Jean-Michel Basquiat and “The Art of (Dis)Empowerment” (2000)

He was also known to be reluctant to involve himself in black politics, often finding himself estranged from “up town” black artist communities. By Louis Armand,  from a lecture at the Comparative Studies Colloquium, August 30, 2000, Monash University, Melbourne, Australia. When Jean-Michel Basquiat died in 1988 at the age of twenty-seven he had only been […]

Robert Frank: “Unpleasant Connections” (1991)

“In Butte, Montana, he photographed a slovenly, middle-aged woman in her car with a sullen child staring out of the window behind her. He showed a bench full of decrepit old people in St. Petersburg, Florida, staring at nothing in particular while a shiny new Pontiac whizzed by on the street behind them.”   By […]

Brassai – ‘The Surrealist Observer’ (Excerpt) (1998)

Brassai always insisted that none of his photographs was posed…   By Marja Warehime, excerpt from Brassai: Images of Culture and the Surrealist Observer Brassai always insisted that none of his photographs was posed, and there is no reason to believe that he behaved differently with the toughs in the rue de Lappe then he […]

An Interview with Leigh Ledare (2013)

Untitled (Entire Roll), 2008 36 mounted C-prints 135.9 x 201.9 cm An Interview with Leigh Ledare By David Joselit, originally published in Leigh Ledare, et al, 2013. David Joselit: So many theories of subjectivity that have structured art practice since the feminist interventions of the 1970s have focused on duality: self vs. other. But, in […]

Andy Warhol Interviewed by Bourdon (EXCERPT) (1962)

Dollar Sign, circa 1981   “Am I really doing anything new?”   By Kenneth Goldsmith, Wayne Kostenbaum and Reva Wolf, excerpt from I’ll Be Your Mirror: The Selected Andy Warhol Interviews From an interview with David Bourdon, 1962-63 WARHOL: Am I really doing anything new? BOURDON: You are doing something new in making exclusive use […]

Keith Haring: “The Authorized Biography (EXCERPT) ” (1992)

Untitled, 1984  “When I started going to high school, I became less and less interested in cartooning for cartooning’s sake. I was wanting to become an ‘Artist.’” By John Gruen, excerpt from Keith Haring: The Authorized Biography, 1992 Keith Haring – “When I started going to high school, I became less and less interested in cartooning […]

On Ralph Eugene Meatyard (Excerpt) (1997)

  Williams wrote me that there was a photographer there who took pictures of children and American flags in attics.   Excerpt from The Geography of the Imagination: Forty Essays By Guy Davenport When I moved to Lexington in 1964 the poet Jonathan Williams wrote me that there was a photographer there who took pictures […]

David Campany’s ‘Gasoline’ and the American Temple

It embodies Campany’s belief, “that photographs don’t have meanings: they have potential for meaning. It’s a question of how they’re used.” Or rather how we decide to see them. THE AMERICAN TEMPLE By Vladimir Gintoff for ASX, October 2013 History often reveals itself in unexpected places. Take Salt, Mark Kurlansky’s non-fiction opus on how a […]