In 1848 the young French painter Gustave Courbet and a circle of dissident artists and intellectuals regularly met at a Parisian café called the Brasserie Andler. It was there after many lively discussions that the term “Realism” was first used to describe the style of art and literature the mavericks were striving for. The art establishment richly rewarded those who…
What is Neoism? Just another permutation of postmodern entropy. An incomprehensible and pointless muddle posturing as the latest avant-garde art movement. Best summed up by its founder, Istvan Kantor, when he stated, “We are the Neoists, do not listen to us.” German police arrested Kantor last November on charges of property damage. He had splashed a container of his own…
In September of 2004, Battleship Potemkin, the revolutionary film by Soviet filmmaker Sergei Eisenstein, was shown in an open air screening in London’s Trafalgar Square. Some 40,000 people gathered to see the film. Today it was announced that a newly restored print of Eisentein’s 1925 classic will premiere at the Berlin International Film Festival this coming February. The new print…
Bourgeois art circles are buzzing with the news that the pickled shark by artist Damien Hirst has been sold to an unnamed American collector for around 12 million dollars. Suspended in a vat of formaldehyde and titled, The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living, the marinated 14-foot shark launched Hirst’s lucrative art career in 1992. Now…
Meanwhile in the pop culture department, the Hollywood Dream machine has joined the war on Iraq. Universal Pictures has announced it will produce No True Glory: Battle for Fallujah starring Harrison Ford. No, I’m not kidding. The film will be based on the yet unfinished book No True Glory: The Battle for Fallujah by former marine and now embedded reporter,…
The yuletide carol, O Tannenbaum (Oh Christmas tree) was written in 1820 and based on a German folk melody. German anti-Fascist artist John Heartfield created the above photomontage in 1934 to deride the Nazis who had seized control of his country the year before. The artist titled his work: O Christmas tree in German soil, how bent are thy…
As with public libraries, art museums should exist to serve the public. The mission of educating, inspiring, and uplifting society has been the calling of art museums… thus far. The erstwhile objective of enriching the social order has evidently been abandoned in favor of the profit motive. New York’s Museum of Modern Art is charging a $20 entrance fee and…
Bernarda Bryson Shahn, renowned artist and illustrator and the wife of the famous artist Ben Shahn, has died at the age of 101. She passed away at her artist colony home in Roosevelt New Jersey where she had lived since 1939. Bernarda worked in all mediums, but was perhaps best known for her lithographs. For President Roosevelt’s depression era Resettlement…
