Compassion: Do artists have a social responsibility?

Teaching with Contemporary Art

Occupy This

Teaching with Contemporary Art

Occupy This

Yinka Shonibare MBE says in his season 5 segment that he would like to have the “trappings of wealth” himself, even though he may be criticizing it. And being made …

5 Questions for Contemporary Practice

5 Questions for Contemporary Practice With Gregory Sholette

5 Questions for Contemporary Practice

5 Questions for Contemporary Practice With Gregory Sholette

Artist, scholar, organizer, and professor, Gregory Sholette embodies multiple ways that artists can interrogate history, politics, and public discourse. Through his initial work with the group REPOhistory (1989-2000) (as in, “repossessing …

Community Arts Training Institute: A Conversation with Roseann Weiss

Community Arts Training Institute: A Conversation with Roseann Weiss

During my time as a guest blogger for Art21, I’ve examined various initiatives that have transformed the cultural landscape of St. Louis. Despite the city’s dwindling population, the arts are …

Creative Rebuild: Theaster Gates in Hyde Park, St. Louis

Creative Rebuild: Theaster Gates in Hyde Park, St. Louis

Artist Theaster Gates likes systems. And what he likes more than a system itself is knowing how to leverage it. Though formally trained in handling clay, Gates also uses the …

Of Monuments and Memorials: St. Louis Modernism and Juan William Chávez’s Pruitt-Igoe Bee Sanctuary

Of Monuments and Memorials: St. Louis Modernism and Juan William Chávez’s Pruitt-Igoe Bee Sanctuary

Notable attention has turned to what many consider the golden age of modern St. Louis—the 1950s—when the city reached its highest population and garnered international attention for its architectural contributions. …

5 Questions for Contemporary Practice

5 Questions for Contemporary Practice with Sanford Biggers

5 Questions for Contemporary Practice

5 Questions for Contemporary Practice with Sanford Biggers

Images from popular culture abound in Sanford Biggers’s work, and particularly from hip-hop, East Asian Buddhism, and the Antebellum and Afro-Futurist African-American. Two images that have become particularly emblematic for …

Flash Points

EMPATHY VIRUS

Flash Points

EMPATHY VIRUS

“People kept telling me art can’t change the world; so I stopped calling what I do art,” says Carl Scrase, a young Australian artist who shot to local fame with his …

Flash Points

PUBLIC AMNESIA

Flash Points

PUBLIC AMNESIA

History isn’t was. History is. No matter how much we wipe our feet at the front door, we track history through the house. Leaving its muddy footprints all over the …

Inside the Artist's Studio

Inside the Artist’s Studio | Gregory Sholette

Inside the Artist's Studio

Inside the Artist’s Studio | Gregory Sholette

Gregory Sholette is a New York-based artist, writer, and founding member of Political Art Documentation/Distribution (PAD/D: 1980-1988), and REPOhistory (1989-2000). A graduate of The Cooper Union (BFA 1979), The University …

5 Questions for Contemporary Practice

5 Questions (for Contemporary Practice) with Not An Alternative

5 Questions for Contemporary Practice

5 Questions (for Contemporary Practice) with Not An Alternative

I encountered the art group Not An Alternative for the first time about a month ago in Corona, Queens, where Tania Bruguera (featured last month in 5 Questions) had assembled …

Inside the Artist's Studio

Inside the Artist’s Studio | Juozas Cernius

Inside the Artist's Studio

Inside the Artist’s Studio | Juozas Cernius

Juozas Cernius is a Canadian visual artist based in Toronto. He has received his MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (2004) and his BFA from Concordia …

Center Field: Art in the Middle with Bad at Sports.

Center Field | Characters, Not Caricatures: The Multifarious Art of Rachel Mason

Center Field: Art in the Middle with Bad at Sports.

Center Field | Characters, Not Caricatures: The Multifarious Art of Rachel Mason

Rachel Mason’s work is not easy to neatly summarize. I’ve been following her projects for several years now, and I still have difficulty explaining what exactly it is that she …

How Much Does Corn Matter? Glory and Humility in the Work of Eduardo Villanes

How Much Does Corn Matter? Glory and Humility in the Work of Eduardo Villanes

As I am grieving the disappearance of the Minimalist from the pages of the New York Times, I am also pondering Mark Bittman’s statement from his farewell column, “the continuing …

Between Barcelona’s Soft Shoulders and Its Hard Underbelly: A Conversation with Daniela Ortiz

Between Barcelona’s Soft Shoulders and Its Hard Underbelly: A Conversation with Daniela Ortiz

Several months ago, even before I set my foot on Catalan ground, I was captivated by a seemingly modest photograph: a chocolate candy in a golden wrapper set on a …

5 Questions for Contemporary Practice

5 Questions (for Contemporary Practice) with Rigo 23

5 Questions for Contemporary Practice

5 Questions (for Contemporary Practice) with Rigo 23

I first encountered Rigo 23’s work this past summer staying with friends in San Francisco’s Mission, where Rigo 23 partially got his start as an artist through his engagement with …

“Elephant,” or Why I Love Performance Art

“Elephant,” or Why I Love Performance Art

Recent guest blogger Marissa Perel wrote a post following up her residency on this site. — Ed. 2010 wouldn’t be complete without the Art21 world knowing about this mind-blowing show …

Eve Essex and Cornelius Cardew

Eve Essex and Cornelius Cardew

Continuing the tenuous thread I’ve begun to weave, today’s post concerns Eve Essex, an artist I’ve been interested in since she was a resident with the Berwick Research Institute in …

Flash Points

Art & Compassion at “New York’s Cathedral”

Flash Points

Art & Compassion at “New York’s Cathedral”

Rev. Tom Miller is the Canon for Liturgy and the Arts at New York’s Cathedral of St. John the Divine, affectionately known as “New York’s Cathedral,” even though it is …

Flash Points

Conveying Compassion

Flash Points

Conveying Compassion

When I learned that Doris Salcedo was being featured in Art21’s episode on Compassion, I couldn’t imagine a more appropriate artist to represent this theme. However to me, Salcedo goes …

Flash Points

Understanding Pain

Flash Points

Understanding Pain

A friend of mine told me how she first learned of rape: rape happens when someone forces all your clothes off, her brother explained. My friend was, of course, horrified. …

BOMB in the Building

Flash Points

An interview with Regina José Galindo by Francisco Goldman

BOMB in the Building

Flash Points

An interview with Regina José Galindo by Francisco Goldman

Welcome back to BOMB in the Building, where each week we’re featuring a BOMB interview with a Season 5 artist—or one that corresponds to the theme of the artist’s work. …

Meet the Season 5 Artist: Doris Salcedo

Meet the Season 5 Artist: Doris Salcedo

The above video is excerpted from the Season 5 episode Compassion, premiering on Wednesday, October 7, 2009 at 10pm (ET) on PBS (check local listings). Compassion features three artists — …

BOMB in the Building

Flash Points

An interview with Carrie Mae Weems by Dawoud Bey

BOMB in the Building

Flash Points

An interview with Carrie Mae Weems by Dawoud Bey

We’re back! Keep your eye on this column in the months to come as BOMB Magazine highlights Season 5 artists and themes, with excerpts of new and vintage interviews from …

Meet the Season 5 Artist: Carrie Mae Weems

Meet the Season 5 Artist: Carrie Mae Weems

The above video is excerpted from the Season 5 episode Compassion, premiering on Wednesday, October 7, 2009 at 10pm (ET) on PBS (check local listings). Compassion features three artists — …

Flash Points

Art21 Extended Play

Meet the Season 5 Artist: William Kentridge

Flash Points

Art21 Extended Play

Meet the Season 5 Artist: William Kentridge

The above video is excerpted from the Season 5 episode Compassion, premiering on Wednesday, October 7, 2009 at 10pm (ET) on PBS (check local listings). Compassion features three artists — …

Flash Points

New Flash Points Topic: Compassion

Flash Points

New Flash Points Topic: Compassion

In celebration of the fifth season of Art:21—Art in the Twenty-First Century, premiering this fall on PBS, we are accelerating the Flash Points format, tying the next round of topics …