Posted inOpinion

A Urinal Is a Urinal Is a Urinal

How many urinals by Marcel Duchamp are there? Turns out there are at least 17. Greg Allen of Greg.org points out that fact and takes the piss [sorry, couldn’t resist] out of Washington Post critic Blake Gopnik for his recent review of “Stolen Pieces” (1995-97) at Postmasters’ Reality is Overrated show by Eva and Franco Mattes. It’s amazing that Duchamp’s “original” idea continues to inspire artists and discussion.

Posted inOpinion

Trees Are Artists Too!

You know how everyone’s claiming to be an artist these days? Make-up technicians, hairdressers, gallerists, your kid sister, that crazy aunt who does crocheted landscapes? Yeah? Well now even plants are getting in on the game. British artist Tim Knowles attaches pens to the tips of tree branches and sets up an easel just within reach of the waving “paintbrushes.” As the tree branches sway and get blown around, the pens trace out black arcs and dots on the papered easels. There’s a minimalist poetry to the works themselves that’s pretty cool.

Posted inOpinion

Why You Should Always Caption Your Photos & Videos Properly

Online we encounter more information than ever, but we also lose a hell of a lot. On May 3, the blog WeLoveViral posted a photos and a video titled “Swimming Pool Illusion.” The YouTube video embedded in the post is titled “Amazing Japanese Fake Pool” and has been viewed (as of today) 6,211,210 times!

The problem is that the pool is question is neither a pool, nor Japanese. In fact, it is an artwork by Argentinean artist Leandro Erlich titled “Swimming Pool” (2008).

Posted inOpinion

Superheroes & the Modern City

Star Wars Modern has posted an extensive essay on the evolution of American superheroes, particularly Batman and Superman, and their relationship to modernity and urbanism. His post incorporates many figures that loom large in the 20th C. American urban imagination and he focuses mainly on pop culture as a barometer of changing public attitudes. The essay, titled “The Urbanism of Superheroes,” careens across many ideas and suggests there is more that binds these seemingly disparate things than may be evident at first glance.

Posted inOpinion

Germain Greer Reminds Us Landscape Painting is “a concept … it exists only in the mind.”

Who knew the Australian landscape painting world could be a hot bed of scandal. Earlier this month, the Wynne Prize was awarded to Australian painter Sam Leach. Normally bestowed on “the best landscape painting of Australian scenery in oils or watercolours … ” this year it was revealed that the painting wasn’t exactly based on an Australian scene but an image the artist found on the Internet. The horror! Veteran feminist and public intellectual Germaine Greer has jumped to Leach’s defense.