I see things through the eyes of a socially engaged artist. Making art is intellectual work that entails conceptual thinking and problem solving, capabilities that must also be applied to the world of politics. As a painter I believe that art is the enemy of war, the converse is also true: war is the enemy of art. In 1999 I…
Why is an artist in Los Angeles, California writing to defend a museum in Detroit, Michigan? Because I understand that whatever the fate of the Detroit Institute of Arts (DIA), it will affect museums all across the United States. The agony of Detroit is one of today’s enormously complex political and economic questions, but one that American artists must grapple…
I am pleased to announce that I am now a member of the Arts and Letters Council of the Mexican Museum of San Francisco. I was asked to join the council by the museum’s director, David de la Torre, and by accepting the position I have become part of a group of esteemed artists, writers, and scholars who have lent…
August 6th, 2013 marks the 68th anniversary of the U.S. atomic bombing of Hiroshima, Japan. Activists continue to protest against nuclear weaponry, and nations continue to build and possess them. I have written about the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki on a number of occasions, and I have created artworks that express my opposition to nuclear weapons. I will…
Jeffrey Deitch is throwing in the towel after serving as the director of the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles (MOCA) for three uneasy years out of his five-year contract. Details concerning his reign at and departure from MOCA abound, but you will not find the minutiae detailed here. A large segment of L.A.’s art community did not trust Deitch…
In 1940 Diego Rivera painted the huge fresco mural Pan American Unity for the Golden Gate International Exposition, which was held in 1939 and 1940 on California’s Treasure Island in the San Francisco Bay. Tens of thousands of visitors and tourists attended the exposition, which included the special showcase, Art in Action. People visiting the showcase could watch artists, such…
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…
