“Art,” wrote Leo Tolstoy in an 1886 essay, “begins when one person, with the object of joining another or others to himself in one and the same feeling, expresses that feeling by certain external indications.”
November 27, 2013
The (New) Handgun Aesthetic
OAKLAND, Calif. — We’ve all seen the moment in movies when the hero, villain, or unwitting victim has to stare down the barrel of a gun.
The Ins and Outs of Contemporary Mexican Art, in Texas
FORT WORTH, Texas — It often seems like the world is made up of pairs: Christo and Jean Claude, Hall and Oates, peanut butter and jelly. Yet some things that seem like they’d fit well together have not cohabitated as one would assume. Take contemporary Mexican art and the state of Texas.
The Politics of Parody: Free Cooper Union at e-flux
For a few hours last Sunday, e-flux’s Chinatown offices were bathed in red light as Free Cooper Union held an interpretive reading of the 41-page trustee meeting transcript first leaked to the Village Voice over the summer.
From Lucky Magazine to Lyrical Sonnets
CHICAGO — Simone de Beauvoir once said, “Buying is a profound pleasure.” To shop, to consume, to purchase a new look even if it’s temporary — an air of satisfaction accompanies that moment of credit card swiping, or handing over that stack of Ben Franklins.
Spike Lee Doesn’t Do the Right Thing [UPDATED]
When famed film director Spike Lee launched a Kickstarter project for “The Newest Hottest Spike Lee Joint” this past summer, we rolled our eyes. But when Spike Lee hires unpaid interns and steals a designer’s work — well, then we feel compelled to say something.
The Days of Future Past: Afrofuturism and Black Memory
When you walk into the main gallery of the Studio Museum in Harlem’s current exhibition The Shadows Took Shape, which explores contemporary art through the lens of Afrofuturist aesthetics, one of the first pieces to catch the eye is a glittering procession of black astronauts fanned across a faded landscape.
The Story of Hip-Hop’s Film Birth
Charlie Ahearn is known as an independent filmmaker, but he’s much more than that. He’s perhaps better described as a community filmmaker. For his films The Deadly Art of Survival (1979) and Wild Style (1983), he connected with local communities of young New Yorkers (many of them teenagers) and worked with them to make movies that starred these amateur actors essentially playing themselves.
Join Hyperallergic on Saturday, December 7, for “The Bloggers’ Guide to Art Miami”
On Saturday, December 7 at 11 am, join Hyperallergic editors Hrag Vartanian, Mostafa Heddaya, and Jillian Steinhauer in the aisles of Art Miami and Context for an hour-long tour of the fair with fellow readers, writers, critics, and cyberflaneurs.