I spotted this anonymous street art poster of Republican presidential candidate John McCain in the North Hollywood district of Los Angeles. The title of the poster, Police and Thieves, comes from a Jamaican reggae hit written and performed by Junior Murvin and produced by Lee “Scratch” Perry in 1976. The song was popularized further in a 1977 punk version by…
LA vs. War promises to be one of the largest antiwar cultural happenings in the recent history of Los Angeles. Organized by the activist artists of Yo!, the same people who put together the Yo! What Happened to Peace? international touring peace poster exhibit, the LA vs. War extravaganza is scheduled to run April 10 – 13, 2008, at The…
War: Dance of Death in Black, White, and Blood Red All Over, is the name of a timely exhibition of woodcuts shown at the A Shenere Velt Gallery in Los Angeles. Printmaker Kurt Brian Webb’s blunt, no-nonsense graphic style makes clear an unequivocal opposition to the forces of war and militarism through prints that are at once honest, sardonic, and…
[ Spiral Jetty – Robert Smithson. 1970. The famous earthwork construction in Utah imperiled by oil drilling. ] A story by Kirk Johnson titled Plans to Mix Oil Drilling and Art Clash in Utah, appeared in the March 27th edition of the New York Times. The article details how oil drilling in the Great Salt Lake of Utah may threaten…
Today the Associated Press reported that the U.S. Department of Defense confirmed the deaths of four U.S. soldiers in Iraq, bringing the American death toll to 4,000. When I posted my very first article on this blog in November of 2004, some 849 U.S. soldiers had been killed in Iraq. The four American soldiers who lost their lives today died…
To mark the 5th anniversary of the U.S. invasion and occupation of Iraq, Foreign Policy in Focus magazine asked me to write a review of Artists Against The War, an exhibition of antiwar art organized and presented by the New York-based Society of Illustrators. The following article was originally published in FPIF, March 18, 2008. ______________ On May 1, 2003, George…
The Whitney Biennial 2008 at New York’s Whitney Museum of American Art is thought of by some as an important but frequently contentious survey of contemporary American art. It unveils the latest trends and directions in the U.S. art scene as well as plumbing the zeitgeist of the nation. If you accept that premise then you might conclude that the…
February, 2008 marked the 100th anniversary of “The Eight Independent Painters” exhibition at New York’s MacBeth Gallery. The event changed the face of American art and established the country’s very first avant-garde art movement. The Eight broke the rules of convention by painting the realities of New York’s working poor instead of the lives and accomplishments of the well-to-do class,…
