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Manhattan Skyline Art Mocks World Trade Center Jumpers

We know memory is convenient.  We prefer to remember the happy and the good while repressing the horrible and the cruel. We also know there is one guarantee in this life you can always count on:  There Will Always Be Bad Art.  The current “Jumpers Sculptures” pocking the heart of New York City is but the latest example of cruelty in convenience masquerading as inspired artwork.

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Iconic Political Urban Graffiti

There is a Universal Human Context that can be tapped and empowered by the proper execution of iconic political urban graffiti. Here’s one stunning example that says it all without saying a single word: America is now more about bombing people than lighting the way to lead them to freedom.

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Calgary Transit Bans Naked Baby

Calgary Transit doesn’t want naked babies on its advertising billboards. 
Especially one that is 16 feet long, smeared in blood and with its umbilical cord in plain view. 

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Asemic Writing, Erratic Scribbling

Imagine writing without writing words, without writing letters. Somehow getting out your thoughts without a coherent system of letters that can be easily recognized and understood by passers-by. Most people do this kind of writing without intending to just about every time their pens run a bit dry and they want to get them going again. Go to any stationary store and walk over to the pen section and you will find that there are scratch pads that are full of such writing.

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Defacing Obama

Obama is, some believe, the most celebrated president in “people’s art” since JFK — and while these public images of Obama are ego-stoking  — we must also ask:  Are they any good? 

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The Banksy Semiotic

Who is Banksy? Banksy is an urban semiotic enigma.  Nobody really knows his name or who he is and none of that matters because his urban art speaks in the whole.

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Doing the Hundreds

There is great power in the semiotic image.  Sometimes it is simpler to grasp a complex idea with a simple vector graphic.  Here’s the seminal work of the “World of 100” and as you can see in the image below, only one person in a village of 100 would have a college education.

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The Art and Science of a Sencha Shot

I have previously confessed in the public square that I have an Ito En green tea addiction.  Today, I am pleased to also confess, I am now addicted to Ito En’s most delicious green tea yet:  The Sencha Shot!

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Saartjie Baartman: The Hottentot Venus

Saartjie Baartman was considered a South African sexual freak by Caucasian culture.  In 1810, when she was 20, she was convinced to leave her homeland for fame in England.  Her traditional Khoikhoi body type was considered freakish in Western Culture and she was put on sexual display.  Her bare breasts and genitals were open for the gaping.  She was given the nickname “Hottentot Venus” for her presumptive beauty, though in Khoikhoi, “hottentot” means “stutterer.”  Saartjie was dead at 25 and her genitals and brain were pickled for continued, public, display.

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At Brandeis, Art is the First Casualty

In a stunning and incomprehensible move, Brandeis University is selling 6,000 pieces of art and closing its art museum because of bad institutional budget management:

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