This essay is not about the Art Nouveau movement, but it is about famed folk singer-songwriter Joni Mitchell. On March 1, 2023 Mitchell received the Library of Congress’ Gershwin Prize for Popular Song. But first, before I detail my reaction to the award… a repentant confession. I’m writing this as someone who, once upon a time, was a youthful enthusiast…
When I first saw the bizarre dispatch from the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) that was circulating on the internet, I thought it was fake, so I checked the official NATO Twitter account. The communique was there, beaming with all the pride the military alliance could muster. The quirky missive read: “Ukraine is hosting one of the great epics of…
I created the silkscreen print No Más Guerra (No More War) in 1983. It was a statement against the wars then raging in Central America and around the globe during the Cold War, including the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan. Later, in the 2000s, I distributed the poster at antiwar protests against the US war in Afghanistan and Iraq. Now unbelievably,…
On Jan. 14, 2023 a golden bronze statue of a “femalefigure” was installed on the rooftop of the Appellate Division Courthouse of New York State. Created by 53-year-old Pakistani-American artist Shahzia Sikander and titled NOW, it’s a tribute to, but not a portrait of, the late Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg and her “fight for abortion rights.” It’s also…
On Oct. 14, 2021 Hunter Biden showed his stupefyingly expensive but unskilled artworks at Milk Studios in Hollywood, California. Soon after the show I wrote an unflattering review titled Hunter Biden’s very first art exhibit. Hunter’s art career has certainly garnered much attention since then, in large part due to the efforts of Georges Bergès, the Manhattan gallerist who represents…
As an artist, I see Karl Bodmer’s artworks as key to understanding America. I discovered his works in the late 1960s and have studied them every since. He was an artist-adventurer in the mid-1800s who travelled the wilds of North America to document the lives of indigenous people with sketches, water colors, and elaborate oil paintings. I always found Bodmer’s…
The Embrace, a new sculpture dedicated to Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and his wife Coretta Scott King, has turned out to be contentious rather than unifying. Black conceptual artist Hank Willis Thomas won the commission to create the monument now displayed in the Boston Common of Massachusetts. What Thomas came up with is a headless bronze structure—a jumble of…
In December 2022 my wife Jeannine and I fled Lost Angeles, California to vacation in the wilds of Arizona. The following impressions and photos will describe our adventures in the Wild West of the Union’s 48th state. We first visited Prescott, the historic city in Yavapai County. The population of Prescott is around 45,800 souls, which is just about the…
