Columns & Features
Praxis Makes Perfect
Praxis Makes Perfect | Having It Both Ways
Praxis Makes Perfect
Praxis Makes Perfect | Having It Both Ways
Kelsey Nelson delves into Vladimir Nabokov’s and Roland Barthes’ diametrically opposed methods of interpreting art and texts, and asks, is it possible to have it both ways?
Teaching with Contemporary Art
Feedback Control
Teaching with Contemporary Art
Feedback Control
Giving good quality feedback can sometimes make the difference between students completing mediocre assignments and high quality works of art. This week I want to offer some suggestions for what to do when students are “done” but we know they aren’t.
Center Field: Art in the Middle with Bad at Sports.
Center Field | Two Histories of the World: Part Two
Center Field: Art in the Middle with Bad at Sports.
Center Field | Two Histories of the World: Part Two
Caroline Picard looks at “Two Histories of the World,” a two-part exhibition taking place at two different venues and at two different points in time.
Teaching with Contemporary Art
Exploding a Theme
Teaching with Contemporary Art
Exploding a Theme
This week began with one of my advanced classes looking into the paintings of season 6 artist, Rackstraw Downes. As students start up a thematic series of their own work I wanted to see if we could “explode a theme” and “frame” Downes’ paintings in three different ways- as a topic, a theme, and as a question.
Word is a Virus
Word is a Virus | New Releases in Artist-Run Journals: MATERIAL and Prism of Reality
Word is a Virus
Word is a Virus | New Releases in Artist-Run Journals: MATERIAL and Prism of Reality
Carol Cheh looks at two artist-run journals, both of which provide compelling textual windows into L.A.’s rich community of artists and artistic practices.
Praxis Makes Perfect
Praxis Makes Perfect | Disorderly Conduct: The Imperfect Librarians
Praxis Makes Perfect
Praxis Makes Perfect | Disorderly Conduct: The Imperfect Librarians
Erin Sweeny on the “new Order” governing her post-graduate life, where any sense of normalcy or routine has largely disappeared.
Open Enrollment
Open Enrollment | The One in Which I Accidentally Got Political.
Open Enrollment
Open Enrollment | The One in Which I Accidentally Got Political.
After watching the first Presidential debates, Sarah Merianos wonders, should we (as artists, as practitioners, as supporters) keep up the good fight, or let federal funding for the arts die out?
Teaching with Contemporary Art
Test This
Teaching with Contemporary Art
Test This
This school year has started out like none other in recent memory. The fascination to quantify practically everything in education has now moved steadily into art education, as discussed in last week’s interview with Jessica Hoffmann Davis. Here in New York and across the entire country art educators (well, all educators, actually) are being forced to administer pre-assessment tests that “establish a baseline” of “what students know and are able to do” at the beginning of a course.
Teaching with Contemporary Art
An Interview with Jessica Hoffmann Davis, Part Two
Teaching with Contemporary Art
An Interview with Jessica Hoffmann Davis, Part Two
This week it’s my pleasure to share part two of our interview with Jessica Hoffmann Davis. Many, many thanks to those who sent along such positive e-mails and messages saying they enjoyed the first half last week. I have a feeling you will also find part two inspirational…
Center Field: Art in the Middle with Bad at Sports.
Centerfield | Goal-less Living Things: The Plants of Heidi Norton
Center Field: Art in the Middle with Bad at Sports.
Centerfield | Goal-less Living Things: The Plants of Heidi Norton
Caroline Picard talks to artist Heidi Norton about her current solo show at the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, which incorporates living houseplant material.
Teaching with Contemporary Art
An Interview with Jessica Hoffmann Davis, Part One
Teaching with Contemporary Art
An Interview with Jessica Hoffmann Davis, Part One
This week it’s my pleasure to kick off a two-part interview with one of my favorite authors in the field of education, Jessica Hoffmann Davis.
Jessica Hoffmann Davis has published and lectured extensively on the role and promise of arts learning, drawing not only on her own and other current research, but also on personal experience as a visual artist, writer, and educator. While her popular book, Why Our Schools Need the Arts (Teachers College Press, 2008), proposes a “new and unapologetic approach to advocacy for the arts in education”, I originally came to admire her work through reading (and re-reading!) Framing Education as Art: The Octopus has a Good Day (Teachers College Press, 2005), where she challenges non-arts education to be more connected to and like the arts.
Ink: Notes on the Contemporary Print
Ink | Political Art for a Contentious Time
Ink: Notes on the Contemporary Print
Ink | Political Art for a Contentious Time
Following a trend that began with the Enlightenment, prints play a role in today’s political discourse by disseminating artists’ views and rallying the public.
Transmission
Transmission | An Interview with Aldo Tambellini: Black Zero, Avant-Garde Jazz, and the Cosmic Void
Transmission
Transmission | An Interview with Aldo Tambellini: Black Zero, Avant-Garde Jazz, and the Cosmic Void
An interview with the 82 year old experimental artist who is best known for exploring the color and concepts of black.
Looking at Los Angeles
Looking at Los Angeles | I Already Know I Exist: Ken Price at LACMA
Looking at Los Angeles
Looking at Los Angeles | I Already Know I Exist: Ken Price at LACMA
Catherine Wagley considers the role that personal biography plays–or doesn’t–in LACMA’s newly-opened “Ken Price Sculpture: A Retrospective.”