News Art Blog

John Lennon liked to joke that Yoko Ono was “the world’s most famous unknown artist.” Before she infamously “broke up the Beatles” (but not really), Ono built an internationally recognized career as an artist in the developing fields of Conceptual art, experimental film, and performance art. Unfairly famous then and now for all the wrong reasons, Ono’s long fought in her own humorously sly way for recognition, beginning with her self-staged 1971 “show” Museum of Modern (F)art, a performance piece in which she dreamed of a one-woman exhibition of her work at the Museum of Modern Art, New York. Now, more than 40 years later, the MoMA makes that dream come true with the exhibition Yoko Ono: One Woman Show, 1960–1971. Better late than never, this exhibition of the pre-Lennon and early-Lennon Ono establishes her not just as the world’s most famous unknown artist, but the most unfairly unknown one, too. Please come over to Picture This at Big Think to read more of "Better Late Than Never: Yoko Ono at the MoMA."

What do “Yesterday,” “Satisfaction,” “My Generation,” “The Sound of Silence,” “California Girls,” and “Like a Rolling Stone” all have in common? They were all hits in 1965, the year author Andrew Grant Jackson calls “the most revolutionary year in music.” In 1965: The Most Revolutionary Year in Music, Jackson weaves a fascinating narrative of how popular music and social change influenced one another to create a year memorable not only for great music, but also for great progress in American culture. In this whirlwind tour of multiple genres of music as well as multiple pressing political issues, Jackson states a compelling case for 1965 as a key turning point in American music and society as well as provides a mirror for how music and society interact today, 50 years later. Please come over to Picture This at Big Think to read more of "Like a Rolling Stone: Was 1965 the Most Revolutionary Year in Music?"

“riverrun, past Eve and Adam’s, from swerve of shore to bend of bay,” begins James Joyce’s Finnegans Wake, opening a torrent of words that has drowned many readers in confusion over Joyce’s modernist approach. A fresh new edition of Joyce’s 1939 novel edited by Danis Rose and John O’Hanlon and illustrated by John Vernon Lord throws a life preserver to readers by offering a more readable, more musical text accompanied by illustrations that capture the playful, multilayered, flowing spirit of the story. For anyone who has tried and failed to finish Finnegans Wake or for anyone too intimated to try, this new edition will have you hearing and seeing Joyce’s language more clearly than ever before. Please come over to Picture This at Big Think to read more of "Hearing and Seeing James Joyce’s Finnegans Wake Anew."

According to a Pew Research study, if you count people who change from one type of Protestantism to another, “44% of American adults have either switched religious affiliation, moved from being unaffiliated with any religion to being affiliated with a particular faith, or dropped any connection to a specific religious tradition altogether.” This “very competitive religious marketplace” promises to only get more competitive, as percentages of young people either unaffiliated with a faith or totally unaffiliated being even higher. Why are these people taking their faith to the marketplace? What are they looking for? Is it some kind of different or higher experience? With the stir surrounding Marina Abramović’s current performance art piece, Marina Abramović: 512 Hours at the Serpentine Gallery in London, England, being described frequently as a “religious experience,” is it possible that performance art—the most often ridiculed, poorly understood, but perhaps most vibrant art form today—could be the new religion? Please come over to Picture This at Big Think to read more of "Is Performance Art the New Religion?"

In 1951, musical composer and overall art theorist John Cage (shown above) stepped into an anechoic chamber at Harvard University. Touted as the quietest place on Earth, the anechoic chamber offered the chance for Cage finally to experience the silence he had been pursuing in his music. But rather than complete silence, Cage found himself bombarded with sounds he later learned were the workings of his own nervous system and blood circulation. Total silence, it seemed, existed nowhere. If sound was everywhere, then music was everywhere—and everything was music. That cognitive jump, combined with Cage’s explorations into Zen Buddhism, helped him spread his ideas to other forms of art, particularly the visual arts. That story and many others appear in Kay Larson’s beautifully written book, Where the Heart Beats: John Cage, Zen Buddhism, and the Inner Life of Artists. But did Cage really break new ground, or did he simply repeat what Marcel Duchamp and his readymades said decades before? That question weighs heavily on both Larson’s book and Cage’s legacy. Please come over to Picture This at Big Think to read more of "John Cage: Guiding Spirit of American Modern Art?"

It all started with a review. When a reviewer of a 1957 painting exhibition by Jasper Johns compared one of his paintings to a readymadeby Marcel Duchamp, Johns and friend and fellow artist Robert Rauschenbergmade the pilgrimage down from New York City to the Philadelphia Museum of Art, home since 1954 to not just Duchamp’s readymades, but also the painting known simply as The Bride and the monumental work known less simply as The Bride Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors, Even (The Large Glass). Inspired, Johns and Rauschenberg soon met Duchamp and struck up a friendship that would eventually include composer/visual artist John Cage and choreographer Merce Cunningham. In Dancing around the Bride: Cage, Cunningham, Johns, Rauschenberg, and Duchamp, which runs at the Philadelphia Museum of Art through January 21, 2013, you discover how these younger artists came to dance around the influential presence of Duchamp and create art in the same playful spirit as the arch-Dadaist. Perhaps the most difficult (yet most pleasurable once acquired) artist of the 20^th century, Duchamp remains the inevitable influence for all American art ever since Johns and Rauschenberg made their trip. Please come over to Picture This at Big Think to read more of "How American Modern Art Still Dances AroundDuchamp."



[Many thanks to the Philadelphia Museum of Art for providing me with the image above from, a press pass to view, and other materials related to Dancing around the Bride: Cage, Cunningham, Johns, Rauschenberg, and Duchamp, which runs through January 21, 2013. The festival celebrating the centennial of John Cage’s birth, Cage: Beyond Silence, runs through January 20, 2013.]