*signage encouraging social interaction, held aloft by assistants at the entrances to Art Basel Returning from the commotion of Art Basel, its “region-wide art week,” and an exploration of Vienna, I’m encouraged to consider the interactive public and private art…
Imagine, if you will, the following scenario. Intrigued by a book of poems you’ve just discovered at your local bookstore, you decide to get in touch with its young author with an appreciative mail. (You’re about the same age, and…
“May you live in interesting times.” – Chinese curse With the fate of the planet hanging precariously in the balance, there’s at least one thing about which we can all be certain: we are living in interesting times. While it’s…
Art is difficult to understand. In the domain of public perception, few truisms have enjoyed greater staying power than this one. What with its endless parade of unfamiliar forms, its highbrow hijinks and hopelessly cryptic meanings, things can hardly be…
“I make these when I’m not making my ‘real’ work.” I heard this statement fall out of my mouth and stopped myself, horrified. I was at the opening of the BLAA Summer 2016 exhibit You Think It’s ____, But It’s…
One beautiful July morning in 2013 Boston woke to discover green paint had been thrown against the Robert Gould Shaw and the 54th Regiment Memorial that sits across from the State House in the Boston Public Garden. Outrage followed but…
On March 4, 2014, Ruin Lust opened at the Tate Britain. The show hosts a parade of famous artists from throughout the canon of art history who used scenes of architectural decay and environmental abandonment as central motifs in their…
I spent the latter half of my childhood in a small town in eastern Connecticut. Once it had been strictly rural, but by the latter half of the twentieth-century was slowly succumbing to the inevitable creep of suburbia. For the…
Chris Burden’s public persona has maintained a quirky and exceptional position within the art world since his 1971 performance of Shoot when he set up a situation in which he was shot in the arm at medium range with a…
For over two years Mario Garcia Torres obsessively researched the circumstances surrounding an obscure assignment given to a small group of students at Nova Scotia College of Art and Design (NSCAD) in 1969. In a process he has likened to…
My first question is: Why Botero? How did this mild, sometimes trivial artist become the chronicler of darkness? At age 73 Fernando Botero broke out of his benign reputation with a series of 100 works—50 paintings and as many works…