
ISTANBUL — ‘Look at all the things a few trees can do!’ reads this graffitti near Tünel on Istiklal Boulevard. Erdoğan infamously dismissed the protests in a speech where he said ‘This is all too much for a few little trees.’ Of course, the trees were symbols of the general policy of the AKP government of sellling public land to private coorporations without public consent.
Continue Reading → 
ISTANBUL — The graffitti that now covers the streets of Istanbul cannot be called ‘art.’ It was put there by people on the run from tear gas and billy clubs. It was done quickly and secretly, at night or in flight. It is a reflection of the social media that inspired it — pithy, angry, quick, and short. The grafitti are spray paint tweets on brick and mortar. And they tell a story — they reveal the hows and whys of this mass, varied uprising against an increasingly arrogant ruler.
Continue Reading → 
Tonight’s hot weather drew throngs of visitors to the galleries of Bushwick, which kicked off the 2013 Bushwick Open Studios event. Tomorrow, artist studios will be the focus of everyone’s attention, but tonight galleries across the neighborhood attracted hundreds of visitors eager to enjoy the good weather and celebrate the community-wide festival.
Continue Reading → 
The United States Postal Service was just expanding into widespread delivery to the remote corners of the country when panoramic postcards appeared to advertise in wide frame the beauty of these far-flung locales. Usually folding for more compact delivery, these broad little views offered expansive looks at landscapes, and also accommodated the rapidly growing modern marvels of the world, like towering skyscrapers or massive sea vessels. The Library of Congress recently added over 400 of these postcards to its online Prints & Photographs Catalog.
Continue Reading → 
The military history of Finland during World War II remains overlooked in those brutal years of battles, as the Nordic country was actually fighting three wars between 1939 and 1945, all aimed at guarding their independence. Now a massive photo archive of around 160,000 images has been made available online, giving an incredible look into those dynamic years of the country’s history.
Continue Reading → 
A lot of 179 of these tintype photographs dating from the 1860s to 1890s is part of the upcoming Fine Photographs & Photobooks sale at Swann Auction Galleries, and are something of a core sample of the shifting social changes in the country, and how those 19th century people were choosing to remember themselves and portray others in the post-Civil War era.
Continue Reading → 
A few weeks ago, I went to the Museum of Modern Art to finally see Trisha Donnelly’s Artist’s Choice show. Donnelly is the tenth artist to participate in the series, which involves the museum allowing someone to dig around in its collection and create an exhibition out of whatever pieces he or she likes. Donnelly’s selections are framed less as a unified, cohesive exhibition and more as offshoots of the permanent galleries, with three scattered rooms given over to her curatorial whims on the fourth and fifth floors. When I was there, viewers wandered in easily, often not realizing they had strayed from the prescribed permanent collection path.
Continue Reading → 
Need an afternoon snack? Check out what Pop artist Claes Oldenburg has for you at MoMA.
Continue Reading → 
Unless, somehow, you miraculously haven’t accessed your Facebook or Twitter in the last two days, you’ve probably noticed a proliferation of crimson tiles with superimposed pink equal signs popping up in avatars and profile pics. The instantaneously ubiquitous logo, a riff by the Human Rights Campaign on its own original design, was posted in response to the two landmark Marriage Equality cases before the U.S. Supreme Court this week. Indeed, a report by the Chicago Tribune estimated that, within hours of its original posting, the image had been shared over 20,000 times. By Wednesday, the original design had transitioned into a fully-fledged internet meme, altered and hastily reconfigured much like last years pervasive image of Hillary Clinton texting from the belly of military plane cargo hold.
Continue Reading → 
If you walked down the High Line in the past month or two, chances are your eyes were caught by a garish grid of painted posters that slapped heavy black text on top of bright gradients of color. The project was Allen Ruppersberg’s billboard “You & Me,” and the posters were in the signature style of Los Angeles’s Colby Poster Printing Co, which, after serving artists like Ed Ruscha and Ruppersberg for decades, recently shut down on December 31, 2012.
Continue Reading →