Reuben Negron, an artist who lives and works in Connecticut and New York, is best known for his realistic watercolor depictions of intimate moments, ranging from the raw to the vulnerable. His scenes often give me the impression of looking in a mirror. Negron’s series This House of Glass, “an intimate exposé on what we keep hidden from others – and in many cases, what we hide from ourselves,” and Dirty Dirty Love, an exploration of “sex, sexuality and identity as concepts … [through] interactions with individuals and couples in domestic and private settings,” were both shown as separate solo exhibitions at Like the Spice Gallery in Brooklyn.
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The name Joseph J. Lhota may not be a household one (yet), but the current Republican mayoral candidate has done a lot in his time in New York City politics. Art worlders may remember him as the man who led the Giuliani administration’s push to bully the Brooklyn Museum into censoring an artwork from the Sensation exhibition.
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In a strange and troubling move that looks suspiciously like censorship, Chicago Public Schools have removed Persepolis, a classic graphic novel that tells the story of author Marjane Satrapi’s coming-of-age in Iran, from all seventh-grade classrooms.
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Okuizumo, Japan, stands paralyzed by an icon of Western art. A 16-foot-high replica of Michelangelo’s triumphant David sculpture was installed in the middle of a public park in the southern Japanese town, but locals think it might be a little bit too public.
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I suppose it was only a matter of time, but yesterday, it finally happened: Hyperallergic was Facebook censored.
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Facing criticism and threats from hardline Islamists, the National College of Arts in Lahore, Pakistan, has shut down an academic journal that published a series of homosexually suggestive paintings. The college pulled the issues from bookstores and dissolved the journal’s editorial board, but that board and the head of the school, as well as an art critic who wrote an accompanying essay and the artist, still face a potential lawsuit on charges of blasphemy, the Associated Press reports.
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LONDON — Cultural relativism is a problematic thing. If you don’t agree, ask Caveh Zahedi, whose new film, The Sheikh and I, is set to premiere at Brooklyn’s Factory 25 on December 7 after having been banned on the grounds of blasphemy by the biennial that commissioned it.
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A Moscow court has ruled that four videos by punk-art-protest band Pussy Riot are “extremist,” and websites hosting the videos must remove them or pay fines.
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Even though Hyperallergic is primarily a blog about art and visual culture, there’s no question that we’re also super nerds who read a lot. So I felt it would be remiss if we didn’t pay at least a short tribute to Banned Books Week, an annual celebration of books and literacy and the freedom for everyone to read whatever the hell he or she wants, which unfortunately is still more of an ideal than a universal practice.
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Is it just me, or do a lot of governments seem to be cracking down on artists these days? The latest country to join the club is India, where a political cartoonist was recently imprisoned for his satirical drawings lampooning government and elite corruption.
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