Columns & Features

Letter from London

Letter from London: Plinth of Thieves

Letter from London: Plinth of Thieves

by Ben Street | Mar 23, 2009

Good news! We’re living in “a golden age of public art,” characterized by “a change in art’s very nature, from an aesthetic, spiritual and intellectual function to a principally social …

Teaching with Contemporary Art

Power(ful) Painting

by Joe Fusaro | Mar 18, 2009

In a recent unit with an introductory Studio Art class, my students created paintings that redefined power visually in a variety of ways. After looking at the work of Season …

Letter from London

Letter from London: Primo Puryear

by Ben Street | Mar 16, 2009

Letter from London: Primo Puryear

by Ben Street | Mar 16, 2009

It’s easy for contemporary art cynics to criticize the Bushesque debasement of language that goes on every day in the art world. I’ve actually started to take to the byzantine …

Teaching with Contemporary Art

Notes on a workshop (Part 2)

by Audrey Chan | Mar 14, 2009

(continued from Part 1…) My students and I had knocked on the door of the Éloignement office of the Préfecture in Nantes. The woman who answered asked us what we …

Flash Points

Teaching with Contemporary Art

Making Artistic Noise Part 2: Contemporary Activist Art

by Lauren Adelman | Mar 13, 2009

Teaching with Contemporary Art

Making Artistic Noise Part 2: Contemporary Activist Art

by Lauren Adelman | Mar 13, 2009

To continue from my first post, at Artistic Noise, we teach a curriculum that focuses on issues relevant to the lives of incarcerated and system-involved youth and uses art to …

Flash Points

Teaching with Contemporary Art

Making Artistic Noise Part 1: Art and Social Activism with Incarcerated Youth

by Lauren Adelman | Mar 12, 2009

Teaching with Contemporary Art

Making Artistic Noise Part 1: Art and Social Activism with Incarcerated Youth

by Lauren Adelman | Mar 12, 2009

noise [noiz] noun – a loud, surprising, irritating, or unwanted sound In 2001, I was approached by Fran Sherman of the Juvenile Rights Advocacy Project to help develop an arts …

Flash Points

Election 2008: Seizing the moment in the classroom

by Dillon Paul | Mar 12, 2009

Election 2008: Seizing the moment in the classroom

by Dillon Paul | Mar 12, 2009

One of the things I love most about teaching 12th grade is the sense that I am meeting students on the border between their child and adult selves. They are …

Teaching with Contemporary Art

Notes on a workshop (Part 1)

by Audrey Chan | Mar 11, 2009

I’m also teaching a course at the École Régionale des Beaux-arts de Nantes called, “Workshop: I am curious… (The Artist as Ethnographer).” Each Friday morning, my students and I have …

Letter from London

Letter from London: Richter Scale

by Ben Street | Mar 11, 2009

Letter from London: Richter Scale

by Ben Street | Mar 11, 2009

I didn’t expect to crack a smile during the new show of Gerhard Richter’s portraiture at the National Portrait Gallery. Especially at a Gerhard Richter show. He is an artist …

Teaching with Contemporary Art

Save Us from Ourselves (Making a Mess)

by Joe Fusaro | Mar 11, 2009

Teaching with Contemporary Art

Save Us from Ourselves (Making a Mess)

by Joe Fusaro | Mar 11, 2009

I’m not very religious, but just the other day I was “given” a prayer that somehow spoke volumes about life, the life of teaching, and the life of artist-educators. Eleanor …

Teaching with Contemporary Art

On representations of the artist at work (Part 2)

by Audrey Chan | Mar 6, 2009

Teaching with Contemporary Art

On representations of the artist at work (Part 2)

by Audrey Chan | Mar 6, 2009

Following up our discussion about documentation of the creative process in the cases of Mark Bradford and Jackson Pollock, my students and I talked about what we might include in …

Flash Points

A better “we” through art? AREA Chicago’s Daniel Tucker on art and community

by Daniel Tucker | Mar 6, 2009

A better “we” through art? AREA Chicago’s Daniel Tucker on art and community

by Daniel Tucker | Mar 6, 2009

This post is written as a dispatch from California, where I was at the College Art Association conference and speaking in classes at CalArts, SFAI, and the CCA Social Practices …

Teaching with Contemporary Art

On representations of the artist at work

by Audrey Chan | Mar 5, 2009

Teaching with Contemporary Art

On representations of the artist at work

by Audrey Chan | Mar 5, 2009

[youtube:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aX9SVg6L5vA] In the Art:21 Season 4 episode Paradox, artist Mark Bradford cites the legacy of Abstract Expressionism as an influence on his process-oriented paintings and collages. On a formal level, …

Flash Points

Fight the man! Three activist artists to watch

by Paddy Johnson | Mar 4, 2009

Flash Points

Fight the man! Three activist artists to watch

by Paddy Johnson | Mar 4, 2009

True story: I used to hate activist art. “Why so shrill?” I thought. “Can’t we just talk about this rather than producing a bunch of bad art?” I don’t always …

Teaching with Contemporary Art

Working Without Warhol

by Joe Fusaro | Mar 4, 2009

Teaching with Contemporary Art

Working Without Warhol

by Joe Fusaro | Mar 4, 2009

Last month, five different Art21 artists were featured in the first five pages of Scholastic Art magazine, an issue that celebrated contemporary women artists including Laylah Ali (featured on the …

Flash Points

Authenticity 2.0

by Audrey Chan | Mar 3, 2009

Flash Points

Authenticity 2.0

by Audrey Chan | Mar 3, 2009

At the École des Beaux-Arts de Nantes (Nantes School of Art), I am teaching a course called “Contemporary Art in the United States, 2000-Today.” The premise of the course is …

Letter from London

Letter from London: See you later, contemporary art curator!

by Ben Street | Mar 2, 2009

Letter from London

Letter from London: See you later, contemporary art curator!

by Ben Street | Mar 2, 2009

Pity the poor curator, scapegoat of the contemporary art sceptic. It’s hard not to feel at least a little sorry for Nicholas Bourriaud, curator of Tate Britain’s Altermodern, who has …

Flash Points

Practical propaganda: Amy Franceschini reinvents the Victory Garden

by Paul Schmelzer | Mar 1, 2009

Flash Points

Practical propaganda: Amy Franceschini reinvents the Victory Garden

by Paul Schmelzer | Mar 1, 2009

Amy Franceschini is my favorite kind of propagandist: she creates enticing imagery you can’t help but rally around, but backs it up with dirt-under-the-fingernails pragmatism in service of a nearly …

BOMB in the Building

BOMB in the Building: Books (and Zombies) Edition!

by BOMB Magazine | Feb 27, 2009

BOMB in the Building

BOMB in the Building: Books (and Zombies) Edition!

by BOMB Magazine | Feb 27, 2009

Since Art21 rotted our little brains with their Audio Visual edition last week, we decided to retaliate with some literary mind-expanding material. Writers who write a lot. Hipster Runoff is …

Flash Points

Where’s all the rightwing street art?

by Paul Schmelzer | Feb 26, 2009

Flash Points

Where’s all the rightwing street art?

by Paul Schmelzer | Feb 26, 2009

Learning of Princess Hijab—a Paris-based street artist who culturejams advertisements to include her namesake headscarf—an old question came to mind: where are all the rightwing graffiti artists, stencil afficionados, and …

Flash Points

Share and Share Alike

by Sharon Butler | Feb 25, 2009

Flash Points

Share and Share Alike

by Sharon Butler | Feb 25, 2009

Artists who garner the most attention in any given time period are those whose work, explicitly or implicitly, reflects the deeper political sensibilities of the era. Right now, contemporary artists …

Teaching with Contemporary Art

What Light?

by Joe Fusaro | Feb 25, 2009

Teaching with Contemporary Art

What Light?

by Joe Fusaro | Feb 25, 2009

On Monday I had the pleasure of attending the last edition of this season’s Art21’s Salon Series with Robert Ryman and Urs Raussmüller. Going into the evening, I kept thinking …

Flash Points

Chakkrit Chimnok’s banana-leaf utopia

by Paul Schmelzer | Feb 24, 2009

Flash Points

Chakkrit Chimnok’s banana-leaf utopia

by Paul Schmelzer | Feb 24, 2009

Chakkrit Chimnok dreams of a “banana world,” a utopia in which overlooked or discarded items — specifically, the ubiquitous banana leaves that litter the streets in his home city of …

Letter from London

Letter from London: Bad Taste Explosion

by Ben Street | Feb 23, 2009

Letter from London

Letter from London: Bad Taste Explosion

by Ben Street | Feb 23, 2009

Sometimes working in or around contemporary art can be a bit embarrassing. When the papers are splashed with the latest case of a work of art being mistaken for rubbish …

Flash Points

Transcending protest: Looking for pragmatic or poetic art of change

by Paul Schmelzer | Feb 23, 2009

Flash Points

Transcending protest: Looking for pragmatic or poetic art of change

by Paul Schmelzer | Feb 23, 2009

This weekend I went to an opening at The Soap Factory, a scrappy and often-excellent nonprofit art space a block or so off Minneapolis’ riverfront. The description of the work, …

BOMB in the Building

BOMB in the building week 3

by BOMB Magazine | Feb 20, 2009

BOMB in the Building

BOMB in the building week 3

by BOMB Magazine | Feb 20, 2009

This week we find BOMB artists all over the Internets: If you haven’t yet it’s about time you checked out Paul Chan’s National Philistine. Bruce Mau will curate the first …

Flash Points

Obama Special, Part 2

by Daniel Quiles | Feb 19, 2009

Flash Points

Obama Special, Part 2

by Daniel Quiles | Feb 19, 2009

This continues my previous post about the laptop DJ/performance artist Girl Talk, in which I situate him in a lineage of intersections between art and music and suggest a link …

Flash Points

“Imperfect Moments: Mapplethorpe & Censorship Twenty Years Later” at ICA in Philadelphia

by Hrag Vartanian | Feb 18, 2009

Flash Points

“Imperfect Moments: Mapplethorpe & Censorship Twenty Years Later” at ICA in Philadelphia

by Hrag Vartanian | Feb 18, 2009

Last week, people from far and wide gathered for a special conference titled “Imperfect Moments: Mapplethorpe and Censorship Twenty Years Later,” which was co-presented by the Institute of Contemporary Art …

Flash Points

Teaching with Contemporary Art

Hope and Change, Part 2

by Joe Fusaro | Feb 18, 2009

Flash Points

Teaching with Contemporary Art

Hope and Change, Part 2

by Joe Fusaro | Feb 18, 2009

On February 13th I received this message, as many of you did, from Americans for the Arts: Just moments ago, the U.S. House of Representatives approved their final version of …

Flash Points

Sade 2.0

by Thomas Micchelli | Feb 17, 2009

Flash Points

Sade 2.0

by Thomas Micchelli | Feb 17, 2009

On February 7th I drove to the Kasser Theater at Montclair State University to see a performance of The Investigation, a 1966 documentary drama by Peter Weiss (1916-1982), the expatriate German artist and …

BOMB in the Building

BOMB in the building (What we did last weekend edition)

by BOMB Magazine | Feb 13, 2009

BOMB in the Building

BOMB in the building (What we did last weekend edition)

by BOMB Magazine | Feb 13, 2009

Last weekend the BOMB folks cut a swath through the NYC cultural scene, so we thought we would share a sampling of what we found. We started off at Terminal …

Flash Points

Artful Prudence

by Kristin Farr | Feb 13, 2009

Flash Points

Artful Prudence

by Kristin Farr | Feb 13, 2009

politic adjective 1. marked by artful prudence, expedience, and shrewdness. Art and politics have a complex relationship. In the past week, I’ve seen city officials propose the elimination of arts positions, …

Flash Points

Il a chaud au Cul

by Naomi Beckwith | Feb 12, 2009

Flash Points

Il a chaud au Cul

by Naomi Beckwith | Feb 12, 2009

Not at all surprisingly for a corporate entity, the Associated Press recently established ownership of a photograph of Barack Obama taken at a 2006 National Press Club event by photographer …

Art21 Extended Play

Jessica Stockholder | Beauty & Politics

by Wesley Miller | Feb 12, 2009

Art21 Extended Play

Jessica Stockholder | Beauty & Politics

by Wesley Miller | Feb 12, 2009

DOWNLOAD VIA ITUNES | SUBSCRIBE VIA RSS EXCLUSIVE: In her New Haven, Connecticut studio, artist Jessica Stockholder discusses the relationship between beauty, pleasure and taste, and how all three have …