The Battle for Babylon is an article written by art critic Jerry Saltz. While his article focuses on the art scene in New York, his critique is applicable almost universally. He takes the position that “more artists, gallerists, and curators are taking matters into their own hands” in an effort to circumvent the current arrangement that “reduces art to its…
The International Center of Photography in New York is hosting an exhibition of wartime photographs titled: El Salvador: Work of Thirty Photographers. This important exhibit details the bloody US backed counterinsurgency war that ravaged the Central American nation, with the photos documenting the period from 1979 to 1983. Organized more than twenty years ago by photographers Susan Meiselas and Henry Mattison,…
I could write about the catastrophic loss the nation has suffered with the destruction of historic architecture in Louisiana and Mississippi, or of the damage done to museums and cultural institutions. But for me, the one story that so far sums up the appalling cultural losses suffered by the nation (and the world), comes from a cultural task force set…
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…
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…
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…
Cultural democracy is part of the structure of any truly democratic society, and like political democracy, it derives its strength solely from the people. The creation, propagation, and accessibility of the arts not only helps to promote democratic values – it is vital to them. However, participatory and community based cultural democracy is never a given, it is something we…
African American artist, Cliff Joseph, was the co-founder of the 1960’s Black Emergency Cultural Coalition in New York, an artist’s group involved in creating socially conscious artworks. Joseph’s oil on canvas painting, titled My Country Right or Wrong was created in 1968 at the height of America’s war on Vietnam. The artwork derided the blind patriotism that made the war…
