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...
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...
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...
In keeping with the theme that viewers of art should decide for themselves what art means, the exhibit goes to great lengths to avoid clarity and specificity (there are few explanatory placards). Works of various media (audio, photographs, diagrams) defy simple, quick definition and, depending on your artistic leanings, the result can feel maddening...
Though not the sexiest of exhibits, little details throughout are often the most insightful: islands were often named for explorers’ wives; a 20,000-pound prize was offered in 1775 for discovery of a northwest passage; Arctic exploration was apparently assigned to the Royal Navy, who had time to kill after the Napoleonic War. The full...