Art and China’s Revolution

Art and China’s Revolution is the latest exhibition at the Asia Society Museum in New York City. Running until Jan. 11, 2009, the exhibit focuses on the propaganda art produced in China during the so-called Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution period of 1966-1976. The exhibit displays some 250 large-scale oil paintings, sculptures, woodblock prints, ink paintings, drawings, posters, and other art…

His Majesty King Mob

His Majesty King Mob

“One thing is certain. King Mob never wanted to find themselves here, in the house rag of cultural consumption, let alone locked away in Tate’s permanent collection. But these posters and magazines are just detritus, the record of past struggles. In the present day, the real action is elsewhere.” So writes author Hari Kunzru in The Mob Who Shouldn’t Really…

An Art World Mesmerized by Bling

As the world burns and international financial institutions fall like so many dominoes, impulsive oligarchs and imprudent investment bankers continue to put their money into the overheated contemporary art “market.” At a two-day Sotheby’s London auction of works by postmodernist Damien Hirst, the artist made a whopping $169 million before the auction even closed. Among the masterpieces snatched-up; The Kingdom,…

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War & Empire Opening in San Francisco

[ The Meridian Gallery in San Francisco, California. Photo by Mark Vallen. ] All three floors of the beautiful turn-of-the-century Beaux-Arts building that houses the Meridian Gallery in San Francisco, California, were packed full of people during the September 4th, 2008, opening reception of the Meridian’s War & Empire exhibition. As the show runs until election night on November 4th,…

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War & Empire at the Meridian Gallery

Coming this September, 2008, San Francisco’s Meridian Gallery will present War and Empire, a group exhibition that has as its theme the state of democracy in the U.S. – as well as the continuing military occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan. I am delighted that my own art has been included in the exhibit, since being able to show with a…

1930s: The Making of “The New Man”
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1930s: The Making of “The New Man”

Those fortunate to see the latest exhibition at the National Gallery of Canada, 1930s: The Making of “The New Man,” will not only have the opportunity to feast their eyes upon some of the greatest artworks of the 20th century – they will be given ample evidence of how artists once responded to calamity and social crisis. On view until…

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“Fundamental” in Brussels, Belgium

Brussels is not only the capital of Belgium and the administrative center of the European Union, it is also the city where the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) is based. In addition, Brussels becomes the latest stop for Fundamental, the group exhibition I’m participating in that explores today’s religious fundamentalist movements. My painting, A People Under Command: USA Today, is…

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The Orientalists: Then and Now

The Lure of the East: British Orientalist Painting, is an important exhibition running in London at the Tate Britain from June 4th, 2008 through August 31st, 2008. The exhibit provides a somewhat critical look at Orientalism, the genre commonly associated with nineteenth-century Western artists who depicted the peoples and cultures of an imagined Near and Middle East. The Tate is…