Essay

I’d rather not point fingers at specific artists, but I am concerned that there is a lack in much of contemporary art of what I perceive as… Passion. A couple…

Last week’s episode of “GIRLS” showed Lena Dunham’s character, Hannah Horvath, engaging in a topless round of ping pong with Joshua, a recently separated 42-year-old handsome stranger performed by Patrick…

A while back I bought some fancy sunscreen in Rice Village and then went to the nearby Starbucks for an iced tea. My credit card company put a hold on…

Last Saturday night I went to a private residence in Travis Heights to see the New Music Co-op‘s performance of Brent Fariss‘ Unitard, a piece that according to Fariss, “explores…

2012 saw a slew of portraits of the late Governor Ann Richards in various media—film, print, on the stage. A lot of youngsters might have forgotten about her or unfortunately…

Lynn Barber lives in Rapid City, South Dakota. She has degrees in microbiology and law, and intermittently works as a patent attorney. She enjoys playing the hammer dulcimer and the…

Amon G. Carter was a man of iron will, blunt charm and big ideas. Her father’s daughter, Ruth Carter Stevenson, inherited his intractibility and vision but thinly cloaked it with…

My first and likely only prediction for visual art in 2013: thanks to the retrospective that was organized by and debuted at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Ken…

Constructivism in Latin America provided fertile ground for a plethora of different movements, proposals and ideas from the 1930s onward as seen in Constructed Dialogues: Concrete, Geometric, and Kinetic Art…

As the holiday season arrives, we all have a little reprieve from the busy slate of art openings, lectures, performances and other events. I have used this mini-break to do…

Who doesn’t love to receive art books around the holidays? Full of inspiration and far more special than your average paperback, the following books will warm the hearts of all…

A few weeks ago, I did a quick survey of what a copyright is and how to get one. But recent reactions to a news report expand what one has…

How can good people appreciate despicable behavior? What can it seriously tell us about the values we hold? These questions are repeatedly addressed and challenged by artists and filmmakers, to…

Dave Hickey recently announced his retirement from art criticism, citing his disgust with the circus that the art world—particularly the world of contemporary art—has become. He also, in an article published…

By the time this is published the new curator of modern and contemporary art at the Blanton Museum may have been announced. I was told last week that an offer…

What & when are your copyright rights? Keep your hands off my image! The other Saturday I wrote a small musing on the art business practices; half the comments in…

The Glasstire Drawing Project presents Chapter 2 of Michael Bise’s “Life On the List,” an autobiographical comic about life on the heart transplant list. For Chapter 1, click here. CHAPTER…

I appropriately write this on “Small Business Saturday” and artists and galleries are among the smallest businesses around. But, as I say in the essay, few seem to know how…

I’ve long thought of clay as a very specific medium. By “medium specific” I’m recalling the critic Clement Greenberg’s term as he defined it in his 1961 essay Modernist Painting.…

I ran around E.A.S.T. Sunday afternoon, the last day of the annual Austin arts festival. It was a sunny and beautiful day–perfect for wandering about and looking at local art.…