The Tate Modern in London currently has on display an exhibit called Degenerate Art, a small showing of German Expressionist paintings that runs until October 30th, 2005. The name of the Tate show comes from the infamous Entartete Kunst (Degenerate Art) exhibit mounted by the Nazis in 1937. Heralding the Nazi regime’s policy towards the arts, that exhibit was the…
Trouble is brewing in the realm of the postmodern art world, one of its stars could take a big fall, and with any luck his plummet may indicate the entire postmodernist school could soon topple. Chris Ofili, the artist famous for incorporating elephant dung into his portrait of the Virgin Mary, is at the center of the controversy, which an…
Thanks to the prevailing postmodern idiocy that rules the world of art, I sometimes hesitate to tell people that I’m an artist. What might they think? That I create paintings like “performance artist,” Keith Boadwee, who squats over his canvases and “paints” by emptying his bowels of egg tempura enemas? In 1995, Ace Contemporary Exhibitions of Los Angeles presented a…
Two years after the US “liberated” Iraq, artists in that beleaguered nation are barely hanging on. Having survived the long night of Saddam and the “shock and awe” blitzkrieg of the Americans, Iraqi artists today are fighting a losing battle against occupation, terrorism, and the rising threat of Islamic fundamentalism. Back in July of 2004, the artists of Iraq were…
When I was a teenager in the late 1960’s, I found an art book in my local library titled, Ecco Homo (Behold the Man). As my first real introduction to German Expressionist art, it was an encounter that profoundly altered my life as an artist. Ecco Homo was a portfolio of prints created by artist, George Grosz, in 1923. That…
August 6th, 2005, marks the 60th anniversary of the atomic bombing of Japan. August 9th, marks the bombing of Nagasaki. Those who survived the blasts became known as hibakusha (Atom Bomb Survivors), and in 1974 the hibakusha began contributing artworks to an unusual project that would preserve for the world their memories of atomic fire. The Nippon Hoso Kyokai (NHK…
Virtually unknown in the west, the Hiroshima Panels are as profound an antiwar work as Pablo Picasso’s famous mural, Guernica. The creation of Japanese artists, Iri and Toshi Maruki (both now deceased), the panels depict the atomic holocaust wrought upon Japan when the U.S. dropped nuclear bombs on the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The monumental panels, which are actually…
Though it may not show in my work, I’ve always been interested in the points of view and politics of the Surrealist movement. So naturally I took great delight in learning that a new museum dedicated to one of my favorite surrealist painters, René Magritte, will open in Brussels sometime in early 2007. The collection will include around 150 works…
