Art Here and Now
Daring creativity happening now around the world
Society > Controversy
Categories: Conceptual Art, Controversy, Featured, Galleries, Installation Art, Multidiscipline, Museums, Performance Art, PhilosophyComments Off

I’ve had friends who collected Star Wars toys and kept them in the original packaging to protect their value. This certainly protects the monetary value, but doesn’t it deprive you of getting everything out of that toy it was created for? If you want to spark your imagination, have a fun afternoon, and [...]

Categories: Controversy, Environmentalism, Featured, Government, Multidiscipline, Performance, Resources, Science, Technology, The WorldComments Off

This is a post for Blog Action Day 2009: Climate Change.
A few years ago, I wrote a post for Blog Action Day presenting ideas for creating art in more environmentally friendly ways – Making Art Without Unmaking the Environment. Art supplies and other byproducts of our work is notoriously toxic. Just like businesses [...]

Categories: Art Life, Big Business, Controversy, Economics, Marketing, PhilosophyComments Off

Most people have no idea what it takes to make good art, whether it’s music, film, painting or anything else. They don’t know how much training and study has gone into building the artist’s skills, and how much practice of that skill it took to allow them to make something, especially if it’s great. [...]

Categories: Art Life, Big Business, Controversy, Economics, Featured, Government, Philosophy, Society, The WorldComments Off

Richard Florida’s latest book, Who’s Your City?, has a lot of interesting ideas. It is a continuation of his work which started with the often quoted, celebrated and vilified Rise of the Creative Class.
In essence, the original book argues that economic greatness in any given place depends on the place’s ability to attract creative [...]

Categories: Controversy, Drawing and Illustration, Graffiti, Israel, Palestine, Public ArtComments Off

In Bethlehem, artists from all over the world, including local artists, have been making art on the barrier wall separating Israel and Palestine.
Video from the BBC:

Read more from
The Washington Times
National Public Radio

Categories: Big Business, Censorship, Cinema, ControversyComments Off

The other day, though not in the rest of the post, I linked to the New York Times story discussing that the studio had tested their own cut of Across the Universe without Julie Taymor’s knowledge. I don’t know how that turned out, but it must be mostly ok because her name is still [...]

Categories: Big Business, Censorship, Controversy, Moving Pictures, Multidiscipline, Music & SoundsComments Off

Negativland is a group that creates mash-ups of existing music, sound and video. They have been sued for this, but believe firmly that art belongs to society. They are releasing a compilation of their work, Our Favorite Things, which properly has been mashed up yet again by other artists. They started doing [...]

Categories: Controversy, Drawing and Illustration, Economics, Featured, TechnologyComments Off

I used to flip through the Artist’s Market when I was in middle school. Back then, the prices paid for illustrations from books and magazines seemed extravagant. I didn’t understand until later how little artists get paid for their time and skill.
How about $.69 per hour?
Mechanical Turk is an Amazon project which hands [...]