When the US Army captured Iraq’s capital of Baghdad in April of 2003, people around the world were shocked by the whirlwind of looting that followed in the wake of liberation. Quick to seize and guard Iraq’s Oil Ministry, US forces left other government buildings unprotected and open to pillage by throngs of impoverished Iraqis. The country’s art and history…
Pioneering American architect Philip Johnson died on Tuesday, January 25th, 2005, he was 98 years old. His controversial designs encompassed everything from magnificent corporate headquarters to the Crystal Cathedral in Los Angeles. Johnson coined the architectural term international style and invented the role of museum architecture curator at New York’s Museum of Modern Art (MOMA) in 1931. Terrence Riley, the…
In Berlin Germany, the Kunst-Werke Institute for Contemporary Art opened a major exhibition on January 29th, 2005 – Regarding Terror: The RAF Exhibition. Through the works of some 40 contemporary artists working in various media, the exhibit focuses on Germany’s infamous terrorist organization, Red Army Faction (RAF). In the 1970’s and 80’s, the communist urban guerilla group conducted a violent…
In 2004 the California Science Center in the Exposition Park of Los Angeles, presented Body Worlds: The Anatomical Exhibition of Real Human Bodies. In the words of the museum, “Thanks to the breakthrough process of plastination, more than 200 real human specimens are displayed to reveal an extraordinary new look inside the human body.” As a realist artist I naturally…
Charles Saatchi set up the British advertising agency, Saatchi and Saatchi, the firm hired by the Conservative party in 1978 to catapult Margaret Thatcher to power. By the late 1980’s Saatchi was one of the most powerful figures in the art world, and he used his millions to create a personal stable of postmodernist young Turks, the so-called Brit Art…
Just days before the official 60th anniversary of the liberation of the Nazi death camps in Europe (Jan. 27th), the United Nations is presenting a special art exhibition at the General Assembly Visitor’s Lobby. Opening on Monday, Jan. 24, 2005, Auschwitz – The Depth of the Abyss commemorates the victims of the fascist terror that claimed the lives of tens…
This past Jan.15th, over 200 artists, teachers, and students assembled outside the Louvre in Paris to protest the museum having stripped them of free entry. Last Sept. the museum did away with its policy of free entry for arts professionals and students, igniting a storm of disapproval. The “Louvre For All” protest was backed by 22 unions – including the…
The “pioneering conceptual artist” Chris Burden has built a prosperous career for himself based on controversy and the limitless gullibility of the official art world. In 1971 Burden arranged a stunt at the F Space Gallery in Santa Ana, California, and called it art. His exploit, titled Shoot, consisted of being shot in the right arm at close range by an…
