Tag Archives: Photography

A willing participant at EMPAC’s “Uncertain Spectator”

A willing participant at EMPAC’s “Uncertain Spectator”

No matter how many times I fly, there are several minutes while tons of metal lift dozens or hundreds of bodies into the air that I can’t help but think …

Patti Smith and Robert Mapplethorpe. Courtesy Patti Smith Archive.

Looking at Los Angeles

Looking at Los Angeles: Owning Robert Mapplethorpe

Looking at Los Angeles

Looking at Los Angeles: Owning Robert Mapplethorpe

  “I don’t know why my pictures come out looking so good,” photographer Robert Mapplethorpe once told his brother. “I just don’t get it.” He had that innate knack for …

Lives and Works in Berlin

Lives and Works in Berlin: January Jones

Lives and Works in Berlin

Lives and Works in Berlin: January Jones

January isn’t often a big month for art, and the same usually goes for Berlin, but this year, galleries seem to be pushing things a bit further to present exciting …

Dissecting the Social Self: A [Wo]Man, an Animal, and an Ambiguous “I.”

Dissecting the Social Self: A [Wo]Man, an Animal, and an Ambiguous “I.”

At the turn of December and January, the myriad summaries and best-of lists of the past year I browse through coincide with a more personal check-up. There is no better …

Letter from London

Letter from London | Porn, Porn Everywhere: Analog at Riflemaker Gallery.

Letter from London

Letter from London | Porn, Porn Everywhere: Analog at Riflemaker Gallery.

In this second and last guest blog post, Kerim Aytac fills in for our hero Ben Street this month. — Ed. Looking at Richard Nicholson’s elegiac contribution to the Analog …

On View Now

On View Now | The Spaces Between: John Baldessari at the Metropolitan Museum

On View Now

On View Now | The Spaces Between: John Baldessari at the Metropolitan Museum

Every so often, there comes along a retrospective exhibition or mid-career survey that puts to rest whatever doubts I may have had as to where a particular artist sits in …

Letter from London

Letter from London: Terry O’Neill Award Show at Hotshoe Gallery

Letter from London

Letter from London: Terry O’Neill Award Show at Hotshoe Gallery

Guest blogger Kerim Aytac is filling in for regular columnist Ben Street this month while he makes his millions. — Ed. It’s hard to see the work of emerging photographers …

Memorial Photographs: An Interview with Jason Lazarus

Memorial Photographs: An Interview with Jason Lazarus

When Michael Jackson died, an impromptu dance party took place just outside my window. A young woman pulled up in a car wearing her best 80s outfit; she turned on …

Light and Desire: An Interview with Melanie Schiff

Light and Desire: An Interview with Melanie Schiff

While always being aware of her work, Melanie Schiff snapped into focus shortly after I first heard about Ox-bow, the School of the Art Insitute’s residency program in Saugatuck, Michigan. …

Ali Fitzgerald’s Top 9 European Gender-Journeys of 2010

Ali Fitzgerald’s Top 9 European Gender-Journeys of 2010

After attempting a general top 10 list of shows, I felt a mild distaste for my own artistic leanings, which, while not limited to investigations of gender and queerness, are …

Liz K. Sheehan’s Top 10 of 2010

Liz K. Sheehan’s Top 10 of 2010

Ten memorable art-related moments of 2010, in no particular order: 10. Best animal weirdness: William Pope.L, Small Cup, 2008, Video, 12:52 minutes, included in the 2010 DeCordova Biennial Filmed in …

On View Now

On View Now | Mirrors with Memories: The Photographs of Binh Danh

On View Now

On View Now | Mirrors with Memories: The Photographs of Binh Danh

Binh Danh: In the Eclipse of Angkor at the North Carolina Museum of Art reveals Vietnamese born artist Binh Danh’s search to imbue photographs with meaning not only through subject …

Going to California: Nightmare City

Going to California: Nightmare City

Every few decades, people decide it’s a good idea to move to California. First, it was for the gold. Then aerospace technology, then Los Angeles. In the 1960s, it happened …

Open Enrollment

The Masters in New Arts Journalism Thesis Part Two: Thus It Begins

Open Enrollment

The Masters in New Arts Journalism Thesis Part Two: Thus It Begins

I guess you could say my thesis came to me in the guise of an email from one of my favorite galleries in Chicago, the Catherine Edelman Gallery. There was …

Flash Points

Art21 William Kentridge: Anything is Possible

There’s No Place Like Home

Flash Points

Art21 William Kentridge: Anything is Possible

There’s No Place Like Home

On Johannesburg | “William Kentridge: Anything Is Possible” (2010) Preview | Art21 from Art21 on Vimeo. It is nearly impossible to talk about William Kentridge’s artistic practice without mentioning – …

Open Enrollment

Open Enrollment: Disciplinary Complex

Open Enrollment

Open Enrollment: Disciplinary Complex

Over the past few decades, “interdisciplinary” has emerged as a popular designation in academic culture, particularly in the arts and humanities. Both as an undergraduate in studio art and as …

Flash Points Wrap-Up: When Art Becomes Your Life

Flash Points Wrap-Up: When Art Becomes Your Life

A few weeks ago, when a friend was planning a visit to New York City, he asked me which art to see. I found myself prefacing less-emphatic recommendations with, “it …

Gastro-Vision

Contemporary Sculpture, How Sweet It Is

Gastro-Vision

Contemporary Sculpture, How Sweet It Is

Has Walter de Maria’s New York Earth Room ever made you crave brownies? Have you ever noticed how much Andy Goldsworthy’s Storm King Wall looks like a meandering Payday candy …

Open Enrollment

Reading the MFA Program

Open Enrollment

Reading the MFA Program

Back in June, I wrote about a new Internet meme that I started because I was so excited about the idea of circulation. Well, my professor Robin Balliger has done …

Monica Majoli. Hanging Rubberman #1, 2006. Watercolor and gouache on paper. 123 x 51 in. Photo: Brian Forrest. Image via hammer.ucla.edu

Looking at Los Angeles

Art21 William Kentridge: Anything is Possible

Dark Undercurrents in the Hammer Contemporary Collection

Looking at Los Angeles

Art21 William Kentridge: Anything is Possible

Dark Undercurrents in the Hammer Contemporary Collection

Last week, Art21 treated Angelenos to the very first preview screening of William Kentridge: Anything is Possible at the Hammer Museum‘s Billy Wilder Theater.  As Art21’s executive director Susan Sollins …

Gastro-Vision

Gastro-Vision: Back in the Kitchen

Gastro-Vision

Gastro-Vision: Back in the Kitchen

The Museum of Modern Art could not have picked a better moment to mount Counter Space: Design and the Modern Kitchen, an exhibition about the changing aesthetics and politics of …

One Hour Photo: Yves Médam

One Hour Photo: Yves Médam

A former commercial photographer, Yves Médam has only recently made the shift to fine art in the last 3 years. The French-born artist constructs large format photographic re-inventions of reality, …

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

Interview | Bill Eiseman of Polyester

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

Interview | Bill Eiseman of Polyester

Like many people, my girlfriend and I set out on a road trip this summer. Our trip took us from Chicago to Portland, following most of the Lewis and Clark …

Looking at Los Angeles

Looking at Los Angeles: Summer Love

Looking at Los Angeles

Looking at Los Angeles: Summer Love

Last weekend, I stopped at a red light and rolled forward into the intersection to turn right. I didn’t see the pedestrian who was about to cross, and came frighteningly …

3 Museums, 2 Days (part II of II)

3 Museums, 2 Days (part II of II)

II. After my visit to the New Museum, I headed uptown to the Studio Museum in Harlem. What stood out to me at the Studio Museum were a series of sculptural, photographic, …

The Nature of Art: On Closer Inspection

The Nature of Art: On Closer Inspection

Popular opinion concerning the relationship between technology and the environment is of great interest to me; my own graduate research focused on its treatment in mid-century American children’s book illustration. …

Barbara Kruger

Weekly Roundup

Weekly Roundup

This week in the roundup … Barbara Kruger gets a celebration started, Cao Fei has her eyes on a prize, Cai Guo-Qiang goes in with a bang, Raymond Pettibon is into …

Looking at Los Angeles

Looking at Los Angeles: Summer Social

Looking at Los Angeles

Looking at Los Angeles: Summer Social

Kip[p] Stagg, nineteen years old and a Columbia undergraduate, was walking in New York one night in 1965 when he heard a man’s voice shouting names at him from somewhere …

Weekly Roundup

Weekly Roundup

In this week’s roundup, Alfredo Jaar and Andrea Zittell go natural, Bruce Nauman tries to get off the ground, Cai Guo-Qiang answers questions about the impact of social visibility in …

Letter from London

Letter from London: In the Loop

Letter from London

Letter from London: In the Loop

My favorite things in Pallant House, the excellent gallery of modern British art in Chichester on the south coast of England, are a couple of small models made before its …

Inside the Artist's Studio

Inside the Artist’s Studio: N. Bernard Viljoen and the Twilight Children

Inside the Artist's Studio

Inside the Artist’s Studio: N. Bernard Viljoen and the Twilight Children

N. Bernard Viljoen is a South African architect based in Johannesburg. He was raised on a farm in the Free State outside the quaint South African town, Parys. He graduated as …

Jenny Holtzer

Weekly Roundup

Weekly Roundup

Soon after last week’s roundup went live, I discovered a Jenny Holzer event happening in my backyard.  In this week’s roundup, CNN shows William Kentridge drawing apartheid, Scotland shows William …

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 …

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 …

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 …