Jan Dibbets. "Untitled" (1969). Photolithographed postcard, 4 1/16 x 6” (10.3 x 15.2 cm). Publisher: Seth Siegelaub, New York. MoMA. Art & Project/Depot VBVR Gift. © 2009 Jan Dibbets/Artists Rights Society (ARS), NY. MoMA Imaging Studio, photograph: Jonathan Muzikar

While today Conceptual Art is utterly ubiquitous, MoMA’s current “In & Out of Amsterdam: Travels in Conceptual Art, 1960-1976” examines a period when only a few cities in the world seemed to embrace this idea-based world of visual art, foremost among them, Amsterdam.

In this well-curated show of objects–which is somewhat ironic since conceptual art often rejected the very notion of the art object–MoMA’s curator of prints and illustrated books Chirstophe Cherix focuses on an influential gallery in Amsterdam, Art & Project, that served as a laboratory for conceptual art practice when it opened in 1968.

Spurred by a recent gift of 230 works by the founders of Art & Project (Geert van Beijeren and Adriaan van Ravesteijn) to the MoMA, this show fills in the blanks of our art historical knowledge, most notably the connection between Los Angeles and Amsterdam. Phillip Van den Bossche describes the unique connection between these two cities in the catalogue as “the first direct links between Europe and the American West Coast–which is to say without New York playing an intermediary role.”

The exhibition offer a great deal of insight into the work of a number of Art21 artists who were either in contact with some of these seminal figures or more significantly benefited and learned from this generation of conceptual artists, including Jenny Holzer, Barbara Kruger, Allan McCollum, and Bruce Nauman, all of whom experiment with objects, language and narrative.

Lawrence Weiner's redesign of the hallway that leads to the "In & Out" exhibition

At the entrance to the exhibit there is a commissioned piece by Lawrence Weiner that combines nautical forms and triple-X wall images, both alluding to the city’s role as a major port for shipping and site for pleasure. On the right side of the hall, an eclectic collection of Dutch posters from the period set the mood. Continue reading »

Cindy Sherman, "Untitled" (2004), color photograph, Courtesy Metro Pictures

Starting today (and while the Art21 Blog editor, Kelly Shindler is on vacation), I’ll be guest editing the Art21 Blog while Kelly gets some much needed R&R. To kick off my temporary stint as blog editor, I’d like to introduce our next Flash Points series: Transformation.

The fifth season of Art:21—Art in the Twenty-First Century will premiere this fall on PBS with four thematic episodes: Compassion, Fantasy, Transformation, and Systems. In the last two months, we’ve explored Compassion and Fantasy but now we’re thrilled to present Transformation, a contemporary topic if there ever was one.

While Transformation evokes associations of all types, in relation to art the topic conjures up a long list of associations, including how we refashion identity, how we reinvent ourselves and how art adapts and changes over time.

Some of the many questions that beg to be answered, include:

• How does our ability to transform who we are, or how we look, impact the way we see ourselves?
• Is our ability to transform or reinvent ourselves what makes us truly modern?
• Has our culture’s relationship to art changed and if so, how?

For the next three weeks, we’ll publish posts about the artists profiled in the forthcoming Transformation episode — Yinka Shonibare MBE, Cindy Sherman, and Paul McCarthy — as well as showcase some thoughts on the topic by guest writers, who will explore the theme beyond the series to new and interesting places.

Feel free to help us start the conversation by leaving a comment below…and save the date for the Transformation episode which debuts nationwide October 21, 2009 on PBS!

Yinka Shonibare MBE (b. United Kingdom, 1962). "Scramble for Africa" (2003). Fourteen life-size fiberglass mannequins, fourteen chairs, table, Dutch wax printed cotton, 52 x 192 x 110 in. The Pinnell Collection, Dallas. Image courtesy of the artist, Stephen Friedman Gallery, London, & James Cohan Gallery, New York. © the artist. Photo: Stephen White

Paul McCarthy "Blockhead" (2003) and "Daddies Bighead" (2003). Installation at Tate Modern, North Landscape. Courtesy: Hauser and Wirth Gallery London/Zurich & Luhring Augustine, New York © Paul McCarthy. Photocredit: Copyright Marcus Leith/Andrew Dunkley Tate Photography

As we say goodbye (but never farewell) to Daniel Fuller for his extensive posts on museums living beyond their means, art hopping in Athens & Venice, a love letter to a curious museum in Philadelphia, an interview with a member of Red76, and a look at Triple Candie’s Maurizio Cattelan is Dead: Life and Work, 1960 – 2009 pseudo-memorial exhibit, we welcome a new blogger-in-residence to Art21…ladies and gentleman, introducing Quinn Latimer.

Latimer is a poet and critic based in Basel, Switzerland. She writes regularly about contemporary art and literature for numerous magazines, including Art on Paper, Artnews, Bookforum, Frieze, and Modern Painters. Her poetry has appeared in Boston Review, The Paris Review, and Prairie Schooner, among other journals, and in the anthology Best New Poets 2006.

Most recently, she was an associate editor at Modern Painters magazine in New York; previously, she did editorial time at American Letters & Commentary, Parnassus: Poetry in Review, and Columbia: A Journal of Literature & Art.

Latimer earned her B.A. from Sarah Lawrence College and her M.F.A. from Columbia University. She is currently finishing her first collection of poems. She has a small Chihuahua named Paul Celan.

New York's St. John the Divine Cathedral, photo by Mark Larrimore via Flickr

Rev. Tom Miller is the Canon for Liturgy and the Arts at New York’s Cathedral of St. John the Divine, affectionately known as “New York’s Cathedral,” even though it is affiliated with the Episcopal Church.

As the largest Gothic cathedral in the world, St. John the Divine is a unique structure with a a one-of-a-kind mission to embrace the whole city. It is a grand structure which fully reopened last November, after a fire damaged the building in 2001. It has a majestic presence in the Morningside Heights neighborhood of Manhattan and since the early 1970s, it has fostered a strong and lasting relationship with the world’s performing and visual arts.

In the last few years alone, the Cathedral has hosted major exhibitions, including A Time For Hope, which showcased the arts of the autonomous region of Castille-Leon in northern Spain, and the Season South Africa show in 2004, which featured the work of 17 South African artists and was co-hosted by the Museum of African Art.

Rev. Miller is a thoughtful man whose urbane sensibility serves him well in New York. He explains that the Cathedral’s openness to contemporary art is multi-faceted, and he elucidates this point with some thoughts on Episcopalian theology and his personal views on the role of art in society.

When one work in the Season South Africa exhibit sparked controversy from school groups and Catholic organizations because of its contemporary take on the Pietà, he took it in stride and mentioned that it reminded him of a hymn which spoke about Christ making the unlovely, lovely. “No one is excluded,” he said. “Artists help us ask the difficult questions we shy away from.”

“In the Episcopal tradition, incarnation is an important part of the doctrine, but it’s not just in doctrine, devotion, or liturgy. So, it is part of tradition to think that everyone in the world, not just church people, are created with this creative impulse. Artists live to investigate and understand the world and sometimes advocate,” he says.

Rev. Miller works closely with Lisa Schubert, Vice President for Events, Marketing, and Communications at the Cathedral, and together they work to integrate visual arts into the Cathedral’s programming.

The following interview was conducted via email.

St. John the Divine's Peace Fountain with the Cathedral in the background. Photo by Alexander Kagan via Flickr.

Hrag Vartanian: Can you tell me about St John the Divine’s visual arts programming?

Rev. Tom Miller: Our visual arts programming invites both established as well as developing artists to install work that reflects on the human condition and those qualities of heart, mind, and soul that respond to a greater awareness of the sacred nature of human life (often in relationship to the divine, defined as broadly as possible).

HV: How does it fit into the mission of St. John?

TM: As New York’s Cathedral, we claim to be a House of Prayer (broadly defined) for All People, which means we have a profile beyond our denominational identity or doctrinal focus. Our mission is to serve the enlightenment of all people in ways of justice and peace, and in that regard, to encourage respect for the dignity of all human beings. Art helps us to do that, but we must necessarily move beyond “church art” and find other expressions of the many ways this divine purpose is perceived by many people. From a scriptural stand point, we claim the belief that God truly did and does come into the world so that we might have life and have it more abundantly. The late Archbishop of Canterbury, Michael Ramsey, among others, was fond of quoting Irenaeus: “The glory of God is a human life fully lived.” That’s my starting point.

A life fully lived necessarily has to do with art, since we are all disposed to it, and it serves us individually and collectively as an integrating agent that connects our hearts and minds and makes us more than we can know or be otherwise. This has something to do with the imagination, of course, and it has something to do with compassion.

Continue reading »

Srdjan Loncar, "Value" (2008), as exhibited at the Old U.S. Mint during Prospect.1 New Orleans

Money is on everyone’s mind but particularly for those in the art world, which faces one of the most difficult economic climates in ages. The last few months on this blog we’ve posted about art and economics, looking at them from various angles and reflecting on a topic to which there is never a conclusion. Here are some highlights from this newly concluded Flash Points topic, “What is the Value of Art?”

Beth Allen kicked off the discussion:

Buried within questions about the economics of art are assumptions, and often judgments, about its value that beg to be examined: How is the value of an artist’s intellectual versus physical labor calculated? Are collectible works valued differently than ephemeral projects?

Ben Street highlighted parallels between the world of money and art:

[they]…may not be equivalent, but they are remarkably alike. As Swiss artist Daniel Spoerri put it, “in exchanging art for money, we exchange one abstraction for another.”

Thomas Micchelli offered his own insights:

Money may be a shared commodity but it fractures perception; not only is it the most unreliable historical indicator of aesthetic value, but when art is rendered into a trophy and displayed as such, its role as a piece of communal experience, owned by all, is diminished.

Lila Kanner pointed out that the artist’s role is crucial in our understanding of art economics and that “currency in art has a beautiful double meaning – it’s about cultural relevance as well as economics.”

Jackson Pollock's "No.5, 1948" (1948) is, according to Wikipedia, the
most expensive painting in history.

Then there were the tales of financial woe, from the impact that the economic downturn has had on museums (more) to artists looking to be fairly compensated for their work in museums.

Some bloggers looked at artists who thrive in the capitalist system, others sought out alternative economies, including one Chicago-based research institute (InCUBATE) that critically examines models for arts funding, and the Exhibition & Free Store in New York, which sought to “demonstrate the value of free art, free imagination, free form, and free rewards.”

The role of the arts administrator was raised by Tracy Candido, who reminded us, “I am an arts administrator, which is arguably the second invisible position in line behind the artist” and Richard McCoy wrote about the question of value from an art conservator’s point of view.

Julia Steinmetz took a different approach to the question of art’s value and cast her net into the body of Adrian Piper’s work to suggest that “art’s value is its capacity to direct our attention to a particular object, image, sound, environment, or situation.”

Among the key posts of the last few months, there were numerous interviews that focused on economics in different ways, including:

• a video chat with Jackie Battenfield, whose first book The Artist’s Guide: How to Make a Living Doing What You Love is a practical reference book that she wished she had when she began her own art career;
• a Q&A with David A. Ross, former director of the Whitney and SFMOMA, who offers his opinion on art’s economic future;
• Arnold Lehman, director of the Brooklyn Museum, spoke about the financial strain on major institutions;
• Dublin-based artist Seoidín O’Sullivan, explained her interest in helping communities feel empowered and take “ownership and responsibility in and for their localities”;
• Bjøernstjerne Christiansen of SUPERFLEX, who addressed the Danish trio’s critique of (doomed) economic systems; and
• and New York $treet Artist$ Enjoy Banking, who plastered the city with fanciful economic messages like “Enjoy Stimulus Package.”

Finally, we looked at the state of federal arts funding by the numbers and then spoke to the House Arts Caucus co-chairs about the state of federal funds for the arts.

For future reading and some hot topics in the news related to Art+Economics, try these:

• LA Times art critic Christopher Knight explores the merry-go-round of museums that deaccession art to buy more art and then change their minds about what they should be buying;
• Felix Salmon, writing for The Atlantic, thinks that if the federal government is serious about stimulating the economy, it should give out some money to its poorest citizens, artists, since “Arts spending is fantastic at creating employment: for every $30,000 or so spent on the arts, one more person gets a job, compared with about $1 million if you’re building a road or hospital”;
• the US House increased arts and humanities funding, including an additional 9.7% or $15 million increase from this year’s budget for the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA);
• New York gallerist and blogger Ed Winkleman has written a brand new book How to Start and Run a Commercial Art Gallery–it goes on sale tomorrow (Tues., July 14)–which promises to be a comprehensive guide for those eager to start their own gallery; and
• a Boston-based artist Geoff Hargadon has created, CASH FOR YOUR WARHOL website, for those who want to dispose of their Warhols quickly. He explained to Artinfo that he has received mixed reactions: “I have received a lot of calls, most of them hang-ups (curiosity?), but a few have probably been real. I haven’t returned the calls yet cause I don’t know what to say to them quite yet. Would I buy a Warhol from them? Sure, but I haven’t figured out the pricing thing.”

Rep. Louise Slaughter speaks about the economic and employment impact of the arts and music industry on March 26, 2009 (via the Education and Labor Committee's YouTube channel).

A few months ago, I went to the Bronx for a studio visit with an accomplished artist, John Fekner, whose personal brand of street graphics helped define a tumultuous era in New York’s cultural life in the late 1970s and early 80s. He explained to me something that people of my generation may not remember, namely that in the early 1980s federal funds for the arts quickly dried up and countless arts programs went into crisis and eventually closed their doors. It was a difficult time, he said, and the decline in federal funding seemed to continue until the mid-1990s, when federal arts funding became a lightning rod issue as the ICA’s exhibition of Robert Mapplethorpe photography became the poster child for an art establishment that reputedly didn’t represent the values of middle-class Americans. The resulting controversy made the federal agency that allocates federal arts money, the National Endowment of the Arts (NEA), a target for national disdain.

If the late 1990s were the nadir of federal arts funding in America (funding hit an all-time low of $97.6 million in 2000) since the turn of this century, the numbers have started to creep up. This year, the NEA received $155 million in funding, with an additional $50 million as part of President Obama’s stimulus plan.

But these small victories are not easy ones for the arts community. Fortunately, the arts sector has two champions in Congress who co-chair the House Arts Caucus, Rep. Louise Slaughter (D-NY) and Rep. Todd Russell Platts (R-PA), both of whom I spoke to separately via phone about the state of federal arts funding today.

A longtime art advocate and a powerful voice in Congress, Rep. Slaughter of Western New York mentioned that while President Ronald Reagan “zeroed out arts funding,” it was also the period when the House Arts Caucus was established. “The Mapplethorpe controversy was a major problem in the 1990s and in 1994, we had people who were being elected to Congress to kill the NEA,” she explains. “They thought it was decadent and didn’t fit their pattern of decency.”

After the turmoil and culture wars of the 1990s, things changed after the 1999 elections. According to Rep. Slaughter: “[Arts funding] did better under President Bush and now with President Obama, we have a more sympathetic ear.”

Continue reading »

President Obama, with Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr., signing the $787 billion stimulus bill at the Denver Museum of Nature and Science in February. (via NYTimes.com, photo by Ruth Fremson/The New York Times)

Talking about federal arts funding in America can be very confusing because of the many facts and figures. So, in an effort to understand the current and historic levels of federal funds that artists of all types have enjoyed, and to better understand the economic impact of the arts in America, I have compiled the following data from online sources for Part 1 of this two-part series. Part 2 is an interview with both Congressional Arts Caucus Co-Chairs, Rep. Louise Slaughter (D-NY) and Rep. Todd Russell Platts (R-PA) about federal funding for the arts, and will post on Thursday.

STIMULUS ARTS FUNDING TODAY

Current funding for the National Endowment of the Arts (NEA): $155 million

2009 Stimulus Bill
American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (aka 2009 Stimulus Bill): $787 billion

Arts portion of the Stimulus Bill: $50 million (0.006%)

• 40% for state & regional arts organizations
• 60% to arts projects competing for NEA grants

Other arts-related funding in the Stimulus Bill:

• $150 million for infrastructure repairs at the Smithsonian

What the Arts Does For America Economically (via Americans for the Arts)

• There are approximately 100,000 nonprofit arts organizations in America, which spend $63.1 billion annually.
• There are more full-time jobs (incl. accountants, designers, plumbers, union workers & engineers) supported by the nonprofit arts organizations than are in accounting, public safety officers, even lawyers and just slightly fewer than elementary school teachers.
• America’s nonprofit arts & culture industry generates $166.2 billion economic activity annually, including 5.7 million jobs, generating $29.6 billion in government revenue, of which $12.6 billion is federal revenue.

Continue reading »

Danish art group SUPERFLEX has been exacerbating the art world for over a decade with its irreverent style of questioning, which hits hard at the foundations of the West’s economic system. But unlike traditional critiques of economics that are rooted in 19th- or 20th-century ideology, SUPERFLEX is able to generate seemingly new explorations into our economic dysfunction with projects that delve deep into our contemporary consciousness and our evolving relationship with copyright, environmentalism, global consumerism, and the Internet.

Left: photo of SUPERFLEX by Nikolai Howalt (Courtesy the Artists). Right: my Skype conversation with Bjørnstjerne Christiansen

I caught up with Bjøernstjerne Christiansen, one third of the Danish art trio, over Skype (he was in São Paulo, Brazil) to discuss the group’s work and his own thoughts about the latest failures of our global economic system. This transcript has been edited with the permission of the artist.

Hrag Vartanian: Were you surprised by the recent economic crisis?

Bjøernstjerne Christiansen: No, that’s the nature of economic systems. There is always someone thinking that he or she can develop a perfect system but it never works. Systems are doomed to collapse and restart in other ways and forms. It is interesting for us to examine and challenge the systems; that’s part of our work.

Flooded McDonald’s from SUPERFLEX on Vimeo.

HV: Can you tell me about your Flooded McDonald’s film, where you recreated the interior of a McDonald’s fast food restaurant and videotaped it being flooded? I noticed that it went viral on the web. I also felt that it comments on the economic meltdown.

BC: The film is open to interpretation, so we don’t want to point to McDonald’s as evil or anything too obvious, but it very much has to do with mass consumerism and the responsibility to deal with that. We wanted to make a film that would have several outputs and interpretations. We chose McDonald’s because it is one of the major brands of globalism. Even if people never go to McDonald’s, they know how it looks, smells and works. We made a replica of a classical McDonald’s, and the associations people have with that are important.

One can go into many interpretations about this…when things go wrong or too high-speed in our global economy, where is the personal responsibility? Also, it touches on the environmental disaster that mass consumerism creates. The strange thing is that recently in Europe, McDonald’s announced it will hire 15,000 new employees; it doesn’t seem much effected by the downturn.

HV: Is the Flooded McDonald’s the first SUPERFLEX project to go viral?

BC: No, the Free Beer project went viral. It is an open-source beer; it is free in the sense of freedom, not in the sense of “free beer.” We published the recipe and branding elements of Free Beer under a Creative Commons license (attribution: ShareAlike 2.5), which means anyone can use the recipe to brew their own and make money from it, but they have to publish their changes or improvements for others to benefit from their work. It has to do with intellectual property rights and how an idea or system from one context can be applied to another via this change—normal patterns of, in this case, production and innovation. When Free Beer was created, it was on the front pages of the New York Times, BBC, etc.

SUPERFLEX, "Free Beer," 2005. Courtesy the Artists.

Free Beer is about the battle over the system of rights. This is particularly important since it impacts the issue of people taking our rights. We look at the copyright system, the patent system, and we try to challenge all those systems because they have become too much part of our society. When someone has an idea, their first reaction is to run to the patent office and trademark the name or idea and 200 variations of it so that others have difficulty working on something similar. People haven’t been challenging this system much and we think it is a dangerous thing. We are locked into this and people aren’t thinking critically about what that means and what the consequences are.

HV: How does that viral aspect impact your work? Do you plan for it now? Does it impact the production of the work?

BC: If you are the kind of artists we are, then you have the ambition that your art is going to be discussed. You don’t have to be a populist, but you are aware of the power of global media and how issues are going to be discussed. You become aware of how to talk about it. So when you send out a press release, you talk in a different way with the media than with an art gallery crowd.

You don’t have to be political but engaged, and as an individual, you should have an interest in how our society is developing. If you have something to say, then you try to get it out there.

Continue reading »

For months, I’ve been spotting countless friendly and ironic stickers popping up across the city’s art-friendly zones. These cutesy bubble-lettered slogans scream “Enjoy Subprime Lending,” “Enjoy Credit Crunch,” “Enjoy Bailout Package,” “Enjoy Golden Parachutes,” or some other economic absurdity that has become all too common in our daily newspeak.

I was very intrigued by the idea that the streets of New York are being used as an arena for economic discussion. While it’s a truism that everything is about money–and I’m really not trying to be cynical–this direct debate (as opposed to the coded one we are accustomed to) is unusual for the street, where ambiguity often reigns. It also was quite refreshing to see street art being used so cleverly to do what it does best—the institutional critique.

A few weeks after their first sticker attack appeared, the masterminds behind this economically-charged street art surfaced on Twitter and Flickr to post their thoughts and images for the world to see. After a few weeks of watching to see where this project would lead, I spotted one gate impressively plastered with the bubbly words near Houston (it was part of NYSAT). I just had to reach out to learn more about the EnjoyBanking Project, as it is known, and its reasons for sprinkling New York City with economic wisdom (or are these warnings?).

According to the organizers, “EnjoyBanking is a multimedia art + in4mation campaign responding to the changing economic landscape.”

The following interview was conducted via email with David from EnjoyBanking who, along with a few partners, runs the campaign on what he claims is “a full-time basis.“

Hrag Vartanian: Is there something specific, other than the obvious economic meltdown, that triggered the EnjoyBanking campaign?

EnjoyBanking: You are partially correct—the financial meltdown is a direct catalyst for the campaign. However, the true heart of the campaign lies in responding to an underlying cause of the collapse: misinformation. Mainstream media outlets, particularly financial news networks, exacerbated the banks’ many problems with panic-driven fear mongering. The media coverage truly inflamed what John Maynard Keynes termed “animal spirits”—a concept Bob Shiller has underscored in his insightful new book. The rampant sensationalism of the 24/7 news cycle helped network ratings but did little to inform the general public about the roots of our country’s structural economic imbalances, including over-consumption, under-investment, and declining savings. Creative education and stimulating artistic/editorial content will enhance financial literacy and restore confidence in the future of free enterprise.

HV: How many people are involved in the project?

EB: A diverse cross-section of talent from New York’s creative economy—visual artists, writers, economists, photographers, historians, musicians, and filmmakers.

HV: How have you defined the parameters of the project?

EB: Limitless.

HV: Why did you choose typography as the medium for your message?

EB: Considering the saturation of these terms in negative headlines, juxtaposing them with an exuberant aesthetic speaks to our overall ethos. Demystifying financial jargon and media sloganeering clearly lends itself to the medium.

HV: Are you at all concerned that this recent awareness about the dangers of the financial systen is only temporary? What if the economy improves and people forget the dangers of short-sighted corporatism?

EB: Not in the least bit. EnjoyBanking strives towards economic revitalization; recovery is the sine qua non of the campaign. For the economy to prosper over the long-term, it is imperative that people become more informed about, connected to, and included in intelligent production and consumption. More people being consciously active in the economy spells a healthier economic future for us all. The platform and content EnjoyBanking develops will adapt to dynamic economic conditions and cycles.

HV: What role do aesthetics play in the EnjoyBanking campaign?

EB: The campaign is a visually-driven forum that draws on all facets of art and creative media to spark enriching discourse about the economy and how it affects us all. Paul Rand’s design vision for the now famous IBM campaigns made computing more accessible to stubborn technophobes; in similar fashion, EnjoyBanking seeks to democratize and demystify a previously inaccessible and daunting subject: the economy. So, as your question implies, aesthetics clearly play a central role in the campaign.

Continue reading »

Everything old is new again, (left) a Soviet-era poster by Alexander Rodchenko, and (right) a contemporary poster by Shepard Fairey

These last two months have proved to be full of lively posts about the sometimes clear and often nebulous intersection of Art+Politics.

Art21′s own Marc Mayer kicked things off when he asked:

Is art inherently political, regardless of its intentions or motives? What role has political art played both in the history of art but also in the broader context of history? Can and will art participate in this new mandate of “change,” and if so, how?

His provocative questions allowed for a whole slew of people to chime in with their thoughts about a topic that never gets old.

As expected, there was a lot of talk about Obama (1, 2, 3, 4) and Shepard Fairey in particular, since the latter’s iconic image of the former sparked a global debate about the recent marriage of art and politics in a modern democracy.

Jenny Holzer (Season 4) was a hot topic since her retrospective PROTECT PROTECT traveled from Chicago to New York during the series. Posts focused on many aspects of Holzer’s work, but most poignantly on her deconstruction of a Pentagon PowerPoint presentation that proceeded the 2003 Iraq invasion and hand prints of U.S. soldiers accused of war crimes.

There were also enlightening discussions about:

• the use of art in the classroom during the 2008 election;
• arts programming for incarcerated girls (pt. 1, pt. 2);
• how an artist not traditionally associated with politics—Jessica Stockholder—uses beauty and taste to address political issues;
• a British perspective on art + politics in America;
• an arts group, W.A.G.E. (Working Artists and the Greater Economy), which has been advocating for collective action by arts workers;
• two perspectives from artists working in Oakland, CA;
• a blogger’s look at the “Extimasies: Art, Politics, Society in Times of Crisis” conference in Athens, Greece;
• another blogger points out “a few of the artists who exemplify the shift from an inward to an outward focus” which, she says, is part of the dawn of the new Obama era;
• one writer uses Peter Weiss’ Marat/Sade as a springboard to discuss the character of art in the political arena;
• a sneak peak at the politics of this summer’s La Biennale de Venezia;
• guest blogger Paul Schmelzer asks: Where’s All the Right-Wing Street Artists?;
• three activist artists to watch; and
• a discussion about what Obama should do with the arts and a post lauding the $50 million in arts funding in the stimulus bill that was approved by Congress…

A view of the bombed car part of Jeremy Deller's "It Is What It Is" in Philadelphia. (via the artblog)

…which brings us to our next Flash Points topic, Art+Economics.

But before we closed out this current topic, let’s take a quick look at some other noteworthy news or opinions from around the web on the always relevant and controversial topic of Art+Politics:

• The Abu Ghraib JPEGs, museums and national responsibility (Modern Art Notes);
• A Chinese art dealer whose winning bid of $40 million snagged him two 18th C. Chinese bronzes from the Yves St-Laurent estate is now regretting his foray into international politics (Bloomberg);
• A writer asks “Can Art Impact Politics?” and discusses the archetypal political painting, Pablo Picasso’s Guernica (The Oregonian);
• Another blog looks at the lasting power of Guernica (Art Threat);
• Is art being used to heal the rift between Cuba and the United States? (BBC);
• A New York art dealer thinks about how the humanities can save America (Edward Winkleman):
• Governor Bobby Jindal of Louisiana cuts state funding for the arts 83% (Culture Monster/LA Times);
• A look at the Annual Arts Advocacy day on Capitol Hill (Looking Around/Time); and
• Jeremy Deller’s It Is What It Is: Conversations About Iraq is spotted in Philadelphia (the artblog).

Next up: Art+Economics