America In Distress

Imagine my shock and disappointment at not being placed on the list of artists to receive the National Medal of Arts from President Bush. I was also excluded from the list of those to receive the National Humanities Medal. I open my heart to the readership of this web log and confess that I’m crushed. Please believe me when I…

Some months ago I was reading a Los Angeles art magazine’s review about an artist’s painting that had as its theme the terror attacks of 9/11. The reviewer made the following comment about the artwork: “the artist managed to de-politicize the work and therefore make its impact that much more dramatic.” The reviewer’s assertion reveals a pathological aversion to politics…

Throughout her long working life as a photographer, Dorothea Lange produced some of the most riveting photographic images in history. She documented the great depression in the US, the internment of Japanese Americans, strikes and workers on relief, the armies of unemployed and displaced farmers who left the dustbowl states for California. An extraordinary woman with enormous talent and a…

Art and China’s Revolution is the latest exhibition at the Asia Society Museum in New York City. Running until Jan. 11, 2009, the exhibit focuses on the propaganda art produced in China during the so-called Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution period of 1966-1976. The exhibit displays some 250 large-scale oil paintings, sculptures, woodblock prints, ink paintings, drawings, posters, and other art…

What is Neoism? Just another permutation of postmodern entropy. An incomprehensible and pointless muddle posturing as the latest avant-garde art movement. Best summed up by its founder, Istvan Kantor, when he stated, “We are the Neoists, do not listen to us.” German police arrested Kantor last November on charges of property damage. He had splashed a container of his own…