New Art Examiner Without Fear or Favor

Al Weiwei is the darling child and poster artist of the Western Art World. I am not passing comment on his art, just the system. He says, “Everything is Art and everything is political.” We, as sluggish, and self centred Westerners, are quite happy for Al Weiwei to cause trouble for the Chinese government. In so doing we use the …

The closure of the degree course in contemporary crafts at Falmouth University was the highest profile closure since the demise of Dartington College of Arts. Crafts and Fine Art were the founding subjects of the Falmouth School of Art which became Falmouth University following the merger and relocation of Dartington. The widespread protests against the closure demonstrated the course’s high …

I still know those cries of the soul. They lie at the breast and in the throat. The mouth wants to open wide and let them out, but all these are antiquities, yes, Jewish antiquities originated in the Bible in a biblical sense of personal experience and destiny. I remember. I must. -Herzog by Saul Bellow Because I remember I …

A TALE—AND THOUGHTS–OF TWO HOUSES “A wall pitted by a single air rifle shot.” That was the sentence the Museum of Modern Art received from artist Lawrence Weiner. The interpretation was up to them. They could write it as is, fake the scene it described, or, most straightforward, just shoot the wall. Encountering the works of Sarah FitzSimons and Amanda …

BIENNIAL EXPO IS JUST FOR ARCHITECTS; ARTISTS SUPPLY THE PUBLIC’S VOICE.   “The Architects are Coming!”, “The Architects are Coming!” is the rallying cry for the citywide exposition Chicago is hosting now through January 3, 2016. For 96 days, Chicago is the architectural center of the world. It is fitting that this city, the birthplace of the skyscraper and bold …

It is nothing new to say that human beings are pattern makers nor that patterns help us to create the structures within which be build society. The art world is such a structure. It relies upon two very important pillars. I am not going to say one of them is money. There is nothing that doesn’t rely upon money in …

In 2014 Art Review named Hans Ulrich Obrist the most powerful figure in the field, but Obrist, a forty-six-year-old Swiss, seems less to stand atop the art world than to race around, up, over, and through it.” During EXPO Chicago, Obrist was “in conversation with the Hairy Who” who were anticipating the fifty-year anniversary of their first exhibition at the …

With elements of a new Cold War – interspersed with irregular hot wars and even a re-run of the medieval Crusades against rampant Islam in the guise of ISIS occupying half Syria and a third of Iraq in just one year, and a rejuvenated Al Quaeda in the form of Jabhat Al Nusra very much a reality, it is a …

A towering unsung figure in the birth of early modernism, Sonia Delaunay and her husband developed early abstraction to remarkable maturity. Their aesthetic theory of simultaneity made abstraction plausible by focusing on pure colour and structure as the focus when looking at work. For the Delaunays, the early 20th century required new forms to suite the new pallet developed over …

Three Speakers, One Message I arrived late to the bowling lawn in Port Eliot Estate, one of Cornwall’s large inherited earldoms, due to the lack of professionalism of their press officer. I missed the opening remarks from the Director of the Tate Gallery, Sir Nicholas Serota and introduction from Chris Stephens, Lead Curator, Modern British Art at Tate Britain, presently …