Featured

Art21 Extended Play

Arlene Shechet Sculpts Time

Art21 Extended Play

Arlene Shechet Sculpts Time

Arlene Shechet discusses a series of plaster sculptures that she created over the course of six years in the mid-1990s, following the death of a close friend.

Art21 Extended Play

Arlene Shechet Reveals the Unseen

Art21 Extended Play

Arlene Shechet Reveals the Unseen

“The thing that’s unseen is sometimes way more interesting than what people want you to see.” —Arlene Shechet In the first of two new ART21 Exclusive episodes featuring Arlene Shechet, …

Art21 Extended Play

Tania Bruguera and the Art of Empowerment

Art21 Extended Play

Tania Bruguera and the Art of Empowerment

“The idea of sitting face to face, it’s a very intimate experience. Having a model and painting them always makes people open up.” —Aliza Nisenbaum Today’s ART21 Exclusive features Immigrant Movement …

Art21 Extended Play

Elliott Hundley Is Playing with Your Emotions

Art21 Extended Play

Elliott Hundley Is Playing with Your Emotions

“What’s appealing to me about collage is the fact that it’s so straightforward—that it’s a good foil to my subject.” —Elliott Hundley Today’s ART21 Exclusive features Elliott Hundley describing an …

Itinerant Domestic

Itinerant Domestic

I first encountered the engrossing work of the multimedia artist Rashawn Griffin (b. 1980) in a 2014 group exhibition, The Center is a Moving Target, at Kemper at the Crossroads, …

Art21 New York Close Up

Welcome to Whoop Dee Doo! (with Matt Roche & Jaimie Warren Too)

Art21 New York Close Up

Welcome to Whoop Dee Doo! (with Matt Roche & Jaimie Warren Too)

In a new “New York Close Up” film, artists Jaimie Warren and Matt Roche produce a one-day-only performance of their variety show, Whoop Dee Doo, at Abrons Arts Center.

On Returning Home and Works in Progress: A Conversation with Bukola Koiki

On Returning Home and Works in Progress: A Conversation with Bukola Koiki

I first learned about Bukola Koiki’s art through Facebook. She posted an essay about her work in the group named “BCC: BrownHall Community,” a networking forum for Black artists in …

Art21 Extended Play

Perspectives from the “Gramsci Monument”

Art21 Extended Play

Perspectives from the “Gramsci Monument”

“I don’t do something for the community, I do something, I hope, for art and the understanding of art – my goal is this.” —Thomas Hirschhorn Today’s ART21 Exclusive features the …

Behind Voids and Dissonance: Experimental Music of Fluxus and the Source Family

Behind Voids and Dissonance: Experimental Music of Fluxus and the Source Family

“Purge the world of bourgeois sickness, ‘intellectual,’ professional and commercialized culture; Purge the world of dead art, imitation, artificial art, abstract art, illusionistic art—PURGE THE WORLD OF ‘EUROPANISM!’” [1]. Written with …

Art21 Extended Play

Leonardo Drew and Piet Mondrian Meet on the Grid

Art21 Extended Play

Leonardo Drew and Piet Mondrian Meet on the Grid

“What can I say about Mondrian, he’s just the man. As far as the grid and composition, obviously I’m working off of him and standing on the shoulders of giants.” …

Personal Digital Networks

Personal Digital Networks

Sara Schnadt and Kristy Baltezore met three years ago at the kitchen table of their mutual friend and fellow new-media artist Rob Ray, who is like a chosen family member. …

Mom in the Mirror

Mom in the Mirror

In December 2013, I received a master’s degree in psychoanalysis at the Center for Modern Psychoanalytic Studies in New York, the same institute where my mother trained, starting in the …

Art21 New York Close Up

Rashid Johnson Keeps His Cool

Art21 New York Close Up

Rashid Johnson Keeps His Cool

In a new ART21 “New York Close Up” film, artist Rashid Johnson charts a decade-long aesthetic and professional development from his early portrait photographs to his later conceptually-based sculptures.

Art21 Extended Play

Trevor Paglen Photographs the NSA

Art21 Extended Play

Trevor Paglen Photographs the NSA

“You as a member of the public should be able to exert the same kind of power over this institution that we can symbolically do by looking at a photograph …

Art21 Extended Play

Trevor Paglen Flexes His Rights

Art21 Extended Play

Trevor Paglen Flexes His Rights

“To go and photograph an airbase is not only to photograph something but it is to insist on one’s right to photograph. You’re flexing that right.” —Trevor Paglen Today’s ART21 …

Letter from the Editor

Letter from the Editor, Clarinda Mac Low

Letter from the Editor

Letter from the Editor, Clarinda Mac Low

To be ruined is to be spoiled beyond repair. It is “downfall, complete destruction, overthrow.” Ruin is the Tower card in the tarot deck—upheaval and harsh displacement, lightning striking, an …

Offshore Art: Artistic Strategies in a Ruined Democracy

Offshore Art: Artistic Strategies in a Ruined Democracy

The term post-democracy has recently emerged in political theory and sociology as part of an effort to grasp the contemporary social order. The term is used by theorists such as …

Three Muddled Blueprints for Ruin

Three Muddled Blueprints for Ruin

Please read the document that follows as a makeshift “program”, “manifesto”, “list of demands”, “wish list”, or “totally impenetrable academic nonsense” in favor of the moderately counterintuitive project of trying …

Asher Hartman’s Ritualistic Marathons

Asher Hartman’s Ritualistic Marathons

For twenty years, the Los Angeles–based artist and performer Asher Hartman has created spaces that foster deeply psychic intuition and allow audiences to create as a group.

Art21 New York Close Up

Daniel Gordon & Ruby Sky Stiler Take Baby Steps

Art21 New York Close Up

Daniel Gordon & Ruby Sky Stiler Take Baby Steps

In a new “New York Close Up” film, married artists Daniel Gordon and Ruby Sky Stiler candidly discuss the complex professional and personal dynamics of bringing a baby into their already busy lives.

New Kids on the Block

The Absurd Magic of Vincent Como

New Kids on the Block

The Absurd Magic of Vincent Como

Vincent Como would never describe his work as magical, yet his work is rife with mysticism.

Teaching with Contemporary Art

Creative Chemistries

Teaching with Contemporary Art

Creative Chemistries

When artists and educators get together, extraordinary things can happen.

Art21 Extended Play

Deeper into the Desert with Andrea Zittel

Art21 Extended Play

Deeper into the Desert with Andrea Zittel

“We’ve always tried to help artists find situations to make their work, where it can retain that quality of unknowableness.” —Andrea Zittel Today’s ART21 Exclusive features High Desert Test Sites, …

Three-dimensional Allegory: Lucia Love’s Reflecting Pool

Three-dimensional Allegory: Lucia Love’s Reflecting Pool

Lucia Love’s resistance to reality manifests in her solo exhibition at CUE Art Foundation.

Word is a Virus

Casting Spells over Los Angeles

Word is a Virus

Casting Spells over Los Angeles

Gurus, healers, psychics, and witches are common in Los Angeles—and their worlds often intersect with the world of artists.

Redefining Intention: Laurel Sparks and Ivan LOZANO

Redefining Intention: Laurel Sparks and Ivan LOZANO

Using the tools of magic, the artists Laurel Sparks and Ivan LOZANO take art’s potential for transformation to a new level.

Now Playing

Twenty-one Songs from Paolo Salvagione

Now Playing

Twenty-one Songs from Paolo Salvagione

In the studio of Paolo Salvagione, instrumental melodies inspire installations that delight the senses.

Art21 New York Close Up

Bryan Zanisnik Goes to the Meadowlands

Art21 New York Close Up

Bryan Zanisnik Goes to the Meadowlands

In new film from the ART21 New York Close Up series, artist Bryan Zanisnik hikes through the New Jersey Meadowlands landscape and exhibits his work “Meadowlands Picaresque” at the Brooklyn Museum.

Homesteading as Art and Revolution

Homesteading as Art and Revolution

Is homesteading still radical? Artist Heidi Norton, her parents, and other generations of their family discuss art, craft, and the back-to-the-land movements.

The Walker Curates the News: 11.03.14

The Walker Curates the News: 11.03.14

The Spanish Association of Christian Lawyers is calling for the ouster of Museo Reina Sofía director Manuel Borja-Villel over a show it deems “anti-Catholic.” On view through February 9, 2015, …

Cacophony as Interruption?

Cacophony as Interruption?

Ralph Lemon’s Scaffold Room and the problem of presenting the Black female body.

Booked

Kalup Linzy Joins the ART21/CUE Book Club

Booked

Kalup Linzy Joins the ART21/CUE Book Club

The ART21/CUE Book Club returns on November 13, with video and performance artist Kalup Linzy guiding our conversation.

Teaching with Contemporary Art

What does it mean to be a responsible global citizen?

Teaching with Contemporary Art

What does it mean to be a responsible global citizen?

An eighth grade language arts class learns about personal and social responsibility through contemporary art.

You Can Do It With Your Eyes Closed

You Can Do It With Your Eyes Closed

Artist Carmen Papalia, who is legally blind, explores issues of public access through experiential projects with diverse audiences, from museum-goers to a high school marching band.

Together Work

Together Work

Carol Stakenas, a curator for Social Practices Art Network (SPAN), contemplates the concept of “together work,” and shares results from the SPAN Together Survey.

Art21 Extended Play

Oliver Herring’s Big Art Party

Art21 Extended Play

Oliver Herring’s Big Art Party

Today’s ART21 Exclusive follows artist Oliver Herring around Madison Square Park as he organizes his largest TASK Party to date.