Opinion
Breaking: Getting Drunk and Losing Sleep are Good for Creativity
LOS ANGELES — I know a lot of artists who get drunk a lot. I know a lot of artists who are sleepy half the time. It just so happens that these artists are also very creative.
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Opinion
Is the Zeitgeist Underground?
We were rather surprised that our Feb 13 post on Christoph Büchel’s "Terminal" project, titled "Artist to Bury an Airplane Underground and Call It Art," was as popular as it was. But what really floored us was that the idea is not original at all and there are two other projects essentially doing th
Art
New Summer Program Puts Students in the Studio
LOS ANGELES — The arts have a long tradition of apprenticeship and mentorship. Somewhere along the way, the expected career path of a professional artist turned into days in the classroom studying art theory and private time in a cramped studio, followed by huge student loan debts.
Opinion
Rainy Cityscapes in Paris and Hong Kong
LOS ANGELES — I love the rain, and especially the aesthetic of rain. I always think back to the work of Hiroshige, whose rainy woodcut prints famously inspired Van Gogh's impressionistic landscapes.
Opinion
Required Reading
This week, Rem Koolhaas will build Marina's temple to performance art, Gaudí's unfinished masterpiece, Renaissance art murder mystery, a new arts center in Utah, a review of Niall Ferguson’s Civilization, best-designed newspapers, Banksy authentication, drawing with chalk, burger grease and ketchup.
Art
What Comes After “Paintant?"
In the 1990s, Fabian Marcaccio coined the word “paintant” by fusing “painting” and “mutant.” In his “paintants,” he would sometimes carve and expose the stretcher bars. He worked on burlap and fabric. He used photographic images and applied various mediums to digitally printed surfaces. His material
Books
Torn Curtain: Gombrowicz and the Europe That Used To Be
When I read Witold Gombrowicz’s Ferdydurke in the late 1980s the Soviet empire was beginning to totter and crack. An English version of the book, published in 1961 in the UK, had been re-issued in 1986 as part of Penguin’s Writers from the Other Europe series, edited by Philip Roth. The project aime
Art
Paint It Black, Blacker and Blackest
Joyce Pensato draws in charcoal and paints in enamel — dense, clinging soot and viscous liquid. For years her palette has been black, white and silver, though color is beginning to make an appearance in her recent paintings, mostly as splatters and drips. The drawing process is one of making marks,
Art
Stealing the Triennial and Other Neat Tricks
As good as the last Triennial was — and, all qualms, quibbles and philosophical differences aside, it was a pretty good survey of emergent art — what it didn’t have was a monster. Adrián Villar Rojas’ “A person loved me” (2012) has already achieved show-stealer status at The Ungovernables, the secon
Opinion
A Conceptual Symphony of Car Horns Across LA
LOS ANGELES — This week, New York artist Zefrey Throwell flew in to create the Entropy Symphony, a series of aural interventions around the world. The LA edition was an orchestrated movement in five parts of some 1,000 cars across the Southland. Each participant received an mp3 attuned to their car
Art
A Report from #ArtsTech's Social Media Art Panel
On Wednesday I attended "Social Media Week Edition: Social Media Art," the newest in a series of Arts, Culture and Technology Meetups. These meetups, organized by Julia Kaganskiy, global editor for The Creators Project and co-director of Blue Box Gallery, are all about the potential for technology i
News
Obama Differentiates Himself from Romney on NEA Funding, Wants Increase
Two weeks ago, we pointed out that Republican Presidential candidate Mitt Romney was proposing severe cuts in the budget of the federally funded National Endowment for the Arts (NEA). Now, this week the Obama Administration has released their 2013 budget request to Congress, which requests to raise