Year Zero: Converting from VICE to Virtue
|

Year Zero: Converting from VICE to Virtue

On April 9, 2021, VICE, the digital media and broadcasting company that touts itself as “the definitive guide to enlightening information,” published a ghastly interview with Matt Loughrey, a successful 42-year-old Irish photo restorer who developed a lucrative career colorizing historic photos. The article was titled, These People Were Arrested by the Khmer Rouge and Never Seen Again. It was…

| |

Sanford Biggers Is Not An Oracle

On May 11, 2021 the Smithsonian Magazine ran an article with the headline, This Monumental ‘Oracle’ Statue in NYC Subverts Traditional Sculpture. Artist Sanford  Biggers was being touted by the magazine as the first artist to be invited by the Rockefeller Center to take over their campus with a multimedia survey exhibition. He was also being applauded for exhibiting his…

The Rise and Fall of LACMA
| | |

The Rise and Fall of LACMA

As a Los Angeles born artist, the tale of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) is a personal story for me; I’m actually older than the museum. My anecdotes will offer a glimpse of its glory days, and my photo essay will depict its inevitable physical destruction under its Director and Chief Executive Officer, Michael Govan. Mr. Govan…

This is not art. This is art. Not Sure.

This is not art. This is art. Not Sure.

Give me a canvas covered in used bubblegum… …I’ll give you $500,000 for it. I was exasperated by a recent “poll” that maligns realism in art. If you have any doubts that every single facet of American life is today being weaponized for political purposes—even the enjoyment of art, then the following should open your eyes. The alternative title for…

|

Spirit Cooking & Marina Abramović – The First Cut Is the Deepest

CAUTION: This essay contains violent imagery not suitable for the faint-hearted or for children. Since writing this in 2017, I have come to the understanding that spiritual evil permeates some contemporary art and culture. As a matter of historic record, I have not edited this essay to reflect my changing view. A facet of the outlandish chronicles having to do…

|

Roger Scruton at TRAC 2014

When hundreds of arts professionals from all over the country, indeed from all across the globe, come together at a four day symposium to enthusiastically discuss the future of realism in painting… it could be said that something might be afoot in the art world. TRAC 2014, or The Representational Art Conference, took place from March 2 through March 5,…

Ward Kimball – Art Afterpieces

In the early 1960s, American artist Ward Kimball (1914-2002) began to playfully alter reproductions of Old Master paintings; he painted directly on the mass-produced replicate masterworks, substantially altering the prints by inserting a number of incongruous images, or sometimes only slightly changing the facsimiles by inserting the tiniest of details. Kimball was a superb draftsman, caricaturist, and cartoonist employed by…