ONE MORE TIME—WHAT IS ART? This year has brought two very good films on the art world, first, The Art of the Steal about the Barnes Collections (reviewed on this site) and, now, Exit Through the Gift Shop. The title refers to the museum blockbuster, which routes...
SCOUNDREL TIME, AGAIN—CENSORSHIP RETURNS Art of the Streets at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, 2011 Like the swallows return to Capistrano, censorship of art returns every time forces of morality feel emboldened or threatened. Two decades ago, it...
ART AS WRITING In the dark days of the late 1970s, New York City was at its lowest ebb. Although Jimmy Carter never uttered the word “malaise” in his infamous “Malaise Speech” (1979), the Big Apple was a psycho poster city for malaise. Infuriated by the benign...
POSTMODERN THEORY Introduction: Modernism and Post-Modernism Deeply marked by the idealism of the Second World War, Americans woke slowly to the changed landscape where idealism was impossible. The era of endless fear and war without end had dawned. The only way it...
Finding White Art There is an interesting painting by the (white male) artist, Mark Tansey, White on White (1986), featuring an unexpected encounter between a Bedouin tribe and a band of Eskimos. At the edges of a sandstorm and a snowstorm is a white out, a reference...
