Columns & Features

Future Metaphors

Bruce Nauman’s Cyborg Eyes

Future Metaphors

Bruce Nauman’s Cyborg Eyes

Not all events are recorded equally. Despite YouTube’s diarrheic explosion of what constitutes a potential video, clips where almost nothing happens are still difficult for a lot of people to …

Relativity-escher

The Paradoxical Art of “Inception”

The Paradoxical Art of “Inception”

What is so compelling about riddles, mysteries, and puzzles?  Most people are fascinated by images and objects that are paradoxical or impossible in real life but look oddly convincing and …

Flash Points

Freewaves: Video Between Their Toes

Flash Points

Freewaves: Video Between Their Toes

Freewaves turned 20 this year. The grassroots new media organization that began in 1989 with a gaping, loosely defined mission to show Los Angeles to itself celebrated its birthday on …

Teaching with Contemporary Art

Gone Fishing

Teaching with Contemporary Art

Gone Fishing

Teaching with Contemporary Art is taking a break this week in order to pull back, take some vacation, and get set for the return to a new school year in …

Open Enrollment

Back to School!

Open Enrollment

Back to School!

With the last days of July upon us, I shed a tear and take a deep breath as I prepare for my final year at San Francisco Art Institute. My …

GIF(t) Basket

Bravo’s Work of Art: Episode 6 Recap

GIF(t) Basket

Bravo’s Work of Art: Episode 6 Recap

In a special series of posts, Wesley Miller watches Bravo’s Work of Art: The Next Great Artist, frame by frame, and attempts to uncover what it all means through the …

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

Summers at Ox-Bow

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

Summers at Ox-Bow

We tend to spend a lot of time talking about art in terms of “work” nowadays, but we don’t always consider how important respite and retreat can be when it …

John Baldessari, 'The backs of all the trucks passed while driving from Los Angeles to Santa Barbara...', photography, 1963. Courtesy a-n.

Looking at Los Angeles

Baldessari 2.0: Jumping the Lobster

Looking at Los Angeles

Baldessari 2.0: Jumping the Lobster

Upon entering Pure Beauty at LACMA, I overheard a fellow museum-goer tell his companion, “That’s cool — it looks like a lot of my iPhone pictures.”  The viewer was responding …

Teaching with Contemporary Art

The Wheels Are Rolling

Teaching with Contemporary Art

The Wheels Are Rolling

From July 7th through July 14th Art21 hosted our second annual summer institute, Art21 Educators. Art21 Educators is an intensive, year-long professional development initiative designed to cultivate and support K-12 …

Open Enrollment

The Summer Slump

Open Enrollment

The Summer Slump

Time is slowly slipping by as the thick Michigan air hangs around my studio — stagnant and hot, a veritable swamp. It is the summer between my first and second …

GIF(t) Basket

Bravo’s Work of Art: Episode 5 Recap

GIF(t) Basket

Bravo’s Work of Art: Episode 5 Recap

In a special series of posts, Wesley Miller watches Bravo’s Work of Art: The Next Great Artist, frame by frame, and attempts to uncover what it all means through the …

No Preservatives: Conversations about Conservation

Contemporary Art: Who Cares? A Discussion with Karen te Brake-Baldock

No Preservatives: Conversations about Conservation

Contemporary Art: Who Cares? A Discussion with Karen te Brake-Baldock

IMA Art Conservator Richard McCoy talks to INCCA Central Coordinator Karen te Brake-Baldock about the recent international symposium Contemporary Art: Who Cares? Research and Practices in Contemporary Art Conservation.

Letter from London

Letter from London: Young Americans

Letter from London

Letter from London: Young Americans

The “must-see show of the summer” is not, despite what the adverts on the buses might have you believe, the John Richardson-curated Picasso show at Gagosian Gallery. Not nearly as …

Gastro-Vision

Gastro-Vision: Feeding Suburbia

Gastro-Vision

Gastro-Vision: Feeding Suburbia

In the early 1970s, Bill Owens began to document the suburban boom in the California Bay Area. Every Saturday for a year, he photographed middle-class Americans in and around their …

Lives and Works in Berlin

Lives and Works in Berlin: The End of Temporary

Lives and Works in Berlin

Lives and Works in Berlin: The End of Temporary

On August 31, 2010, the Temporäre Kunsthalle Berlin (TKB) will close its doors as according to the original concept. With 8 major exhibitions, 3 facades, and other projects involving over 800 …

Teaching with Contemporary Art

Dear Oliver

Teaching with Contemporary Art

Dear Oliver

You know what I like about Oliver Herring? Pretty much everything. Oliver was generous enough to join us for the 2nd year in a row to jump-start the Art21 Educators …

Flash Points

Experience in Art Education

Flash Points

Experience in Art Education

“An art school, it would appear, does not teach art, but sets up the conditions necessary for creative production, and by extension the conditions for collaboration and social engagement.” — …

Open Enrollment

School’s Out for Summer – But the Work Goes On

Open Enrollment

School’s Out for Summer – But the Work Goes On

This past Fourth of July seemed to mark the beginning of a lingering heat wave across much of the country. While I waited for the sun to set and some …

GIF(t) Basket

Bravo’s Work of Art: Episode 4 Recap (part 2)

GIF(t) Basket

Bravo’s Work of Art: Episode 4 Recap (part 2)

In a special series of posts, Wesley Miller watches Bravo’s Work of Art: The Next Great Artist, frame by frame, and attempts to uncover what it all means through the …

GIF(t) Basket

Bravo’s Work of Art: Episode 4 Recap (part 1)

GIF(t) Basket

Bravo’s Work of Art: Episode 4 Recap (part 1)

In a special series of posts, Wesley Miller watches Bravo’s Work of Art: The Next Great Artist, frame by frame, and attempts to uncover what it all means through the …

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

Printed Matter | Martine Syms and Marco Kane Braunschweiler of Golden Age

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

Printed Matter | Martine Syms and Marco Kane Braunschweiler of Golden Age

Walking around Chicago-based concept shop Golden Age has become a rather dangerous activity for me. After setting a monthly budget for artists’ books, I often find myself going over that …

Flash Points

Machine Project: A.I.R. at the Hammer

Flash Points

Machine Project: A.I.R. at the Hammer

On a recent weekend at the Hammer Museum, you may have stumbled across other visitors napping on the gallery floor and wondered if they had succumbed to museum fatigue. In …

Calling from Canada

Calling From Canada: Runa Islam at Contemporary Art Museum of Montreal

Calling from Canada

Calling From Canada: Runa Islam at Contemporary Art Museum of Montreal

The Great White North, as Canada is affectionately known, could be called something altogether different in the heated summer months. Try “Huge Hot Land” or “Expansive Land Mass Connected by …

Calling from Canada

New column: Calling from Canada

Calling from Canada

New column: Calling from Canada

We are pleased to announce another new column this month, Calling from Canada. Calling from Canada chronicles the burgeoning art scene across the border. The column will deliver the goods …

Flash Points

Looking at Los Angeles

One Day Only De Maria

Flash Points

Looking at Los Angeles

One Day Only De Maria

In 1969, when Lee Lozano began her Dialogue Piece, a project for which she simply invited artists and others to talk with her, she called Walter De Maria twice, once …

Open Enrollment

Quit Grad School.

Open Enrollment

Quit Grad School.

Well, that title may overstate it a little and perhaps it comes from a sullen mood, but in recent days I’ve found myself ruminating about giving up on grad school …

Teaching with Contemporary Art

Shake It Up

Teaching with Contemporary Art

Shake It Up

For about ten summers now I have enjoyed teaching and traveling in some capacity. It’s become increasingly important over the past decade to broaden my own experience as an artist-educator, …

Flash Points

Seeing and Time: Video Art as Experience

Flash Points

Seeing and Time: Video Art as Experience

It is neither a secret nor a surprise to know that, regardless of broad worldly appeal, the average Louvre visitor views the Mona Lisa for a scarce fifteen seconds before …

Letter from London

Letter from London: Tense Present

Letter from London

Letter from London: Tense Present

Let us assume there are two boxes on a table. In one box, there is a relatively normal turtle; in the other, Adolf Hitler’s skull. You have to select one …

Future Metaphors

Future Metaphors: An Introduction

Future Metaphors

Future Metaphors: An Introduction

[youtube:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W3CKD9JRhME] Shana Moulton, “Whispering Pines 9,” video, 2009 In an essay titled “Cyborg Anthropology,” Gary Lee Downey, Joseph Dumit and Sarah Williams offer a sort of manifesto: Cyborg Anthropology invests …

GIF(t) Basket

Bravo’s Work of Art: Episode 3 Recap

GIF(t) Basket

Bravo’s Work of Art: Episode 3 Recap

In a special series of posts, Wesley Miller watches Bravo’s Work of Art: The Next Great Artist, frame by frame, and attempts to uncover what it all means through the …

Inside the Artist's Studio

Inside the Artist’s Studio: Paul Zografakis Part 2

Inside the Artist's Studio

Inside the Artist’s Studio: Paul Zografakis Part 2

This is the second half of the discussion I had with Paul Zografakis’ at Gyzi, Athens and the continuation of Friday’s post. He opened his studio to me and I …

An unlikely gift horse

An unlikely gift horse

A short post today and a follow-up, of sorts, to my earlier post Timing is Everything.  It was announced on Thursday afternoon that Charles Saatchi would be gifting a substantial …

Inside the Artist's Studio

Inside the Artist’s Studio: Paul Zografakis

Inside the Artist's Studio

Inside the Artist’s Studio: Paul Zografakis

Paul Zografakis is a Greek-American artist who was born and raised in St. Louis, MO and based in Athens, Greece since 2007. Paul arrived in Athens on a Fulbright Scholarship …

Lives and Works in Berlin

Lives and Works in Berlin: Gender (and other) Trouble

Lives and Works in Berlin

Lives and Works in Berlin: Gender (and other) Trouble

Judith Butler, that radical Valkyrie of all things identity politics, caused quite a stir in Berlin recently. On June 19th, she declined the “Civil Courage Prize” awarded by the organizers …

On View Now

Art21 Extended Play

On View Now | Mind the Gap: Thoughts on Representing the Holocaust through Comics

On View Now

Art21 Extended Play

On View Now | Mind the Gap: Thoughts on Representing the Holocaust through Comics

The act of codification that is enshrined in the International Declaration of Human Rights has ensured that the unspeakable has been cut down to size at the very moment that …