Opinion
Berkeley's Giant Bonsai Trees
BERKELEY, California — Berkeley's unusually large population of giant Bonsai-like trees has caught my attention since moving from Brooklyn. Why are they here and what do they mean?
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Opinion
Should Museums Exhibit Bad Art?
BBC Arts Editor and former Tate director Will Gompertz has a piece in the Wall Street Journal this week advocating a curious proposal: museums, he says, should mount shows of bad art.
Opinion
An Escape Pod for the 1%
Wes Heiss’s presentation of "Chariot" at Vox Populi, an artist-run gallery in Philly, is a modest proposal for an uber-wealthy escape pod. Offering all the trappings of a trade show, Heiss’s exhibition convincingly makes a case for protecting oneself from a plebeian demise.
Opinion
Spectacular Living Pictures
Yesterday on my rounds of Chelsea, I stumbled upon three amazing photographs on the walls of Andrew Edlin gallery. Included as part of Collectors of Skies, a wonderfully eclectic if somewhat theoretically abstract group show, each is a photograph of thousands of soldiers brought together to form a l
Art
The Impossibility of Documenting New York City
Like most people (I assume), I had heard about Humans of New York in passing, with a share on Facebook or a retweet on Twitter, but until recently, I wasn't actually following the blog. Then I found myself looking at a portrait one day — I don't remember which — and being overwhelmed by its simultan
Performance
The Invention of the Teenager
It’s strange to be reminded in the 21st century that there was a time before “teens” and “tweens,” before those years between childhood and adulthood, i.e. adolescence, had a name and now, a stereotype. All of us who attended the Books & Talks lecture Friday night, however, at Artists Space’s new of
Art
A Combo Gallery-Studio-Workshop Activates Oakland's Art Scene
BERKELEY, California — When I visited The Compound Gallery and Studios in North Oakland, it was the first time I felt like I was back in Brooklyn's art scene since I moved to California. The multipurpose space was very active and full of art projects, ranging from a residency program, to different g
Art
The 20 Most Powerless People in the Art World: 2012 Edition
It's that time of year again. Art Review just had their fun bringing the art world their directory of the rich and powerful, and now it's our turn to flip the script and point out that not everyone is rich, famous, or powerful in our beloved community. Here is our infamous Hyperallergic Powerless 20
Opinion
Painted Pigeons: Political Commentary or Pop Street Art?
BERKELEY, California — Artists Julius von Bismark and Julien Charriere have teamed up to create a hilarious installation first in Venice and now in Copenhagen entitled, "Some Pigeons Are More Equal than Others" (2012). The performative work exists on multiple levels: a hanging sculpture (pictured be
Opinion
Vote Picasso for Minister of Art!
CHICAGO — When my wife was completing her mail-in voter ballot for the upcoming US elections, something on the instruction leaflet caught my eye.
Art
Traditional Chinese Painter Beats Munch for Fastest-Growing Auction Figures
Could traditional Chinese artists little known in the west take over the global art market? Bloomberg notes that auction price indexes for Li Keran, a prominent 20th-century Chinese landscape painter, are growing at a faster rate than Edvard Munch, the western master behind "The Scream," a version o
Art
A Grand Unified Theory of Art?
Could there be a unified theory of art? As someone who is a casual follower of the sciences and once happily attended a lecture in Boston by Stephen Hawking in which he amusingly illuminated some of the challenges that face physicists who, as of yet, do not themselves have a unified theory in their