Category Archives: Uncategorized

  1. Olive Ayhens new painting

    Olive Ayhens is a wonderful painter and a great artist. This is a new painting called Amphibian Emergency. If you look closely you can see that inside the glass condominiums are frogs, an endangered species. They are disappearing everywhere. They are an essential part of our ecosystem. The condos are popping up everywhere in her […]

    This entry was posted on February 18, 2009 and is filed under Uncategorized.

  2. Afghanistan Treasures and Bagram Afghanistan

    While I am on the subject of contradictory language and situations, the stunning exhibition of Afghanistan art, the Hidden Treasures from the National Museum, Kabul, is full of them. First, it makes no bones about the fact that the war in Afghanistan starting in 1979 and continuing to the present has completely destroyed archeological sites […]

    This entry was posted on November 4, 2008 and is filed under Uncategorized.

  3. Artemesia RIP

    I have lost a member of my family.Someone told me they liked personal information in my blog, of which I have very little. Today though is different. I must write in honor of my dear cat, Artemesia, whom we found dead yesterday under our front steps, after six days of wondering what happened to her. […]

    This entry was posted on April 1, 2008 and is filed under Uncategorized.

  4. Inside the Northwest African American Museum

    One of the featured artist is James W. Washington, Jr. painter and sculptor, born in Gloster Mississippi in deep Jim Crow, moved to Seattle in 1944 to become a successful artist. Here is the symbolic portrait of Mark Tobey with whom he studied for a few years in the 1940s. The James Washington Foundation put […]

    This entry was posted on March 11, 2008 and is filed under Uncategorized.

  5. Martin Luther King Day in Seattle!

    All ages all ethnicities, all came together for peace and justice

    This entry was posted on January 23, 2008 and is filed under Uncategorized.

  6. my new website and my new grandson

    www.artandpoliticsnow.com is now online and available for everyone to see!and this is my brand new grandson for everyone to see!Art and Politics has a lot to do with the future of our planet which belongs to this tiny infant and the other children of the world. Let’s make sure we stay on the task of […]

    This entry was posted on December 13, 2007 and is filed under Uncategorized.

  7. Kara Walker

    Kara Walker has really started to talk loudly about miscegenation. Although I have seen her works for years, they always seemed to me to be perpetuating racism rather than countering it, but her recent retrospective as well as her new works, on display at Sikkema Jenkins and Co in Chelsea, are unavoidably challenging. In the […]

    This entry was posted on November 8, 2007 and is filed under Uncategorized.

  8. Extreme Interiors Olive Ayhens

    Olive Ayhens expressionist nightmares of contemporary life currently on view in New York City at Frederieke Taylor Gallery are tour de force paintings that present us with the chaos of our contemporary world.One recent series represented interiors of computer labs where the wiring has taken off on its own in a nightmare of disorder. At […]

    This entry was posted on November 8, 2007 and is filed under Uncategorized.

  9. Not only possible but also necessary, optimism in the age of global war

    The lengthy title of the 10th Istanbul Biennial suggests Hou Hanru’s desire to address the role of art in the midst of the pressing social concerns of the contemporary moment. To a surprising extent he was successful.There were several reasons for his success. First, he looked at the modern and contemporary history of Turkey, rather […]

    This entry was posted on October 1, 2007 and is filed under Uncategorized.

  10. Reinventing Books in Contemporary Chinese Art

    On a positive note, Seattle has an extraordinary exhibition of contemporary Chinese art at the Asian Art Musuem until December 2Originally curated by Wu Hung at the University of Chicago for the China Institute Gallery it was supplemented in Seattle, due to the efforts of the assistant curator of Chinese art, Josh Yiu. Yiu was […]

    This entry was posted on August 28, 2007 and is filed under Uncategorized.

  11. Willie Cole in Seattle

    The exhibition of the work of Willie Cole at the Frye Art Museum is a stunning installation by a major American artist. Cole’s relationship to the masters of twentieth century sculpture and painting is obvious in every work. This postage stamp photograph of With a Heart of Gold, shoes, stone, wood screws, metal, staples and […]

    This entry was posted on August 28, 2007 and is filed under Uncategorized.

  12. James W. Washington, Jr. Creativity as a path to freedom

    This sculpture by James W. Washington, Jr, The Chaotic Half, was made in 1945, long before the so-called era of Civil Rights in the 1960s. I say so called because African- Americans had been fighting for their Civil Rights ever since they arrived on Slave ships. Washington made this sculpture one year after he moved […]

    This entry was posted on July 26, 2007 and is filed under Uncategorized.

  13. "Stuff Happens" David Hare

    Last night I saw the new David Hare play about the Bush administration march to the Iraq war. It was terrific.Even though we knew the whole story, we were still sitting on the edge of our seats with the tension and stupidity, arrogance, malice, and ignorance of the whole thing. Colin Powell was the central […]

    This entry was posted on July 6, 2007 and is filed under Uncategorized.

  14. Shahram Karimi and Shirin Ebadi

    In the 2003 Istanbul Biennial the artist Shahram Karimi showed a work with the title “Traces” which he referred to as presenting the creative people of Iran who participated in the “collective struggle toward modernity.” Painted on rice sacks, he made realistic portraits of 248 intellectuals many of whom are dead or in exile. Beside […]

    This entry was posted on July 5, 2007 and is filed under Uncategorized.

  15. Venice Biennale: A Note on Turkey and Lebanon

    For the first time Turkey and Lebanon are officially represented at the Venice Biennale. Those of us who cannot afford to go there can visit the sites online. Turkey is represented by a quirky artist Huseyin Alptekin . Alptekin has been doing offbeat interventions in Europe and Turkey for quite awhile. In Albania, for example, […]

    This entry was posted on June 22, 2007 and is filed under Uncategorized.

  16. Word into Art Artists of the Modern Middle East

    Word into Art: Artists of the Modern Middle East at the British Museum explores the complexity of contemporary Middle Eastern culture from the perspective of the use of calligraphy and text.

    This entry was posted on June 14, 2007 and is filed under Art and Politics Now, art criticism, Iraqi Art, Iraqi contemporary art, Uncategorized.
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  17. Homage to Palestine

    As the news in Gaza gets worse and worse, I am posting some images of contemporary art from Palestine by way of affirming the fact that many people are working hard to keep Palestine culture and history alive.This is from an installation of Palestinian art in an exhibition called Made in PalestineThe work in the […]

    This entry was posted on June 14, 2007 and is filed under Uncategorized.

  18. Memorial Day

    Memorial Day 2007We can remember it for the dreadful passageof yet another appropriations bill by the spineless Congress.- 98 Billion to continue the war, to continue to provide “military training for the Iraqis to defend themselves” and to “support out trips.” In other words to pour more money into the hands of the corporations and […]

    This entry was posted on May 29, 2007 and is filed under Uncategorized.

  19. Online vs in the street a debate on activism

    I am having an ongoing debate with my thirty something daughter about street activism vs internet activism. I tend to dismiss people who just sit at computers all day as not “real” activists”. She claims that “internet activism is *equally* important, and that if you focus more time on one type of activism but not […]

    This entry was posted on May 5, 2007 and is filed under Uncategorized.

  20. Iraq in Fragments and Orientalism

    Independent films can be racist without realizing it, much like racism in a place like Seattle in general. The film Iraq in Fragments, made by Seattle filmmaker James Langley presents a classic liberal view of a racialized, impoverished, fanatic, backward, “other.” The focus on impoverished “primitive” families reinforces prejudice about life outside the United States […]

    This entry was posted on May 3, 2007 and is filed under Uncategorized.

  21. Artists Against the War

    Artists against the War, New York City in collaboration with other groups, handed out a petition for impeachment and supporting documents. It was designed as a tabloid newspaper and delivered to every congressional office. This is a brilliant direct action in the halls of power as Congress is wimpering and whining and unable to really […]

    This entry was posted on May 1, 2007 and is filed under Uncategorized.

  22. Selma Waldman’s Black Book of Aggressors

    Selma Waldman “Lust for power and territory is the same lust that kills man, women, children and the land itself” Selma Waldman No artist has more consistently addressed the subject of inhumanity and its relationship to power than Selma Waldman. Waldman’s entire life and art have been dedicated to the representation of war, capitalism, in […]

    This entry was posted on May 1, 2007 and is filed under Uncategorized.

  23. Cai Guo Qiang’s exploding cars

    Now that I have said all the pluses about the new Seattle Art Museum, I have to address the exploding cars. The installation by Cai Guo Qiang suspends nine white Ford Taurus ( tauri?), from the ceiling of the entrance hall ( that tells you how big it is). My first thought wassuicide bomberslong taut […]

    This entry was posted on April 27, 2007 and is filed under Uncategorized.

  24. The New Seattle Art Museum Spring 2007!

    The new Seattle Art Museum has been expanded to 268,000 square feet. They have the option to expand into another seven stories of the Washington Mutual Tower after ten years, or they can incrementally expand through the addition stories which will bring the total of square footage eventually to 450,000!! The museum is a success […]

    This entry was posted on April 26, 2007 and is filed under Uncategorized.

  25. A scarey situation for a graffiti artist

    This came to me from another website. It is a truly frightening story.   “My name is Alain Maridueña. Many of you know me by my professional name, Alan Ket, or just Ket. As some of you may have heard, I wasrecently arrested and charged with numerous criminal charges related to graffiti. What is different […]

    This entry was posted on April 19, 2007 and is filed under Uncategorized.
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