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Aug 6, 2018
7 min

Wojnarowicz at the Whitney and Seven Miles A Second

Last month a retrospective of the work of David Wojnarowicz opened at the Whitney Museum in Manhattan. Known as a painter, photographer, writer, filmmaker, performance artist, songwriter/recording artist and AIDS activist, he died of HIV AIDS in 1992. He was born in in Red Bank, New Jersey, the youngest of three, to an alcoholic abusive father who committed suicide when David was 22. As a teen Wojnarowicz hustled on the streets of New York. He attended the High School of Mus

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May 28, 2018
4 min

Beyond Black Panther: A Celebration of Black Comix Creators

Black Panther the movie has just been released on 4K Ultra HD. Marvel’s new Black Panther: World of Wakanda spin-off series from Marvel just scored this year’s GLAAD Media Outstanding Comic Book Award. And here in real life, multitudes of conventions and exhibitions nationwide are honoring the talents and accomplishments of black comics creators. If you attended the Brooklyn Academy of Music’s BAM Black Comix Expo, the Black Comic Book Festival at Harlem’s Schomburg Center, a

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May 12, 2017
7 min

Can Commercial Art Ever Be “Art”?

John Roman explores what prerequisites need to be present for commercial art to be respected as fine art. “All advertising art is pornographic,” claimed the well-known philosopher, Joseph Campbell (1904–1987). And many of today’s art critics, holding little regard for “commercial” art, might support such a view. Those of us in the graphic arts, however, disagree and refuse to draw a line between “fine art” and some of the magnificent images created in the numerous markets of

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Mar 6, 2017
7 min

Will Eisner and the Century of Comics as Art

Cartoonist Will Eisner was such a life force that it’s difficult to believe that he’s not with us to celebrate his 100th birthday on March 6th. For seven decades, he was vitally instrumental in creating and shaping the comic book form, in elevating the quality of its writing and art, in revealing and expanding its graphic potential, in popularizing its respectability on a global scale, and in educating and inspiring generations of aspiring comics artists. And yet he died in e

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Nov 26, 2014
4 min

Andy Warhol’s Magazine Career, from Raggedy to Riches

Alexey Brodovitch had the eye. Beginning in the 1930s Harper’s Bazaar’s art director became famous for his ability to look through contact sheets and know precisely what images to choose, where to crop, and arrange to produce highly elegant and refined pages and spreads. And he’s since come to be considered American publication design’s most innovative and skilled practitioner. One of his freelancers in the 1950s was a struggling, unkempt graphic artist nicknamed Raggedy Andy

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Oct 8, 2014
3 min

Like, OHMIGOD! A Totally Bitchin’ Valley Art Show

The San Fernando Valley is a joke. A running joke that had its heyday in the 1970s and ‘80s. There was “beautiful downtown Burbank,” ceaselessly mocked by Johnny Carson. There was the Van Nuys porn industry, most famously ridiculed in Boogie Nights. There was Encino’s “valley girl,” legendarily skewered in the Zappa pop hit. And now comes Valley Vista: Art in the San Fernando Valley ca. 1970–1990, and it’s a major punchline changer for Valley jokes. Robert Williams: “The Brai

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Jan 29, 2013
3 min

Andy Warhol's Attraction to Herbert Bayer's Lips

When Alexey Brodovitch was art directing Harper’s Bazaar, he ran a striking cover by Herbert Bayer for its 1940 “College Fashions” issue. A three-quarter view photo of a woman’s face is duplicated in two rows of four: a clear newsstand eye-catcher. In his formative years as a commercial artist, Warhol would regularly produce drawings by tracing photos. Although the article doesn’t mention Bazaar, it does remark that the sketch “reflects his obsession with repetition.” And now

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Mar 16, 2012
5 min

Pop Art, Politics, and Critiques of Contemporary Culture

Chryssa Romanos: Reportage, 1965. Collage on canvas, 65 x 55 cm. © Dimitris Tsoublekas. Popular culture, capitalist critique, and female empowerment are among the topics of this, the last of a three-part feature on “Pop and Politics,” one of the programs at the 100th annual College Art Association conference in Los Angeles. Part one, my interview with Anthony E. Grudin about Andy Warhol and comic books, is here. Part two, the first half of this interview with art historians A

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Mar 14, 2012
5 min

The Pleasures, Politics, and Proto-Feminisms of Pop Art

Niki de Saint-Phalle: Kennedy-Khrushchev, 1962. © 2012 Niki Charitable Art Foundation. In 1963, Betty Friedan’s The Feminine Mystique drew attention to the stifling state of American womanhood, and Roy Lichtenstein painted what might be considered a visual analogue: “Drowning Girl”, who’d rather be engulfed by tidal waves than call Brad for help. It was also the year Andy Warhol began his grungy, frightening Race Riot silkscreens, as civil rights protests grew. And James Rose

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Mar 9, 2012
4 min

Politics of Pop: Warhol’s Working Class SuperHero

Anthony E. Grudin cares about the working class. He also cares – a lot – about Andy Warhol. Not the later Warhol, who pandered to high society celebs, but the younger man, with one foot headed for the galleries and the other still hustling for commercial illustration gigs. Anthony, an assistant professor of Art and Art History at the University of Vermont, has written articles and delivered symposium papers about that early 1960s Warhol. His interest is in that transition per

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Jan 17, 2012
6 min

4:02 PST. The L.A. Art Scene's Original Culture Jammers, part 2

Wallace Berman: Untitled, 1963. Collage: magazine page, press type, printed acetate stapled to cardboard with ink inscription, 12.6 × 9.4 inches, private collection. This is the second half of my interview with Claudia Bohn-Spector and Sam Mellon, curators of Speaking in Tongues: Wallace Berman and Robert Heinecken, 1961 – 1976, a Pacific Standard Time exhibition currently at the Armory Center for the Arts. In part one we discussed Berman and Heinecken as designers, jokesters

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Jan 13, 2012
6 min

4:01 PST. The L.A. Art Scene's Original Culture Jammers, part 1

Robert Heinecken: Are You Rea (Title Page), 1964 –1968. Offset lithograph, 8.7 × 6.3 inches, The Center for Creative Photography, University of Arizona. Several decades before AdBusters, there was Wallace Berman and Robert Heinecken. Hardly anyone knew that these two media-manipulating L.A. hipster artists were intimates, beginning in the early 1960s. But now their relationship has been exposed to the public for the very first time. Naked women are also involved. A lot of nak

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Wojnarowicz at the Whitney and Seven Miles A Second

Beyond Black Panther: A Celebration of Black Comix Creators

Can Commercial Art Ever Be “Art”?

Will Eisner and the Century of Comics as Art

Andy Warhol’s Magazine Career, from Raggedy to Riches

Like, OHMIGOD! A Totally Bitchin’ Valley Art Show

Andy Warhol's Attraction to Herbert Bayer's Lips

Pop Art, Politics, and Critiques of Contemporary Culture

The Pleasures, Politics, and Proto-Feminisms of Pop Art

Politics of Pop: Warhol’s Working Class SuperHero

4:02 PST. The L.A. Art Scene's Original Culture Jammers, part 2

4:01 PST. The L.A. Art Scene's Original Culture Jammers, part 1

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