Inauguration Day
The Coronation of Napoleon and Josephine (detail) Jacques-Louis David 1805-7.
The Coronation of Napoleon and Josephine (detail) Jacques-Louis David 1805-7.
I created this cartoon of a turkey at his Thanksgiving feast when I was only 17 years old. My pen drawing titled, No Thanks!, served as the cover for the Southern California psychedelic “underground” newspaper, The Tribe. This particular edition of the pre-Watergate paper hit the streets on November 26th, 1971. Its anti-Nixon theme certainly didn’t win me any friends,…
When I wrote a critique of the March 25th Whither Arts Journalism in LA? public forum, I didn’t expect it to strike such a deep chord with people. My analysis of the event stirred dozens of working artists, gallery owners, curators, educators and art lovers to send me encouraging e-mails. Of the dozens who have wrote to me, none were…
Jacob Lawrence (1917-2000) was one of America’s greatest African American artists – but you could just as easily say that he was one of the preeminent artists of the 20th Century. There’s no doubt that his narrative style, a blend of social realism and flattened abstract picture planes, was to influence legions of artists – myself being one of them….
Angels & Demons: Blessed or Possessed? is the latest exhibit presented by the A Shenere Velt Gallery at The Workmen’s Circle in West Los Angeles. The gallery’s press release for the show runs as follows: Demonizing our enemies and deifying our ideals stretches back long before contemporary religions. The polarization of discourse into ultimate good and ultimate evil is found…