Stories and blogs about art
For four years, Taryn Simon traveled the world photographing 18 family bloodlines and their related stories. The resulting images document victims of genocide in Bosnia, a polygamist family in Kenya, the alleged body double of Saddam Hussein’s son, Uday, Filipino farmers and miners, children with no known bloodline from a Ukrainian orphanage, and many...
Promotional fliers for rock shows typically end up in the trash. But David Ensminger collects them. He’s stockpiled them for more than 30 years, documenting a Xeroxed history of punk gatherings, an anthropologist of punk rock’s printed images and text. The do-it-yourself tradition of punk-rock fliers are just part of his new book, “Visual...
When the Memphis design group turned up at the 1981 Milan Furniture Fair with their plastic laminated, brightly colored and highly patterned furniture, the exhibition was reportedly mobbed and streets were blocked as people tried to cram into the tiny exhibition space. In an effort to explore how this and other examples of postmodernism...
The Barbican Art Gallery is offering a glimpse of life in downtown Manhattan in the early 1970s — at least through the eyes of a particular group of artists. The “Pioneers of the Downtown Scene, New York 1970s” exhibition, at the gallery through May 22, features sculptures, drawings, photographs, documentation of performances, and mixed-media...
In London, you can take classes on how to make graffiti. On weekends, street artist Andy Seize gives graffiti lessons to children and adults who pay between £35 and £150 per session. Since he works in pre-approved spaces, Seize doesn’t have to worry about London’s active graffiti clean-up crews. “ will always have people...
Throughout the three-day Kinetica Art Fair, fans of scientific specifics — robotics, wave forms, gravity — will grapple with more human, philosophical ideas — spirituality, relationships. The fair, which runs Feb. 4 to 6, is a place to witness artists “harnessing the powers of nature and cosmic energy as a means of expression,” according...
In the late 1980s, Miles Davis once told a Canadian journalist that a lot of his paintings and drawings in that period were simply “faces and lines,” and that making art helped him relax. When asked how he compared to other musicians pursuing visual art at the time — Tony Bennett, Joni Mitchell, David...
At a time when e-readers may be displacing the good, old-fashioned print book, an effort to revive interest in the art of the book cover is taking place in London. The gallery StolenSpace gave a simple task to a group of more than 30 artists, designers, ceramic artists and photographers: design a cover for...
On the belief that poets, not politicians, can help bring about tangible political change, London’s Southbank Center will again host its biennial Poetry International festival, nine days’ worth of readings, music, translations and new poetry commissions. The festival, which runs from Oct. 30 to Nov. 7 in various venues within Southbank, has political roots....
Since the middle of last month, the Mexican-born artist Damián Ortega has been in London gathering up bits of news — newspaper stories, photojournalism, graphics — from local, national and international publications. He’ll now spend the next three months repurposing his stash as art, in the form of sculpture, installation and prototypes for future...