A public presentation about a friendly demon might sound suspect enough, but when you hear that an art museum sponsored a performance art piece about an affable demon, you might want to pay attention. Such is the case with the Walker Art Center in Minnesota. On August 5, 2023 it presented artist Tamar Ettun’s “demon summoning” performance piece, Lilit the…
In the Vatican City State on June 23, 2023, beneath Michelangelo’s High Renaissance mural in the Sistine Chapel, Pope Francis addressed some 200 invited artists and creative types. One attendee was Andres Serrano—maker of the infamous Piss Christ photograph and other sacrilegious images. I’m not writing this essay as a practicing Catholic, but as a working artist. The Pontiff’s assembly…
Photographer Lynn Goldsmith’s 1981 black and white photo of Prince was made just as the talented young singer-songwriter-musician was on his way to super stardom. Goldsmith’s portrait captured a moment in time with the genre-defying musician. She caught the soulfulness of the man on film. On May 18, 2023 the Supreme Court issued a momentous smackdown to the ghost of…
This essay will broach the subject of The Last Supper, a controversial artwork by photographer Elisabeth Ohlson. Deemed blasphemous by many, it was exhibited at the European Union Parliament in Brussels, Belgium in May of 2023. I will contrast Ohlson’s irreverent photo with a brief overview of how visual artists in the West have portrayed The Last Supper—the final meal…
On Jan. 14, 2023 a golden bronze statue of a “femalefigure” was installed on the rooftop of the Appellate Division Courthouse of New York State. Created by 53-year-old Pakistani-American artist Shahzia Sikander and titled NOW, it’s a tribute to, but not a portrait of, the late Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg and her “fight for abortion rights.” It’s also…
On Oct. 14, 2021 Hunter Biden showed his stupefyingly expensive but unskilled artworks at Milk Studios in Hollywood, California. Soon after the show I wrote an unflattering review titled Hunter Biden’s very first art exhibit. Hunter’s art career has certainly garnered much attention since then, in large part due to the efforts of Georges Bergès, the Manhattan gallerist who represents…
The Embrace, a new sculpture dedicated to Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and his wife Coretta Scott King, has turned out to be contentious rather than unifying. Black conceptual artist Hank Willis Thomas won the commission to create the monument now displayed in the Boston Common of Massachusetts. What Thomas came up with is a headless bronze structure—a jumble of…
This is a tale of two cities, though I imagine Charles Dickens never imagined anything like the following. The story has to do with one garden city where gentlepeople exalt art, and another cosmopolis… actually the very same burg, where those identical magnificos step over bodies to see first-class art exhibits. Wherever you are in Los Angeles, you will come…
