My painting, A People Under Command: USA Today, is included in the traveling exhibit, Fundamental, which opens at Espacio de Cultura LA BOCA in Madrid, Spain, Feb. 21, 2008. Exploring the sensitive subject of religious fundamentalism in the 21st century, the group show at the Madrid gallery runs until until March 2nd, 2008. LA BOCA is located in the Lavapiés…
The following are excerpts from Obey Plagiarist Shepard Fairey, a critique I wrote about artist Shepard Fairey on the occasion of his solo exhibition, opening Dec.1, 2007, at the Merry Karnowsky Gallery in Los Angeles. The full, unedited critique contains thirteen illustrated examples of plagiarisms committed by Fairey, three of which are shown in this web post. To view the…
At London’s Sotheby’s auction house on Oct. 12, 2007, just as Execution, a painting by contemporary Chinese artist Yue Minjun was about to go on the auction block, a man seated in the auction hall leapt to his feet and began shouting; “Shame on all of you! You’re spending millions of pounds on art and the world is falling apart!…
The following account of a community being gentrified, is now so commonplace a story across America as to hardly merit attention. While this chronicle concerns a district in the City of Los Angeles, the dynamics apply to cities everywhere. I was born and raised in Los Angeles, and North Hollywood is a district in the north-western section of L.A. known…
Jacob Lawrence (1917-2000) was one of America’s greatest African American artists – but you could just as easily say that he was one of the preeminent artists of the 20th Century. There’s no doubt that his narrative style, a blend of social realism and flattened abstract picture planes, was to influence legions of artists – myself being one of them….
Some people have no business being artists… and others have no business holding public office. Put the two together and you get, well, the following story. Actress Jane Seymour fancies herself a painter. As with the artworks of most pop celebrities who turn to the “hobby” of painting after a dazzling and money-spinning career, it’s not quality or profundity that…
During the last few months in New York City, someone has taken to destroying the illicit stencil graffiti art and wheat-pasted posters of that city by splashing them with brightly colored daubs of paint. Nicknamed “the Splasher” by the media, the perpetrator has for the most part ignored the majority of street art, preferring instead to purposefully target and deface…
During the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq, the Pentagon released to American troops a wanted list of Iraqi leaders that came in the form of a deck of cards. The playing cards featured photos and information about various government henchmen, and were designed to help U.S. troops identify and capture members of Saddam Hussein’s regime. Now, four years after the…
