Opinion
Branding Vintage Condoms: Remember Your Rubbers!
You've seen it before with heroin bags, but now check out a typology of a different, (potentially) less dangerous sort.
Latest
Art
The Fashionable Wallpaper of Retna
Last night's opening of art by the LA graffiti artist Retna was more of a fashion event than an art show. Bizarrely titled The Hallelujah World Tour, the artist's all-over calligraphic style was ill served by poor curatorial decisions like a dense hanging that reduced the lines to visual wallpaper f
Opinion
Is the Boston ICA Already Dead on the Water?
The Boston art media are getting into a tiff, arguing if the newly redesigned ICA Boston is irrelevant-on-arrival. The Diller Scofidio+Renfro-designed home has actually heralded a new high point for a museum that is becoming one of the Northeast's most dynamic, interesting contemporary art instituti
News
Art Positive Requests Smithsonian Wojnarowicz Installation Shots
Bill Dobbs, representing anti-censorship organization Art Positive, has sent a letter to Smithsonian director Martin Sullivan requesting that the museum release the original installation shots of David Wojnarowicz's “A Fire in My Belly,” as well as photos of the gallery as it now stands, minus the v
Art
Alice in a Brooklyn Museum Wonderland
Situ Studio's reOrder, a new project under construction at the Brooklyn Museum, looks like Alice in Wonderland, wandering among surreal spaces not quite of this world. The folding cloth and underlying structure of hoop skirts actually provided inspiration for the installation, Situ Studio partner Br
Opinion
Why You Should Care About Sotheby’s Ullens Contemporary Chinese Art Sale
Belgian industrialist Guy Ullens is the most important international collector of Chinese contemporary art, amassing an encyclopedic collection and opening a contemporary art museum in Beijing. Now he's selling off a part of that collection at Sotheby's. Here's why the sale is important.
Opinion
LA Street Artists Not Letting Deitch Off the Hook
The Blu/MOCA whitewash censorship incident isn't going away as some street artists continue to draw attention to LA MOCA director Jeffrey Deitch's lapse in judgment.
Books
Harmony Korine and Bill Saylor Go Gritty in Ho Bags
Harmony Korine is known chiefly as a filmmaker, best for writing Larry Clark's 1995 cult hit Kids. His most recent movie, Trash Humpers, was variously decried and praised for its unabashedly gritty commitment to a certain kind of disturbing, voyeuristic realism. Bill Saylor is an artist who works in
Opinion
Babe-watch on Google Art Project
You know it was hilariously inevitable that someone was going to cruise the walls of Google Art Project checking out the hotties and collect them all into one place. Well, Chicago Now blogga Taleen Kelenderian just did that and she has labeled her favorites with such hipster-ific monikers as "Ginger
Art
This Tuesday, Join Us for Nostalgia for the Net
Please join Melissa Gira Grant & Joanne McNeil for an evening of personal stories about the Internet of long ago. The years of BBS, IRC, ICQ, MUDs, Mosaic, Usenet, Fidonet, Telnet, dot matrix printers, 28.8k modems, and saving those AOL startup disks until they broke in two. Special guests: Katie Ba
Opinion
A Subversive Chinese New Year, Courtesy of Ai Weiwei
Happy Chinese New Year! The Year of the Rabbit began this month, and fireworks have been rocketing off in Chinese cities ever since. In celebration, Chinese artist Ai Weiwei’s FAKE design office has created a contemporary version of a Chinese New Year’s tradition: Door Gods for 2011 (seen above). Th
Opinion
Richard Serra Cleans Off Desk, Makes Art
Richard Serra may be best known for his curving steel wall sculptures, but his earlier works erred even more on the side of conceptually abstract. The artist's 1967 “Verb List Compilation: Actions to Relate to Oneself” kicked off a body of work in which a single verb directly translated into art. Ch