Hrag Vartanian is editor-at-large, founding editor, and co-founder of Hyperallergic.
Art
Samantha Beverly (aka @kalofos) has created the funniest example of mail art that has arrived at Hyperallergic HQ yet. In her contribution to the Mail Art Bulletin, Beverly has transformed the greatest piece of contemporary spam — the West African email scam — into a hand-drawn scroll complete with
Art
Artist John Fekner recently found this previously unpublished photograph of a subway billboard street art piece from 1983. This work transforms a Newsday newspaper poster in the Ely/23rd Street subway station in Long Island City, Queens, into a more ominous scene. Unlike street art interventions tod
![War Photographer Tim Hetherington Killed in Libya [UPDATED]](https://storage.ghost.io/c/51/f8/51f871d8-b6be-4a73-b958-0ca4fff0110a/content/images/size/w600/hyperallergic-newspack-s3-amazonaws-com/uploads/2011/04/tim-hetherington-home.jpg)
News
War photographers help us witness pain, discover injustice and make sense of abstractions that are fed to us by our governments and leaders. They are the front line of image creators and they capture frightening, incredible, tender and unthinkable pictures that shock and enlighten us. Their jobs are
Opinion
A month ago, artists Michelle Vaughan and John Powers made a bar bet — I'm guessing it was a drunken one — over one of Powers's bombastic claims. He made the sweeping statement that "movies are the art of our time." Not one to step away from a challenge, Vaughan disagreed. Eventually Vaughan, who is
Art
This anonymous work — the first we've received — is the most digital image, and informed by digital aesthetics, we've received. While most mail art lends itself to a handmade and analog quality, here the artist has gone to the other extreme and sent us a digital print on photo paper with no indicati
Opinion
This week's Required Reading has links to the garb needed to paint in the arctic, Jasper Johns and orgies, an interview with artist Sharon Hayes, a handwritten transcript by Diego Rivera, artist Cao Fei on the unsung factory workers of the Pearl River Delta and Japanese shut-ins.
Opinion
Sebastian Buck of Unurth, which is arguably the premiere street art photo blog, has a lot of visual goodies from LA MOCA's Art in the Streets show. He also has some very interesting thoughts on the show, which officially opens tomorrow:
Interview
Last night, In the Use of Others for the Change premiered at the Center for Performance Research in Brooklyn. Choreographed by Julia K. Gleich, the new ballet featured collaborations with some familiar faces on the Bushwick art scene, including Audra Wolowiec, Austin Thomas, Kevin Regan and Andrew H
Art
Lynn Aquaheart of Conway, Arkansas, mailed us a a small canvas in an envelope covered with objects (and an animal) that fly. Inside was a small canvas painted light blue and covered with an inspiring message. We're not sure if she meant it as a slogan for art in general or a commentary on mail art s
Opinion
American politics has always been deeply connected to spectacle. Yesterday, Rep. Joe Crowley (D-NY) delivered a one-minute "speech" on the floor of the House of US Reps and it was pure art.
Opinion
Fair use is a term we hear bandied about all the time nowadays (Shepard Fairey vs. AP, Patrick Cariou vs. Richard Prince, etc.), but what is it really? The library of the University of Minnesota wants to help you out.
Art
Since we sent out a request for mail art, we've received 27 mail art submissions from five countries (Belgium, Canada, Spain, the United States and Uruguay) and nine US states (Arkansas, California, Illinois, Iowa, Nebraska, New York, Pennsylvania, Texas and Vermont). The work we're featuring today