News Art Blog

In his recent New Republic article titled “Liberals Are Killing Art: How the Left became obsessed with ideology over beauty,” art critic Jed Perl makes a convoluted argument that liberalism now “find[s] the emotions unleashed by the arts—I mean all of the arts, from poetry to painting to dance—something of an embarrassment.” Embarrassed by emotions, liberals “who support a rational public policy—a social safety net, consistency and efficiency in foreign affairs, steps to reverse global warming—[are] reluctant to embrace art’s celebration of unfettered metaphor and mystery and magic.” Beginning with that quick hop, skip, and rhetorical leap from global warming to art appreciation, Perl stands up a series of liberal straw men to knock down in his overall accusation that liberals see art just as political (or politicizable) content at the expense of aesthetic pleasure. In resurrecting an old school argument from more than half a century ago, Perl asks if liberals are killing art, but ends up making readers ask if conservative critics are killing art instead. Please come over to Picture This at Big Think to read more of "Are Liberals Killing Art?"

All apologies to Michael Jackson, but in the art world, Andy Warholwill always be the King of Pop. The bewigged eccentric didn’t start Pop Art, but his works largely influenced what we think of as Pop. But who is the Queen of Pop? It might just be Japanese artist Yayoi Kusama, subject of a huge retrospective exhibition at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York City. Perhaps the most important Japanese female artist of the 20^th century, Kusama’s made art for more than six decades, including the Pop-crazed 1960s, during which Kusama exhibited alongside the likes of Warhol and Claes Oldenburg. Kusama’s much more than just that decade, but in many ways she’s still the Queen of Pop in making her ideas and images pop in the imagination of the viewer. Please come over to Picture This at Big Think to read more of "Yayoi Kusama: Still the Queen of Pop?"



[Many thanks to the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York City for the image above and other press materials related to the exhibition Yayoi Kusama, which runs through September 30, 2012.]