Here’s a perfect example of why “news” distributed by mainstream sources should always be taken with a grain of salt. The Press Association, “the UK leader in news and sports information,” distributed a news release on Feb. 22nd that was picked up by a number of news websites, like the Manchester Evening News. The story concerns a painting of singer…
Slash Magazine of Los Angeles was the first punk publication to emerge on the west coast of the US in 1977. I consider myself fortunate to have worked there for a time, designing pages and graphics and also creating two cover illustrations for the notorious periodical. Slash did more than just challenge the prevailing ideas of the day regarding music,…
Starting February 16th and running until May 30th 2005, the Philadelphia Museum of Art will present Salvador Dalí, a broad retrospective of the artist’s works -the first in the United States in over 60 years. Co-curator of the exhibit, Michael Taylor, said “It’s astonishing, the range of his work. It’s really crucial, I think, to the re-evaluation of his career.” As…
As Christo and Jeanne-Claude prepare to inflict The Gates upon New York’s Central Park, the famous commons is beginning to look as if it’s under police siege. Several hundred police will flood the park around the clock to guard the installation for sixteen days starting Feb. 12th. Private security, park enforcement, and hundreds of police officers both uniformed and undercover,…
On February 7th anti-war artists held a protest outside of the Farnsworth Art Museum in Rockland, Maine, to voice disapproval over the museum’s exhibit, Fire and Ice: Combat Art from Afghanistan and Iraq by Staff Sergeant Michael Fay USMCR. The exhibit was made possible by the support of the Marine Corps Heritage Foundation, and the protest took place as the…
On February 6th, the Mayor of Blacktown Australia banned anti-war street artwork by artist Zanny Begg. The artist’s works consisted of life-sized poster cut-outs of a US soldier gripping his M-16 rifle. Each wildly painted artwork incorporated the words, Checkpoint for Weapons of Mass Distraction. Hmm… whatever happened to those weapons of mass destruction we went to war over? The…
I first discovered the works of Black American artist Jacob Lawrence, as a teenager in the late 1960’s. Inspired by the Civil Rights Movement and the rising tide of dissent all around me, I was naturally enthusiastic over Lawrence’s epic series regarding the great Haitian slave rebellion of 1791. Lawrence was only twenty one when he completed his forty one…
Ben Shahn was one of my earliest inspirations as an artist. He believed art was “one of the last remaining outposts of free speech,” and his dedication to social realism led him to paint and draw the American experience of the 1930’s as he lived it. Shahn captured the poor and the working class with his pen and brush, and…
