Opinion
Required Reading
This week, Syrian heritage under threat, invisible art, Franz West remembrance, Etsy's feminist disappointment, Ai Weiwei as Warhol, fashion criticism and more.
Latest
Poetry
Fold by Fold
Out of the amazing trifecta of early modernist French poets, Stéphane Mallarmé is probably the least read and least translated. That’s partly down to the genuine difficulty of his writing, but then the language of Baudelaire or Rimbaud is hardly of the most transparent either; the real difference ma
Art
Nobuo Sekine and Charles Ray and Their Sculptures Filled with Liquid
Lee Ufan’s letter to Stella underscores his ongoing critique of Western aesthetics, which began with the specific objects we associate with Minimalism. Whereas Minimalism, at least as Stella codified it, emphasizes the material presence of an object isolated from the passage of time, the artists ass
Books
Surrealism in a Minor Key: Recent Translations of Ghérasim Luca
Considered through Deleuze and Guattari’s somewhat idiosyncratic interpretive lenses, Ghérasim Luca is a minor writer — minor in the sense that he relentlessly pushes language toward its limits, that he deterritorializes it, that he transmutes it from a mere instrument of representation into an extr
Art
Up from the Mud: “The Parade” by Nathalie Djurberg
Claymation has always had that special something — a lilt of life that its too-perfect digital counterparts can’t touch. Its magic resides partly in its imperfection, namely its inability to disguise its own processes. The herky-jerky motions and the impressions of the animator’s fingers reinforce i
News
Syrian Sculptor, Wael Kaston, Is Reported to Have Been Tortured and Killed
The stories of tragedy continue to roll out of Syria, though some have been disproven or highly doubted as Western propaganda, many are certainly true and now we learn of the death of the Syrian sculptor, Wael Kaston, 46, who was killed earlier this week in Homs, Syria, under what is believed to be
News
Your Essential Guide to MOCApocalypse 2012
A lot has happened in the week and half since we last gave you an update on the situation at Los Angeles's Museum of Contemporary Art. Oh wait, except ... nothing's actually happened.
Opinion
Overheard in the Art World
This week we overheard a few things at a subdued 2012 Chelsea Art Walk, the artworld continued to talk about Dietch while carrying its tote bags and we found out people are over Christian Marclay's "The Clock." (I mean it has been 2 years.) But our favorite "overheards" came from the twitterverse (m
Interview
Art’s Corrosive Success: An Interview with Martha Buskirk
Following up on the essay I wrote about the ZERO1 Fellowship sponsored by Google, I wanted to speak with someone with a wider perspective on the shifts that have taken place in the past few decades in the arts, particularly shifts that relate to the interface between art and the marketplace. Martha
Interview
Occupy.Here Hopes to Create a Free, Open, Unregulated Community Without the Internet
Occupy.here uses a wifi router to create a network for discussion for only a locale audience. By bypassing the traditional internet, Phiffer is working to make a free, open, unregulated and community based platform for exchange.
Opinion
From the Inbox: Dear Universe, I don't pretend to have figured out what art is …
… and with the same non-existing deception, in addition to my rebellion against the intellectual arrogance that plagues some of my fellow students, I admit not to really care. Even though something inside of me twists and shouts “Liar!” Well, maybe if I tell myself I don’t care enough times I will s
Art
James Franco / Free Beer
“James Franco / Free Beer” was distributed as a pamphlet as part of Keith Rocka Knittel’s performance “James Franco / Free Beer / Spiral Jetty (IV),” at Perform Chinatown in Los Angeles on July 21, 2012.