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."

By the 1960s, the two most criticized art forms in America were modern art and television.  Some critics called modern art mystifying junk, while others targeted TV as anything from trash to a threat to democracy. Revolution of the Eye: Modern Art and the Birth of American Television at The Jewish Museum, New York, hopes to redeem both media by exploring how modern art provided an ethos and aesthetic for early television — a debt repaid later as television, in turn, inspired a new generation of modern artists, including Andy Warhol, who began as a modernist-influenced graphic designer for, among other clients, television networks. By looking back at modern art and television’s mutual love affair from the 1940s to the 1970s, Revolution of the Eye challenges us to reflect on the artistic aspirations of TV’s latest golden age. Please come over to Picture This at Big Think to read more of "Eye Opening: Modern Art and the Early Days of American Television."

“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."

Comedian Stephen Colbert called Jeff Koons “The world's most expensive birthday clown” when the artist famous for his giant balloon animals appeared on his show in 2012. A year later, one of Koons’ balloon dogs sold for $58.4 million, setting a record for the highest auction price paid for a work by a living artist, so Koons could laugh all the way to the bank. Disdained by critics but loved by buyers, Koons and his work have always struggled for critical acceptance, especially in New York City, Koons’ base of operations. Finally, the Whitney Museum of American Art presents Jeff Koons: A Retrospective, a museum-filling show featuring 150 objects dating from 1978 to what one curator says are “literally works finished last week.” Is this the official canonization of Jeff Koons into the pantheon of art history? Must we take Jeff Koons seriously now? Please come over to Picture This at Big Think to read more of "Must We Take Jeff Koons Seriously Now?"

“Humbug,” harrumphed Minimalist/Conceptual artist Carl Andre recently in response to a question about Conceptualism in art today. “I think it is humbug myself,” Andre announced, channeling his inner Ebeneezer. “That is my own private opinion… I just don’t believe in Joseph Kosuth’s slogan ‘art as idea as idea’—if it is an idea it has never entered the world.” Surprising words from a surprising source, Andre’s pronouncement on the state of contemporary Conceptualism presents art critics and museums with the odd predicament of defending a school of contemporary art from one of the founding figures of the school itself. If we take Andre at his word, is it time to consider whether contemporary Conceptual art really is (as non-Dickensian Americans would call it) a fraud? Please come over to Picture This at Big Think to read more of "Is Contemporary Conceptual Art a Fraud? ThisConceptual Artist Thinks So."

[Image: Carl Andre. Equivalent VIII (The Bricks), 1966.]

When news came out recently that artist Damien Hirst had ended his long and lucrative relationship with dealer Larry Gagosian and his international chain of Gagosian Galleries, there was more than a presumptive little dancing on the grave of Hirst’s career. It seemed that the man famous for his formaldehyded shark (in 1991’s The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living, shown above) was now chum in the art world waters. Esquire’s Stephen Marche not only announced the end of Damien Hirst, but also “the end of art as pure money.” But before we call in the undertakers, let’s undertake an analysis of whether this really is the end of Damien Hirst and the era of “art as pure money” he embodied. Please come over to Picture This at Big Think to read more of "Is This the End of Damien Hirst?"

[Image: Damien Hirst. The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living, 1991.]