Does art have actual social worth and significance, or is it just another commodity to be bought and sold by the wealthy? My beliefs place me in the former camp, as I loath the very idea that something as magical, spiritual and ephemeral as art – could or should be controlled, influenced or marginalized by market forces. However, there are…
Richard Schaaf of Azul Editions, a small independent press, informed me of some exciting news. A long out of print book by famed Mexican Muralist, David Alfaro Siqueiros, has been translated into English and republished by Azul Editions. How to Paint a Mural is the Mexican master’s instructional essay on the fine art of creating a public wall mural. It…
I saw the Treasures of Tutankhamen when it showed at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) in 1978. At the time the entrance fee was $2 (today’s equivalent adjusted for inflation would be $6). After nearly 30 years the treasures have returned to LACMA as a razzle dazzle Hollywood road show called Tutankhamen and the Golden Age of…
In January of 2002, then Attorney General of the United States, John Ashcroft, censored a pair of classic Art Deco statues located in the Great Hall of the Justice Department. I wrote about this ridiculous act of Taliban-like extremism at the time it happened. Ashcroft, a Christian fundamentalist, was made terribly uncomfortable by the statues. In order to protect western…
At sixteen I became aware of those artists who lived and worked throughout Germany’s dreadful years of war and fascism. German Expressionist artists like George Grosz, Conrad Felixmüller, Gert Wollheim, and Max Pechstein had enormous influence upon me – not so much for how they painted… but what they painted. They were unafraid to tell the truth about their society,…
In 1970 artist Sam Wiener created an artwork that addressed the slaughter then occurring in Vietnam, but his work unfortunately still has resonance in our world today. Those Who Fail to Remember the Past Are Condemned to Repeat It was originally titled 45,391… and counting, with the title changing as the numbers of U.S. soldiers killed in Vietnam kept climbing….
The 51st Venice Biennale opened on June 12th, 2005, and artists, patrons, curators, collectors and the general public will view the latest in contemporary art until the festival closes in November. It’s been said that this biennale has abandoned the display of gimmicky artworks designed to shock in favor of more subdued statements, and that this year’s festival is a…
Is Totalitarian Postmodern the latest in design trends? It may well be, since visual styles usually go hand in hand with the political realities of the day. This prime example of a totalitarian postmodernist poster was recently spotted on trains and train stations in the Washington, DC area. Reminiscent of the propaganda posters issued by the regimes of Hitler’s Germany…
