Pioneering Video Artist Bill Viola Dies at 73
Artist Bill Viola, who elevated the fledgling medium of video art into something worthy of awe, imbuing it with the kind of spiritual transcendence found in the Old Masters, died on Friday at his home in Long Beach, California. He was 73. His wife, Kira Perov, confirmed that the cause was complications of early onset […]
Do Art History Majors Really Face the Worst Job Prospects of Any Profession?
Art History majors face the worst employment prospects of any profession after graduating from college, a study by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York has found. The data, released by the Fed in February, became a talking point online this week, just as students close out the academic year and many start the job […]
Is ‘Moby Dick’ America’s Most Illustrated Novel? A New Exhibition Makes the Case
Today, Moby Dick’s place in the literary canon is as weighty as its titular antagonist, but upon its release in 1851, the book barely made a ripple. “This is an odd book, professing to be a novel, wantonly eccentric and outrageously bombastic,” wrote the London Literary Gazette, before declaring it so torturous that readers might […]
Cuban Artist Julio Larraz’s 80-Year ‘Artistic Odyssey’ Is Highlighted in Traveling Exhibition
Born in Havana in 1944, Cuban artist Julio Larraz began his career as a political caricaturist and cartoonist, signing his work by his first and middle name: Julio Fernandez. In Cuba, his family were owners of the newspaper La Discusión, which undoubtedly had an influence on his early practice. They relocated to the United States […]
Art Bites: Barbie’s Art History Era
Buried in the mix of the blockbuster Barbie movie’s mishmash of entry-level feminism and peppy capitalism was a stray reference to “Proust Barbie.” It was an oddly high-brow joke in a film of weird decisions and director Greta Gerwig threaded it in because kids aren’t exactly known for their love of Proust, and it reflected […]
Art We Love: Bruce Nauman’s Living and Breathing Sculpture
Legendary REM frontman Michael Stipe maintains a visual art practice that mines instinctual feeling from the conceptual. His multivalent works, spanning sculptures, ceramics, and photography, were most recently on view at his solo exhibition at ICA Milano. Accompanying the show was Even the birds give pause, his fourth photographic book encompassing his portraiture and other […]
Do Art History Majors Really Face the Worst Job Prospects of Any Profession?
Art History majors face the worst employment prospects of any profession after graduating from college, a study by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York has found. The data, released by the Fed in February, became a talking point online this week, just as students close out the academic year and many start the job […]
The Hunt: $200 Million Worth of Art Is Still Missing From a Paraguay Museum
In July 2002, a heist at the National Museum of Fine Arts of Asunción in Paraguay rocked the world, not only due to the lost masterworks, which were valued at around $200 million, but the elaborate ploy the thieves used to pull off their robbery. They favored European paintings, with a haul that included a […]
Eureka: What Was Helen Frankenthaler’s Soak-Stain Technique?
When the artist Helen Frankenthaler, then in her early 20s, met Jackson Pollock, he was building an international reputation with his drip paintings, in which he flung enamel paints—the kinds used for household decorating, which were cheaper and more readily available than traditional artists’ paints—onto canvases which were laid on the ground. By allowing the […]
Long-Lost ‘Star Trek’ Props Resurface After More Than 50 Years
A pair of props from the original Star Trek series is heading to auction after disappearing for more than half a century. The items in question are an original phaser and communicator as used by William Shatner’s James T. Kirk in NBC’s 1966 television show. The props are expected to fetch between $100,000 and $200,000 […]