Posts Tagged ‘Art History’

America’s Favorite Television Artist Strikes Again

The Joy of Painting—a TV series hosted by American artist Bob Ross, on which he would conjure up Alaskan landscapes in just 27 minutes of airtime—ran for 403 episodes between 1983 and 1994. Eventually syndicated to almost 300 PBS stations nationwide, it attracted over 80 million daily viewers of varying ages and backgrounds. According to […]

Evan Holloway’s “Scry if you want to” LP released June 29

Last November I visited Evan Holloway’s Los Angeles studio to tape our conversation for his upcoming exhibition “Scry if you want to” at Xavier Hufkens. It consisted of three new bodies of work: abstract paintings referencing 16th century writings by the inventors of Enochian magic John Dee and Edward Kelley, large-scale automatic drawings, and welded […]

Museums and willful ignorance

When Boris Pasternak was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature for his novel Doctor Zhivago, the Soviet press exploded with outrage. The year was 1958, and although Stalin was dead, he had instilled a lingering fear, and despite the liberalizations of his successor, Khruschev, critical portrayals of life in the ussr were still commonly demonized as enemy propaganda. […]

Evan Holloway “Scry if you want to” exhibition interview

Xavier Hufkens gallery (Brussels) recently published a clip of an interview I conducted with Los Angeles-based artist Evan Holloway. The interview was conducted on the occasion of his upcoming exhibition Scry if you want to which runs February 10 through April 1, 2023. We discussed work which ranges from abstract relief paintings Enochian Tablets based in on the writings of 16th […]

Why the Boston MLK memorial misses the mark

Art and politics simply do not mix, and attempts to force them together reduce the efficacy of both.

The “Boho Dance” goes on

Exactly one year ago Christie’s procured a sale of a non-fungible token for an eye-watering sum of US$69,346,250. Since then, my friend and former colleague Professor David Hawkes and I have co-authored a series of articles on the subject of NFTs: their relationship to other currencies, their lack of aura, and their use for art […]

In Memory of Wayne Thiebaud

My tribute to the great Wayne Thiebaud is out in the February issue of The New Criterion—a magazine he had subscribed to for decades. I had the privilege of working with Wayne for the past few years, so the text below contains my insights into this man of impeccable integrity, strong will, and unwavering dedication […]