Bob Duggan

Performance art usually receives condescending smirks in the United States as the last kid picked for the cultural game of kickball. With Charlie Sheen’s big adventure, however, maybe performance art has finally come to the colonies.

“You fall backward and you’re moved by the spirit of God and you get up and go forth and you’re a different person,” artist Liza Lou says in an interview […]

“Once I am sure there’s nothing going on/ I step inside, letting the door thud shut,” begins Philip Larkin’s poem “Church Going.” “Another church: matting, seats, and stone,/ And little […]

“It never phased him that we’d call out different tunes from the stage and change the set around endlessly to stop from being bored,” Radiohead front man Thom Yorke says […]

One of the unavoidable realities of going to look at art in a museum is the feeling that you the viewer are being viewed yourself—especially by your fellow patrons. In […]

Paul Cézanne painted slowly. Very slowly. The fruit in his still lives would ripen and even rot as he worked. Hortense, first his mistress and later his wife, visibly suffers […]

Have traditional liberal institutions such as education, religion, labor, and the arts stopped challenging corporate powers and, instead, joined them? Yes, says Pulitzer Prize winner Chris Hughes.

“Satire works by inference,” cartoonist G.B. Trudeau says in Brian Walker’s new book Doonesbury and the Art of G.B. Trudeau. “What you condemn should reveal what you value, what you […]

Around this time of year many high school and college students worldwide come to the sad realization that they’re failing chemistry. To them, a mole will always be just a […]

“In the long run, we’re all dead,” John Maynard Keynes once said in defense of his brand of economics featuring an array of short-term solutions. It seems like the state […]

Kanye West‘s album My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy came out too late to be nominated for the Grammy Awards being held tonight, so we’ll have to wait until next year […]

Two years before opening his Barnes Foundation in 1925, Dr. Albert C. Barnes vowed that in his new institution, “negro art will have a place among the great art manifestations […]

“My beard points to heaven, and I feel the nape of my neck on my hump,” Michelangelo wrote in a poem about his experience painting the ceiling of the Sistine […]

The art collecting world remains as much about collecting name cache as it does about collecting art. Becoming a trusted dealer and banking on that brand name allows you to […]

For a country that created a special holiday just to remember those who have fought for our freedoms in war, we do a lot of forgetting the rest of the […]

One of the true joys of the internet is that you can do pretty much anything (even blog) from the comfort of your own bedroom (maybe even in your pajamas). […]

Watching American media outlets attempt to cover the events happening in Egypt over the past few days reminded me of just how ignorant we are about the rest of the […]

For Americans, the name Iran conjures certain key images—the Shah, the Revolution of 1979, the hostages, the Ayatollah Khomeini, and black chador-clad women. Worn as part of the Islamic code […]

Forgery is the bane of the art world. But what does it mean when a forger practices his trade for art’s sake without accepting a cent in return?

The business world is full of what can be most kindly called “empty suits”—individuals who look the part but hollowly fulfill positions of power. In the art world, the empty […]

We see them every time we go to a museum, but we never really see them. Like Rodney Dangerfield, frames get no respect. Julius Lowy Frame & Restoring Company, Inc. […]

To borrow a phrase fromBilly Idol, Dijkstra presents “flesh for fantasy” first as the nightmare of Puritanism and, more hopefully, as the perhaps impossible dream of a mature, open society.

This year marks the 150th anniversary of the beginning of the American Civil War. The process of looking back at that time must also include looking back at previous attempts […]

Great art can sometimes be like a magnet—attracting hordes of admirers. The Gauguin: Maker of Myth exhibition that recently closed at the Tate Modern in London, England, drew more than […]

New York taxis are known for lots of things, most of them bad.  Thanks to a new advertising campaign, 500 Big Apple taxis will be known for something great—great art.  […]

Just when you think artist/charlatan Jeff Koons reaches the nadir of respectability/believability, he digs just a little deeper. As an early Christmas gift, Koons instructed his lawyers to issue a […]

Pretty much everyone knows that Superman is the original super hero, and maybe the greatest of that genre. As Jim Crocesang, “You don’t tug on Superman’s cape.” But one super […]

On a day filled with tragic images of the shooting of Arizona Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords and 18 others, it seems absurd to blog about anything else. As advertised, this is […]

Amongst the weaponry of the Spanish Inquisition were such diverse elements as fear, surprise, ruthless efficiency, and an almost fanatical devotion to the Pope, or at least that’s how the […]

Calling it “an insistent history that refuses to wait any longer to be told,” Lynn Hershman Leeson declares “WAR,” her acronym for the women’s art revolution begun in the 1970s, […]