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I have a law degree (Stanford, 66') but have never practiced. Instead, from 1967 through 1977, I tried to contribute to the revolution in America. As unsuccessful as everyone else over that decade, in 1978 I went to work for the U.S. Forest Service in San Francisco as a Clerk-Typist, GS-4. I was active in the USFS's union for several years, including a brief stint as editor of The Forest Service Monitor, the nationwide voice of the Forest Service in the National Federation of Federal Employees. Howsoever, I now believe my most important contribution while editor of the F.S.M. was bringing to the attention of F.S. employees the fact that the Black-Footed Ferret was not extinct; one had been found in 1980 on a national forest in the Colorado. In 2001 I retired from the USFS after attaining the age of 60 with 23 years of service. Stanford University was evidently unimpressed with my efforts to make USFS investigative reports of tort claim incidents available to tort claimants (ie, "the public"), alleging the negligence of a F.S. employee acting in the scope of his/her duties caused their damages, under the Freedom of Information Act. Oh well. What'cha gonna do?
(2 comments) SHARE Monday, January 26, 2009 A Pictorial Essay - Abstract Expressionism versus Geometric Expressionism
I keep changing my mind about my favorite school of modern painting: I go back and forth between Fauvism and Abstract Expressionism. Like when the Stones and the Beatles were coming out with new albums every six months in the 1960's - my favorite group was whichever one I'd heard the latest good stuff by.
(14 comments) SHARE Thursday, April 29, 2010 Reflecting Sadness - The Art of Richard Estes
What's an artist to do, if he loved Manhattan in the 1960's and lived out the 20th century there? Richard Estes kept on keeping on. Fortunately, even his earliest works had reflections which championed the down-and-outer, the common man, and the loner.
(12 comments) SHARE Saturday, February 7, 2009 Richard Misrach – A Life of Fine Art, and Reportage and Protest Photography
When I first posted Protest Art/Photography at OEN last September, I realized Richard Misrach was very special. But the times were hectic, what with the election coming and me feeling my way with pictorial articles at OEN. I revisited Misrach at artnet's Artist Works Catalogues last week, and this article is the result. (Some of the photographs' titles include my explanatory words.)
SHARE Tuesday, December 16, 2008 Fine Art on 12/16/008 - Abstract Expressionist Paintings by Four Artists
Abstract Expressionism was painting's premier American innovation in the 20th century. It spread from New York City outward to the world. And the most contemporary and avant garde artists are still inspired by it.
(14 comments) SHARE Sunday, October 19, 2008 HELL EXPLAINED BY CHEMISTRY STUDENT
The following is an actual question given on a University of Washington chemistry mid-term. The answer by one student was so "profound" that the professor shared it with colleagues, via the Internet, which is, of course, why we now have the pleasure of enjoying it as well:
Bonus Question: Is Hell exothermic (gives off heat) or endothermic (absorbs heat)?
(3 comments) SHARE Friday, January 2, 2009 An Early Impressionist American Painter – Mary Cassatt
[[MCA1900]] "Mary Stevenson Cassatt (was) born on May 22, 1844, in Allegheny City, Pennsylvania, to Mr. and Mrs. Robert Simpson Cassatt. She...(died) on June 14, 1926, at Beaufresne, France, and is buried in the family tomb in the cemetery at Mesnil-Théribus...fifty miles from Paris"
(2 comments) SHARE Tuesday, February 3, 2009 Six Remarkable Contemporary Artists
All six artists can be appreciated at artnet's Artist Works Catalogues. Hunt Slonem, Peter Beard, and Jamalii are new to OEN; but Idell Weber, Burhan Dogancay, and Wangechi Mutu are featured in previous articles
(5 comments) SHARE Saturday, October 10, 2009 A Selection from Herb Ritts' 1993 African Photographs
In his life and work, Herb Ritts was drawn to clean lines and strong forms. This graphic simplicity allowed his images to be read and felt instantaneously. They often challenged conventional notions of gender or race.
SHARE Sunday, November 29, 2009 Stuart Davis and Strength of Character in 20th Century Painting
Many of Stuart Davis' early paintings were post-impressionistic. Many of his later ones were unmistakably modern works of geometrical expressionism. All of them are unmistakably Stuart Davis.
(6 comments) SHARE Tuesday, January 20, 2009 Five Watercolors by Jean Dufy, a Notable 20th Century French Painter
There follow three more watercolors by Dufy, illustrating the combination sketch-and-watercolor approach that many successful watercolorists have used to deal with the imperatives of a free-flowing and slow-drying medium.
(8 comments) SHARE Wednesday, April 4, 2012 My Mare Island, Vallejo, CA, 94592: Is It a Toxic Waste Hazard?
I worked for the U.S. Forest Service from 1978 to 2001. My duty station for all 23 years was in the Regional Office of the Pacific Southwest Region (Region 5), for 20 years in San Francisco's financial district, and for the last 3 years on Mare Island in Vallejo, CA, where the Regional Office moved in 1998 to reduce rental costs.
(3 comments) SHARE Sunday, October 12, 2008 PROTEST ART ON 10.08.008 (Part 2)
Marina Abramovic is a performance artist, an installationist, and a photographer. According to Wikipedia, her "...work explores the relationship between performer and audience, the limits of the body, and the possibilities of the mind." If she were a painter, she would be a surrealist.
SHARE Saturday, November 21, 2009 Eight 1960's Collages by the Contemporary American Artist Joseph Cornell
There are more than fifty collages by Joseph Cornell at Artnet's Artist Works Catalogues. Seven of the eight included here were constructed by Cornell in the 1960's, and the eighth was constructed in 1959.
(6 comments) SHARE Monday, September 7, 2009 Hoffa, the Movie. A Summary Review for Labor Day
What happened to this movie? Has anyone found it in their local library's catalogue? (It's not in my library's.) Jimmy Hoffa was an American original, and only Jack Nicholson could have done justice to his character in this movie. But am I going crazy? Or would Hoffa the movie be totally unknown in America today if Danny DeVito hadn't been a beloved TV comedian in 1992?
(3 comments) SHARE Sunday, January 22, 2012 The Golden Age of Late-20th Century Photography
Millions participated, thousands succeeded, hundreds became rich and famous, but in retrospect, Annie Leibovitz was (and still is) the greatest American photographic artist of our time.
(13 comments) SHARE Saturday, September 11, 2010 Freeman Dyson Writes About Religion and Science
This is the third OEN article I've published since last month based on, and containing extensive excerpts from, the writings of the brilliant mathematical physicist Freeman Dyson. Dyson's most popular book was largely biographical and was titled Disturbing the Universe. He's also the author of Infinite in All Directions, Origins of Life, and The Sun, the Genome, and the Internet.
(2 comments) SHARE Saturday, December 13, 2008 Humorous Protest Art on 12.13.008 -- Again, Vitaly Komar
Vitaly Komar was born in Moscow in 1943, and he attended art school there from 1958 to 1960. Subsequently he studied engineering at the Moscow High School of Industry, and graduated from it.
(7 comments) SHARE Thursday, February 18, 2010 Nine Years Ago: Eric Foner Reviews a Biography of Rosa Parks
February is African American History Month. A much-remembered event in this history occurred in 1955, when a 42 year old black woman named Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat on a bus to a white passenger in Montgomery, Alabama, as required by municipal law.
(10 comments) SHARE Monday, September 29, 2008 Progressive Art: Two More Paintings by Bansky
Yes, these two wonderful protest paintings by the contemporary artist Bansky belong in every Progressive's Collection
(6 comments) SHARE Saturday, October 18, 2008 PROTEST PHOTOGRAPHY ON 10.17.008
Michael Dweck was born in Brooklyn, raised on Long Island, and studied fine arts at the Pratt Institute.
(6 comments) SHARE Wednesday, June 9, 2010 Eight Paintings by the Famous Contemporary Artist George Condo
My intellectual favorite of these remarkable paintings is Grace; my pictorial favorite is Jazz edges; and my thematic favorite is USA Cancer. Six of the works are what I call Contemporary Surrealism.
(7 comments) SHARE Monday, October 18, 2010 7 Watercolors by John Singer Sargent
This is the second OEN article I've published with the art of John Singer Sargent. He was born 25 years before Pablo Picasso, and was as unique and accomplished in his own way as The Most Recent Spanish Master.
(4 comments) SHARE Saturday, November 14, 2009 The Contemporary Artist Leon Golub: Six More Images from his Portraits of Power Paintings
A selection of Leon Golub's works, including these six paintings and a photograph of the artist, can be found in the “Painters†section at artnet's Artist Works Catalogues. For me, Golub's “power†paintings are the artistic equivalent of the movie treatment of suicide (which is devoid of interpersonal physical violence) in “The Virgin Suicidesâ€.
(4 comments) SHARE Sunday, December 12, 2010 An Excerpt from The Politics of War, a Book by Gabriel Kolko
This excerpt is from Gabriel Kolko's monumental study of American foreign policy -- The Politics of War: The World and United States Foreign Policy, 1943-1945. It's from the beginning of Chapter 14 of the book, and sketches the weightiest issues involved in the Yalta Conference of February 1945 when Roosevelt, Churchill, and Stalin met in the Crimean city on the shores of the Black Sea.
(7 comments) SHARE Monday, February 15, 2010 Five Oil Paintings of Arabian Horses by Dede Schuhmacher
Dede Schuhmacher is a remarkably talented artist who was born in Texas and still lives in the Southwestern United States. She is a longstanding personal friend of mine, but I'm sure you'll agree that her art is here not because of our friendship but because it deserves your attention.
(1 comments) SHARE Tuesday, January 31, 2012 6 Photographic Works by Darren Almond and 4 Paintings by Marc Quinn, from the Patricia Low Gallery in Switzerland
Intro: The Patricia Low Gallery featured these works in a recent opening in St. Moritz, Switzerland. Wikipedia tells us that "Votive offerings, swords, and needles from the Bronze Age, were found at the base of the springs in St. Moritz, which indicate that the Celts had already discovered them....(And) St. Moritz is first mentioned around 1137-39 as ad sanctum Mauricium (literally, near or at a holy Moorish place).
(6 comments) SHARE Wednesday, June 1, 2011 More Joan Mitchell -- From a Lifetime of Great Abstract Expressionist Works
Joan Mitchell was born in 1925 and died in 1992. In my opinion her Abstract Expressionist works are the best anyone ever painted, better than Jackson Pollock's, who founded abstract expressionism in New York City in the 1950's; and better than Willem De Kooning's, whose wonderful purely abstract works are considered by many to be better than even Pollock's at his best.
(7 comments) SHARE Friday, August 27, 2010 Freeman Dyson, A Brilliant Scientist Who is an Unabashed Optimist About Biotechnology Research - Part II
Freeman Dyson is the British mathematical physicist who famously drove cross-country from New York to California with Richard Feynman in the late 1950's and helped him work out the mathematics to formalize the path integral formulation of quantum mechanics, for which Feynman shared the Nobel Prize with Sin-Itiro Tomonaga and Julian Schwinger in 1965. The Nobel Prize for Physics has never been shared by four physicists.
(9 comments) SHARE Friday, February 25, 2011 Post-Mortem Benny Andrews: Seven of His Early Paintings from Artnet's AWC.
Benny Andrews was a remarkably talented African-American painter who died in 2007. This article, during the month we honor African-Americans, is dedicated to all the artistic ones whose works never saw the light of day because of the color of their creators' skin.
(4 comments) SHARE Tuesday, December 27, 2011 An Appreciation of Woman Love in the Movies "Bound" and "High Art"
Woman love, or love between women, is so abhorrent to men with access to Flickr, there are hardly any images of it at Flickr Commons. However, seeing it in movies or in person is a turn-on, and consequently Hollywood has depicted love between women very commendably in two color films I've seen recently: Bound, starring lovers Jennifer Tilly and Gina Gershon, and High Art, starring lovers Ally Sheedy and Radha Mitchell.
(2 comments) SHARE Wednesday, November 24, 2010 A Book Review of "The Sorrows of Empire: Militarism, Secrecy, and the End of the Republic (2004)," by Chalmers Johnson
Chalmers Johnson died four days ago. He will be best remembered for his book "Blowback: The Cost and Consequences of the American Empire (2000)." In 2004, after experiencing four years of King George II, Johnson published "The Sorrows of Empire: Militarism, Secrecy and the End of the Republic (2004)." I reviewed it in an OpEdNews article, which I reproduce here.
(6 comments) SHARE Saturday, July 10, 2010 An Appreciation of the Movie, The Constant Gardener
Go out and rent this movie, still very timely! Not much has changed in Africa since it first came out.
Scenario:
In London, Justin Quayle (Ralph Fiennes) meets and falls in love with outspoken humanitarian Tessa (Rachel Weisz), a beautiful young activist who persuades him to take her back with him to Africa. (Wiki)
(6 comments) SHARE Wednesday, August 4, 2010 Seven Contemporary Paintings by Ilya and Emilia Kabakov
Ilya and Emilia Kabakov show that some of America's best contemporary art has been produced by artists born between 1933 and 1945. Ancient times, you say? Not in the art world.
(18 comments) SHARE Friday, May 21, 2010 Seven Political Works by DC Artist Thomas Durham
Thomas Durham is a multi-talented artist who works in Washington, DC. The names Tom assigned these works at his website convinced me beyond a reasonable doubt that he considers them "Political Works."
(1 comments) SHARE Wednesday, February 10, 2010 Michela Wrong Reviews "Six Months in Sudan" by James Maskalyk
This book review is in the current issue of the London Review of Books, and its title is "Significance Addicts". Michela Wrong is a British journalist and author who has spent six years as a foreign correspondent covering events across the African continent for Reuters, the BBC, and the (London) Financial Times.
SHARE Sunday, September 18, 2011 An Appreciation of Joaquin Phoenix, Nicole Kidman, and Matt Dillon in the movie To Die For
To Die For was released in 1995, which was during a comeback, or slow period, in the careers of three of its stars: (1) Joaquin Phoenix, who had starred in Ron Howard's Parenthood (in 1989, as Leaf Phoenix), which was his 4th Hollywood movie; and, (2) Nicole Kidman, who hadn't yet gone down with the ship in Stanley Kubrick's last and least notable film, Eyes Wide Shut (1999); and, (3) Matt Dillon, whose career still was blahh.
(1 comments) SHARE Friday, May 28, 2010 More Scary Art by Tom Durham
Tom Durham is a multi-talented artist who lives and works in Rhode Island. His art has appeared in exhibitions and museums in Europe, New York City, Washington, DC, and several eastern seaboard states.
(3 comments) SHARE Monday, November 3, 2008 PROTEST ART ON 01.03.008 -- ONCE MORE, MARINA ABRAMOVIC
I have previously posted two sets of works by Marina Abramovic - performance artist, installationist, photographer, and protest artist extraordinaire. Two more of this remarkable artist's photographs follow.
(5 comments) SHARE Tuesday, April 20, 2010 Seven Portraits by Kehinde Wiley
Yesterday, an advertisement on satellite TV (USAHD) featured the art of Kehinde Wiley. He is a remarkable artist.
(1 comments) SHARE Friday, February 5, 2010 Jenny Diski on Beauty, Ugliness, and Art
This review of the book "On Ugliness" edited by Umberto Eco was published in the January 24, 2008, issue of the London Review of Books. Ms. Diski writes regularly for the LRB.
(7 comments) SHARE Tuesday, September 28, 2010 Imperialist Morality, by Jean-Paul Sartre
Interview with Jean Paul Sartre on the War Crimes Tribunal in 1967, which tried American War Criminals for the Vietnam War en abstentia.
(1 comments) SHARE Tuesday, September 15, 2009 An Introductory Book Review of “Fidel Castro: My Life: A Spoken Autobiography,†by Ignacio Ramonet
Over the last seven months, John Little has posted at OpEdNews his remarkable review of the book “Fidel Casto: My Life: A Spoken Autobiography†by Ignacio Ramonet. John's review was composed of twenty installments, progressing through the book chapter by chapter. This is my brief review of the first 230 pages of the book, followed by links to John's series of reviews here at OEN.
(10 comments) SHARE Wednesday, August 11, 2010 Thirteen More Works by Nancy Spero, a Persistently Disturbing Artist
Nancy Spero has been producing cutting-edge protest art for five decades. Her biography at Artnet's Artist Works Catalogues speaks mainly of technique, but I've arranged her works to contrast the pictorial effects, which illustrates the consistency of her radicalism.
(2 comments) SHARE Tuesday, January 12, 2010 Twelve More by Joseph Cornell, American Master Collagist.
Joseph Cornell (December 24, 1903 -" December 29, 1972) was an American artist and sculptor, one of the pioneers and most celebrated exponents of assemblage. Influenced by the Surrealists, he was also an avant-garde experimental filmmaker (Wikipedia, 2009).
(11 comments) SHARE Sunday, July 25, 2010 Rock-and-Roll in America, 1956-1960
I went east to college from high-school in Texas in 1959. And I took a three-record Hank Williams collection, which knocked the sox off my fellow freshman in Harvard Yard. But from 1956 through 1959, country and western was very much secondary to my high-school musical enjoyment.
(4 comments) SHARE Saturday, February 14, 2009 David Maisel, Contemporary Art, and Protest and Reportage Photography
The first set of six photographs below is straightforward. They are aerial photographs of five strip mining sites in Arizona and one site in Montana. I would be hard-put to decide whether 'protest photography' or 'reportage photography,' more accurately describes these works
(4 comments) SHARE Saturday, April 10, 2010 Six Years Ago: Jenny Diski Writes About Stanley Milgram's Torture Experiments
his book-review article appeared six years ago and forty-three years after Stanley Milgram's legendary experiments in New Haven, Connecticut, designed to determine how far ordinary Americans would go to comply with orders to torture. The experiments, not to mention the review, are more relevant now than ever.
(5 comments) SHARE Thursday, December 23, 2010 Bill Clinton's Lies
It truly pains me having to deny it. Today he is nothing more than a simple fellow consigned to history, as if the empire's history, and even more importantly, the history of the human race, were guaranteed beyond a few dozen years, without a nuclear war breaking out in Korea, Iran or some other area of conflict. As is known, the United Nations has sent Clinton as a special envoy to Haiti.
(3 comments) SHARE Sunday, December 26, 2010 More Portraiture by Arnold Newman | Seven Artists and One Impresario, In Color
Arnold Newman is a new addition at Artnet's Artist Works Catalogues, but his name belongs with the greatest American black-and-white photographers, right up there with Carleton Watkins, Imogen Cunningham, and Ed Weston. Newman died in 2006.
(3 comments) SHARE Wednesday, October 8, 2008 MORE PROTEST ART
Christa Dichgans is a German artist. Pictured here are three of her works dated 2003 and 2007.
(3 comments) SHARE Sunday, January 11, 2009 Protest Art – Five Photographic Works by Three Contemporary Artists
Robert Longo, Andres Serrano, and David LaChapelle are photographer-artists of great honesty and remarkable ability. More explicit works by the three artists may be viewed at artnet's Artist Works Catalogues.
(1 comments) SHARE Wednesday, March 28, 2012 Four Artworks by Nell Blaine
Ten Nell Blaine paintings are presently for sale online at Artnet.
(2 comments) SHARE Wednesday, December 23, 2009 How Can I Miss You, If You Won't Go Away?
This is the fourth OEN article I've published with images of the works of Marina Abramovic, possibly America's first performance artist/installationist.
(9 comments) SHARE Tuesday, February 9, 2010 Seven Miscellaneous Photographs Taken Before 1968 by Imogen Cunningham.
I've said that photography is not art, but it was when it was new. In a time long ago when most of the great American photographers were men: Ansel Adams, Carleton Watkins, Ed Weston, and others - which was late in the 19th century and in the first half of the 20th. But there was one woman too.
(4 comments) SHARE Saturday, February 5, 2011 More Jenny Holzer Art: Nine Miscellaneous Works
OEN's John Reed liked my previous article showing works by Jenny Holzer, and he sent me an internal OEN mail identifying three of her works at Artnet's Artist Works Catalogs and requesting they be included in a second Jenny Holzer article.
(8 comments) SHARE Friday, October 23, 2009 Jimmy Ernst, Five Decades of Just Another American Modernist
I hope you're not getting bored with the art I've been posting here at OpEdNews. It might distract you a few seconds from the world of bombs and torture. At least, that's why it's here.
(6 comments) SHARE Wednesday, March 16, 2011 Seven More Paintings by Almut Heise, German Modernist
Almut Heise was born in Celle, Germany, in 1944. She has been an artist and a student of art and a professor of art all her life, in Germany, and she presently lives and works in Hamburg.
SHARE Friday, March 12, 2010 Six Paintings by Local Artist Wayne Kohler
Wayne Kohler and I live in the same small northern California town of 25,000 souls, Benicia; and I first saw his works there about three months ago on the walls of a small coffee shop.
(12 comments) SHARE Wednesday, May 12, 2010 The Odious Tyranny Imposed on the World
Is President Barak Obama responsible for or a promoter of this tyranny? No. He is ignoring reality and neither wants to nor would be able to overcome it. Or rather, he is dreaming of the unreal in an unreal world. "Ideas without words, words without meaning," as a brilliant poet once stated.
(7 comments) SHARE Friday, May 6, 2011 Eight Steel Sculptures by Isaac Witkin
I used to always say "I don't appreciate sculpture," and I didn't. Then last week Artnet's Artist Works Catalogs had a new face at the top, and I discovered Isaac Witkin. I still don't appreciate sculpture, but Witkin's steel works knocked my socks off.
(6 comments) SHARE Wednesday, August 25, 2010 Freeman Dyson, A Brilliant Scientist Who is an Unabashed Optimist About Biotechnology Research - Part I
Freeman Dyson is the British mathematical physicist who famously rode cross-country from New York to California with Richard Feynman in the late 1950's and helped him work out the mathematics to formalize the path integral formulation of quantum mechanics, for which Feynman shared the Nobel Prize with Sin-Itiro Tomonaga and Julian Schwinger in 1965. The Nobel Prize for Physics has never been shared by four physicists.
(3 comments) SHARE Saturday, May 28, 2011 An Appreciation of Rescue Dawn, Starring Christian Bale and Steve Zahn
This 2006 movie about America's extension of the Vietnam War into Laos in 1965 gets a lot of things right. In 1965, America's war against Asians was about leadership and brotherhood under fire, and high-school high-jinks afterwards, and the American military thought the CIA was a bunch of clowns.
(2 comments) SHARE Saturday, December 19, 2009 Five by Jules Olitski, an Inspired Artist-Worker
The artist is a remarkable new abstract expressionist; herein, he speaks of inspiration, love, gifts, the gods and work, while quoting Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henri Matisse. And while showing you his art. Enjoy.
(1 comments) SHARE Monday, March 22, 2010 Rebecca Solnit Reviews Dead Pool, by James Lawrence Powell
A current view from England of the long view in the American West: this book review is from the December, 2009, issue of the London Review of Books. Ms. Solnit has written three articles for the LRB since 2003, all on environmental issues.
(2 comments) SHARE Monday, January 9, 2012 An Appreciation of T. Jefferson Parker's California Girl, Baja California, and KT.
In 1975, I was living with a lady I'll call KT, from Florida, while we were working in the Student Financial Aid Office at U.C. Berkeley; and, after our collaboration on writing a book of advice for California applicants for student financial aid had failed (due to my hard-headedness), we decided to take a trip from the Bay Area to Baja California in a very used 1967 VW bus I was driving at the time.
(19 comments) SHARE Thursday, December 31, 2009 Six By Ron Jennings - A Very Talented, Undiscovered Artist
Ron Jennings is 59 and was born in Syracuse, New York. But he's lived most of his life in California, first in San Diego and then Santa Rosa and Concord in the greater San Francisco Bay Area.
(1 comments) SHARE Saturday, April 14, 2012 Four Artworks by the Amazing Mark Tansey
I first saw Mark Tansey's art five years ago, when Sothebys and Christie's websites carried artworks being auctioned at their attended auctions worldwide, and the artworks did not download in a streaming format from their websites, so you could collect their pictures in your own files and create slide shows and backgrounds with them.
(2 comments) SHARE Saturday, November 1, 2008 PROTEST PHOTOGRAPHY ON 11.01.008 - WALKER EVANS
In 1935, Walker Evans began working on 'Let Us Now Praise Famous Men' in collaboration with the writer James Agee. In 1938, Evans' first major exhibition, 'Walker Evans: American Photographs' opened at Museum Of Modern Art's temporary underground gallery in Rockefeller Center, New York. In 1968, Evans became a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Letters; and in 1973, he received a Grant from the Mark Rothko Foundation
(5 comments) SHARE Wednesday, April 13, 2011 Premonitions: Eight Paintings by Alberto Sughi.
Alberto Sughi was born in Cesena, Italy, in 1928. A self-taught painter, by the end of his formative years he had become one of the greatest Italian artists of his generation. He started painting in the early 1950s, choosing realism in the debate between abstract and figurative art in the immediate post-war period.
(7 comments) SHARE Friday, February 18, 2011 History's Shadow: Ten Cutting Edge Contemporary Photographs by David Maisel
The best contemporary art is always a challenge. Over-simply stated, the best combines the new and the old and when done by the most talented contemporary artists, the very subject matter may be multi-dimensional.
(1 comments) SHARE Sunday, October 16, 2011 An appreciation of the Spike Lee movie Sucker Free City
If you watch the DVD Sucker Free City and if your first language is English, don't turn on the subtitles. If you watch the movie Sucker Free City on Showtime TV, turn on the subtitles.
(6 comments) SHARE Thursday, March 4, 2010 Four Pictures of California Trees, By Imogen Cunningham
Imogen Cunningham was one of the greatest American photographers at work during the first half of the 20th century. These four pictures were all taken before 1940.
(5 comments) SHARE Wednesday, August 18, 2010 The UN, Impunity, and War, by Fidel Castro Ruz
With Resolution 1929 of the United Nations Security Council on June 9, 2010, UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, fulfilling orders from above, appointed Alvaro Uribe Vice-President of the commission responsible for investigating the Israeli attack on the humanitarian flotilla transporting essential foodstuffs to the besieged population in the Gaza Strip. The attack occurred in international waters.
(3 comments) SHARE Saturday, March 27, 2010 Eight More Paintings by "Undiscovered" Artist Tracey Levine
With this article, I've published four articles of Tracey Levine's paintings here at OEN. This is the same number of articles I've published here showing the artworks of Marina Abramovic, probably the most famous installationist and performance artist in the world. Ms. Levine's work is that remarkable.
(6 comments) SHARE Tuesday, October 5, 2010 Five Paintings by Merlin Flower
If you like art and read OpEdNews, you maybe caught one or more of the five articles published recently by Merlin Flower, OEN's own "How I Painted This One" artist.
(5 comments) SHARE Sunday, February 26, 2012 A Time Trip Back to '55, by David McDermott and Peter McGough
I recently visited "Artists Monographs" at Artnet online and came across an unlikely looking pair, McDermott and McGough by name; then when I visited their biographical page, I was immediately hooked by something McDermott says there: "I've seen the future, and I'm not going."
(7 comments) SHARE Sunday, October 18, 2009 William T. Wiley and the Definition of “Mixed Mediaâ€
Most OEN readers probably lack any clear idea of what constitutes “mixed media†– like, it's a contemporary expression of post-painting art. But what is THAT?
(8 comments) SHARE Tuesday, October 28, 2008 PROTEST PHOTOGRAPHY ON 10.28.008: FOUR BY MITCH EPSTEIN
Mitch Epstein was born in 1952, and has taught at Bard College – where Stephen Shore was Director of the photography program - in 1997, 1999, and 2001.
SHARE Saturday, October 25, 2008 PROTEST ART WORKS ON 10.24.008
Herein is a landscape structure, two paintings, and one photograph, by four exceptional artists. Viewing them recharges my protest batteries.
(4 comments) SHARE Friday, March 19, 2010 Five Paintings and Four Paintoons by John Ohannesian
John Ohannesian's paintings are completely different from anything I have previously published at OpEdNews. But I'm sure you'll agree that they are the works of a remarkable painter.
(8 comments) SHARE Friday, October 15, 2010 5 Cubist Watercolors by Ben Schonzeit
Ben Schonzeist is one of the most recent artists added to the collection at Artnet's Artist Works Catalogs. I'm a great fan of the Fauvists, I love humorous and pop art, and I never quite "got" what Picasso and the Cubists were up to; so these whimsical "cubist watercolors" totally knocked my sox off.
(4 comments) SHARE Thursday, December 23, 2010 A Review of the Book "A Separate Creation" by Chandler Burr
The full title of the book reviewed is " A Separate Creation: The Search for the Biological Origins of Sexual Orientation." In both the prefatory materials and in my book review, the words "sexual orientation" are equivalent to the more frequently found words "gender orientation" today.
(4 comments) SHARE Thursday, May 5, 2011 An Appreciation of the Films The Wild Child, Starring Francois Truffaut, and Barry Lyndon, Starring Ryan O'Neil
The first of these films -- The Wild Child -- came out in 1970, and the second -- Barry Lyndon -- came out in 1975. The Wild Child starred Francois Truffaut and was in black and white, and the first time I saw it, it recalled for me the compelling black and white films of Ingmar Bergman. Barry Lyndon starred Ryan O'Neal and was in color, and the first time I saw it, I thought its director Stanley Kubrick had lost his min
SHARE Saturday, November 7, 2009 Leon Golub – Picturing Some Complications of Power
Leon Golub's paintings deal with stress and violence. These six depict the artist's interpretation of some of the domestic consequences of the greatest violence ever unleashed internationally, by the most powerful nation on the planet – America.
(2 comments) SHARE Tuesday, October 21, 2008 Protest Art Works on 10.21.008
Marina Abramovic is a performance artist, an installationist, and a photographer. According to Wikipedia, Abramovic's "...work explores the relationship between performer and audience, the limits of the body, and the possibilities of the mind."
(3 comments) SHARE Wednesday, September 3, 2008 Greek Cities in Italy and Sicily by David Randall-MacIver (1931)
The major key of Greek Cities is a description of Greek architectural sites in southern Italy and Sicily in 1931, with narratives about the cities where the sites are found including the cities' mythologies and most famous citizens, visitors and political figures. The book's history, then, spans the period from about the eighth century B.C. to about the third century B.C.
(7 comments) SHARE Saturday, January 29, 2011 3 Selections from Truisms, 2 Selections from Living, and 1 Selection from Survival, by Jenny Holzer
It seems like I've always known who Jenny Holzer is, but I'm sure that's not true. No, it's not. And what it must mean is, when I started really looking at art in Berkeley, California, in the middle 1970's, I was drawn to Holzer's works because I liked them and they were so different from other art.
(3 comments) SHARE Friday, February 11, 2011 Family Values in 1972, in Concord, California
The Caldecott Tunnel bores through the hills separating Oakland from Concord, Walnut Creek, and Pleasant Hill, three little boom-towns in 1971 on their way to being the San Francisco Bay Area's fastest-sprouting white-flight suburbs. I worked as a computer programmer in Martinez, another town close by but far less booming, and I shared a rented house with a young family in Concord for several months in 1971 and 1972.
(8 comments) SHARE Friday, June 24, 2011 Happy Birthday Alan Turing !
Yes, Alan Turing was born on June 23 (1912). So celebrate your gender today - hard core male or hard core female or any of the myriad variations and permutations in between.
(5 comments) SHARE Sunday, May 23, 2010 Seven Endangered Species by Tom Durham
Last Friday, seven of Thomas Durham's political artworks were published at OEN to much acclaim. This article's images are a selection from Durham's endangered species artworks.
(2 comments) SHARE Saturday, October 1, 2011 An appreciation of the movie The Killer Inside Me
The DVD of this movie warns that it's rated "R" for "disturbing brutal violence, aberrant sexual content and some graphic nudity." But that's not why I immediately checked it out of the library. Nor was it the sultry noir pictures of the movie's most 2011-stars on the DVD case -- Casey Affleck, Jessica Alba, and Kate Hudson - that knocked my socks off.
(1 comments) SHARE Monday, October 26, 2009 The Greens and Blues and Blacks and Oranges of Donald Sultan, A Most Original and Recognizable Painter
All eight of these works by Donald Sultan are contained in the artist's “paintings†section at artnet's Artist Works Catalogues. But all eight paintings are accompanied with the artist's descriptions of their “Medium†which indicate they are also “constructions.†So I've included these descriptions with the names of the paintings.
(3 comments) SHARE Saturday, March 20, 2010 Ten Portraits of Women by Wayne Kohler
Wayne Kohler is an undiscovered artist who lives in my home town of Benicia, California, about 25 miles from San Francisco. He has given me permission to reproduce his works at OEN.
(4 comments) SHARE Friday, September 4, 2009 An Appreciation of the movie De-Lovely, with Kevin Kline as Cole Porter
I caught this 2004 movie last night on MGMHD television, but I missed a lot because it lacked subtitles. And not being musically gifted, and/or bisexual, I was ignorant of any particulars of Cole Porter's professional and personal life; as ignorant as any man could be who was born in central Texas in 1941 and raised in a household where the words bisexual and homosexual were words never heard.
(2 comments) SHARE Friday, January 14, 2011 The crime against the Democratic Congresswoman, by Fidel Ruz Castro
As is known, the state of Arizona, a territory that was snatched from Mexico by the United States together with many other expanses of land, has been the scene of painful events for the hundreds of Latin Americans who die trying to immigrate to the United States in search of work or to join parents, spouses or other close family members who are there.
(8 comments) SHARE Friday, August 6, 2010 In Memory of August 6, 1945, and of Joseph Rotblat
Today is the 65th anniversary of our bombing of Japan at Hiroshima. As Americans, we should all bow our heads for a moment in shame.
(4 comments) SHARE Saturday, November 26, 2011 Tony Stewart Wins ! ! !
Tony Stewart wins the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series auto racing championship ! (Or...so you think art is dangerous to your health and only collected by rich idiots?)
(2 comments) SHARE Monday, May 23, 2011 Damaged Animals
I have previously published this article at OEN. But lately there has been a new awakening at OEN about the serious political consequences of brutality toward the very young.
(4 comments) SHARE Monday, December 1, 2008 Politics & the Arts, Internationalism, and Activism: Interview with Gary Corseri
"Revolution without the Arts is meaningless," writes Gary Corseri, whose articles, poems, stories and plays have appeared in hundreds of periodicals and websites worldwide. "I don't think we've had really good and effective political art since the Beat Movement petered out in the 70s. We've had notable exceptions, but artists, in general, have been constrained and restrained since the Reagan Revolution."
(1 comments) SHARE Tuesday, June 28, 2011 Linh Dinh's Streets of San Francisco
Linh Dinh is a remarkably gifted writer and photographer who publishes regularly at OpEdNews; he tracks our deteriorating social landscape through his frequently updated photo blog, State of the Union; and he is the author of two books of stories, five books of poems, and a just released novel, Love Like Hate.
(2 comments) SHARE Tuesday, October 7, 2008 More Protest Art
Burhan Dogancay is one of Turkey's most famous artists. If you appreciate Protest Art, it's easy to see why.
(2 comments) SHARE Tuesday, January 18, 2011 Two Who Sparked the Second American Revolution
Today is the third Monday in January, the day on which Americans traditionally celebrate the birthday of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
(5 comments) SHARE Monday, November 22, 2010 Seven More Modern Cubist Paintings by the Incomparable Ben Schonzeit
My first OEN article featuring Schonzeit's cubistic paintings garnered eight comments. That was a lot of comments for an arty article but less than fitting considering the artist is living and has such unusual and unparalleled talents. Enjoy ! (Especially you two: John Sanchez Jr, and Dave McCauley !)
SHARE Sunday, September 7, 2008 The Political Economy of Secrecy
Information is power. In a society organized according to principles of rationality and justice, information will be universally available and widely diffused, permeating the social order with power. In a society organized according to capitalist principles, information will be concentrated in the hands of a ruling class and its agents, augmenting and even displacing the force required to maintain capitalist inequities.
(5 comments) SHARE Thursday, March 25, 2010 Title: Nine Paintings of Sportspersons by Wayne Kohler
Wayne Kohler and I live in the same small northern California town of 25,000 souls. The town is called Benicia, and I first saw Kohler's works there about three months ago on the walls of a coffee shop called Rraggs.
(10 comments) SHARE Friday, January 7, 2011 In Time For Christmas: Another HRB Arrives in Port-Au-Prince from Cuba
(Just before December 23, 2010)... "a new group of 60 Cuban health workers belonging to the Henry Reeve International Contingent of Doctors Specializing in Situations of Disaster and Serious Epidemics arrived in the Haitian capital Port-au-Prince, in order to join the Cuban Medical Brigade battling against the cholera epidemic in this Caribbean nation...."
(2 comments) SHARE Saturday, April 3, 2010 Wayne's Kids, Seven Portraits by the Artist Wayne Kohler
This is the fourth in a series of articles displaying the art of Wayne Kohler, a multi-talented Vietnam Veteran who lives in the same, small town I do about 25 miles east of San Francisco.
(2 comments) SHARE Thursday, February 11, 2010 Five More Pictures by Tracey Levine
Tracey Levine is a very talented undiscovered artist whose paintings were seen here twice last month
(3 comments) SHARE Wednesday, April 14, 2010 Eclectic Wayne Kohler - Eight Diverse Artworks
Wayne Kohler can be found in Rrag's Coffee Shop in Benicia, California, most days between 8:30 and 9:30 AM. He says he's never sold a single artwork other than those he's sold off the walls of Rrag's.
(2 comments) SHARE Friday, March 30, 2012 From Wylie, an Old Law School Pal Who Played an Acoustic Guitar...
Back in the dark ages when I attended Stanford Law School (from 1963 to 1966), several members of my class played guitars, most of us not professionally, and some of us - like Wylie and me - not very well. But we kept playing (or in my case "trying"). My fave performer after the Beatles and the Stones and Dylan and Baez was Rambling Jack Elliot and the only song I remember finger-picking was his "Railroad Bill.
(4 comments) SHARE Sunday, November 27, 2011 This is my kind of article.
A new study involving bat skulls, bite force measurements and scat samples collected by an international team of evolutionary biologists is helping to solve a nagging question of evolution: Why some groups of animals develop scores of different species over time while others evolve only a few. Their findings appear in the current issue of Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences.
(4 comments) SHARE Thursday, December 1, 2011 Five More Paintings by the Incomparable George Condo
Many moons ago I posted an article with eight works by George Condo here at OEN and reviewing it I realize the man is probably my favorite contemporary artist.
(3 comments) SHARE Monday, August 18, 2008 Damaged Animals
Three vignettes about machoism in Texas
(6 comments) SHARE Thursday, February 26, 2009 Hitch-Hiking from Marin County to Grants Pass, in 1975
I was living in Marin County, and my freshman roomie and his wife were both Poly Sci profs at the U of O, and I got this wild hair to hitch-hike to Eugene and visit them.
(1 comments) SHARE Sunday, July 3, 2011 Dateline July 3, 2011: A Time for The Audacity of Hope and a Time for Boycotts, Divestment, and Sanctions
About a year ago, the violent attack on the Freedom Flotilla radically changed the international dialogue on Israel and Palestine. Protests in solidarity with the nonviolent activists erupted around the world, from expected global capitals like Tel Aviv and New York City to areas where one would never expect to see a Palestinian flag, like Cincinnati and Des Moines.
(3 comments) SHARE Tuesday, February 23, 2010 Industrial Strength Imogen
Imogen Cunningham was one of the greatest American photographers who ever lived. This is the second in a three-part series presenting examples of her art at Artnet's Artist Works Catalogues.
(1 comments) SHARE Tuesday, April 10, 2012 Seven Artworks at Artnet by the Post-Contemporary Kaws
I don't know sh** about Kaws. But I know what I like"", and it's not Kaws. (Just kidding. Would I submit an Artnet artist I did NOT like?) Don't answer that.
(3 comments) SHARE Wednesday, February 11, 2009 Book Review: The Thinnest of Ice and The Ravening Maw
"Villa and Zapata" deserves reading twice, the book is so rich in detail and the Mexican Revolution was so fascinating and timeless. But it's likely only dedicated students and historians have given it much attention.
(6 comments) SHARE Sunday, October 12, 2008 THE LAST POEM
I wrote was written in 2007
(2 comments) SHARE Thursday, December 8, 2011 "Join, Or Die"
"Join, or Die" is a well-known political cartoon, created by Benjamin Franklin and published in his Pennsylvania Gazette on May 9, 1754. The original publication by the Gazette is the earliest known pictorial representation of colonial union produced by a British colonist in America.
(7 comments) SHARE Saturday, December 6, 2008 Me and Art at OEN
There is one aspect of the Protest Art Series that hopefully will promote sensible politics in the long run.
(3 comments) SHARE Thursday, August 19, 2010 Bobby Thomson, who hit 'Shot Heard 'Round the World' for '51 New York Giants, dies
Bobby Thomson, the man immortalized with his "Shot Heard 'Round the World" in 1951, died Monday night at his home in Savannah, Georgia. He was 86 and had been in failing health for several years, the Fox & Weeks funeral home said Tuesday.
(10 comments) SHARE Tuesday, March 10, 2009 An American Photographer in Hong Kong, Part 1: The Real Fake Art Series
As a photographer, Michael Wolf has come to believe his camera can capture a culture. Which is to say, capture it directly with images of people, their activities, and immediate surroundings, instead of indirectly like landscape paintings reflect exploration or cultural land uses.
(3 comments) SHARE Sunday, June 6, 2010 US-Cuba Friendship Caravan to Tour 130 Cities
The 21st U.S.-Cuba Friendship Caravan is to tour more than 130 U.S., Canadian and Mexican cities from July 3-22. An initiative of the Interreligious Foundation for Community Organization/Pastors for Peace (IFCO), the delegation will be calling for an end to the blockade of Cuba throughout a 13-route convoy of school buses and cars.
(4 comments) SHARE Saturday, March 21, 2009 The Stark Facts About Violence Against Women
by Elizabeth Schulte, at Dissident Voice on March 19, 2009. Dissident Voice and OpEdNews have a mutual piece-sharing agreement. Submitted by Gentry Rowsey.
(2 comments) SHARE Wednesday, March 31, 2010 Six More Arabians and a Cow, by Dede Schuhmacher
Dede Schuhmacher is a very talented painter who specializes in oil portraits of Arabian horses. She has given me permission to reproduce the images in this article.
SHARE Monday, December 19, 2011 Remembering the NYT's Live Chats
In the summer of 2003, I was separated from my wife and the love-of-my-life and contemplating divorce after almost continuous intense and usually drunken arguments.
(2 comments) SHARE Thursday, October 23, 2008 ARTNET IS THE FINEST ART SITE ON THE INTERNET.
It has the most exhaustive selection of past and present artists – for viewing and for purchasing online – that I've ever seen. Additionally, many pictures at the site can be downloaded free by the public pursuant to the site's new "Artists Work Catalogues" program.
SHARE Saturday, October 11, 2008 PROTEST ART ON 10.10.008
Benny Williams paints the kindest, gentle-ist protest art I've ever seen. He must have grown up in a very loving family.
(8 comments) SHARE Tuesday, November 4, 2008 It's All Luck
The subgroup of the human species referred to as "Western Civilization" has experienced three utterly disorienting events since the early part of the 19th century – the first involving Time, the second Space, and the third Man's Inhumanity to Man.
(2 comments) SHARE Friday, March 27, 2009 Obama Nominates Kathleen Sebelius Secretary of Health & Human Services
Kathleen Sebelius (born on May 15, 1948) is...currently serving as the 44th Governor of Kansas. She is the second female governor of Kansas...and...(s)he is President Barack Obama's choice to be the next Secretary of Health and Human Services.
SHARE Tuesday, March 24, 2009 "Confidence" - A Movie Review
This action movie starring Edward Burns, Rachel Weisz, Dustin Hoffman, and Andy Garcia was released in 2003 (9 APF) - that is, nine years After Pulp Fiction - and I suspect it inspired the TV series Burn Notice.
(1 comments) SHARE Friday, July 9, 2010 Netanyahu Would Discuss Settlements in Direct Talks With Abbas
Dateline July 8 -- Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said he's willing to negotiate the future of West Bank settlements "right away" if Palestinians agree to meet face- to-face for Middle East peace talks.
SHARE Thursday, October 2, 2008 FIEDEL CASTRO: PART 1
This is the first in a series of ten videos. Watch, learn, and enjoy!
SHARE Thursday, October 30, 2008 Questions And Answers re Early Voting in San Antonio
Day-before-yesterday I exchanged OEN messages with a current resident of San Antonio Texas. I moved away from San Antonio - more or less permanently - in 1959. The answers indicate some of the reasons why.
SHARE Thursday, September 11, 2008 Notes on Group
This is a modified version of a piece I wrote for the New Bridge (Substance Abuse) Treatment Program in Berkeley, California, in 2003.
SHARE Tuesday, June 15, 2010 Two Disasters, One Story (Part 2)
Stopping the Oil - An Interactive Guide.
This week, we're assessing the impact of the Louisiana oil spill. Correspondents in the US, the Gulf of Mexico, Brazil, Nigeria and London will be reporting.
SHARE Thursday, October 16, 2008 Iraq War Vets Plan Action to "Force the Issue" - Demand Face Time at Final Prez Debate
Members and supporters of Iraqi Vets Against the War (IVAW) are planning to crash the third and final Presidential debate on Oct. 15 at Hofstra University if they are not permitted to address a question to both Sen John McCain and Sen Barack Obama.
(3 comments) SHARE Wednesday, April 1, 2009 Personal Advice for Windows Users
I found a way to keep track of your computer's CPU usage. If it drops to zero and stays there, and you can't get anything to run, beware.