Arts

On May 9, 1974 the Pennsylvania Gazette published an editorial regarding the lack of unity in the colonies. The author, Benjamin Franklin, also provided a woodcut drawing of a snake cut into eight initialed parts (one for each colonial government) with the text “Join, or Die” underneath. The article’s politics were ignored, but the drawing lived on, with modifications, to become a rallying point for different political causes.

In the 1970s German artist Joseph Beuys, famous for his public performances and theories on art, politics, and society, developed the term Social Sculpture. The term, which became monumentally influential and continues to simmer in both the high and low art worlds alike, investigates “how we mold and shape the world in which we live” and led to the equally famous saying, “Everyone an Artist.” For a week in 1974, Beuys performed I Like America and America Likes Me by staying in a New York City gallery with a live coyote—it was his symbolic effort to repair the damage done to Native Americans.

Rock the Bells is a funny and quite often frightening account of concert promoter Chang Weisberg’s attempt to reunite all nine original members of the Wu-Tang Clan for the 2005 “Rock the Bells” hip hop festival—a show that would be Ol’ Dirty Bastard’s last before his death less than six months later. It’s a skillfully paced doc that slowly builds to an almost-harrowing conclusion as the promoters and fans wait for the group’s troubled wildcard, ODB, to complete the reunion. “It’s planning a wedding, and you hope the groom shows up,” Weisberg comments, but he is seriously understating the situation.

Showing in the main room of New York’s Proposition Gallery until April 12 is Gothic Intrusion, a group show headlined by Chinese artist Huang Yan’s Skulls, a collection of intricate floral patterns and traditional Chinese landscapes painted directly onto human skulls. The image of the skull is echoed in a series of drawings by Alfredo Martinez, and complimented by industrial/architectural work by Jason Gringler.

Celebrating their second annual community celebration is the di Rosa Preserve and Art Gallery. Nestled in the heart of the Napa Valley wine country, the preserve houses an extensive collection of the bay area’s finest artistic offerings. The grounds will be opened for visitors to enjoy a day of art and nature.

Opening March 15th at the Acuna-Hansen gallery in Los Angeles is the debut exhibit from bay area artist Shashana Chittle, Humaneyes. Grounded in Buddist mantras and karmic ties to George Harrison, Chittle fuses movement, mathematics, and metaphysics into the fabric of her work.

The New York Times recently published an online interactive tour of this year’s Whitney Biennial art exhibit. The exhibit takes place in more than three floors and is documented here in 360-degree panoramic photos, exhibit maps, and audio by Holland Cotter, an art critic for The Times.

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Books routinely fall out of vogue and slip out of print. Non-fiction books are especially vulnerable, discarded when their subjects lose popularity or when more updated information becomes available. Regardless of the innovation, mastery, or irreproducibility of their stories, these books are doomed to obscurity in labyrinthine secondhand bookstores or among the dusty, stamped stacks of libraries. When Prophecy Fails is one of these books.

There’s no need to travel to see great Japanese artists when you can find them right in your city. That’s what co-author Eric C. Shiner discovered when the Japan Society asked him to put together an exhibit. Making a Home, based on the exhibit for the Japan Society’s centennial, flaunts the artwork of 33 Japanese-born contemporary artists living in New York. Each artist has a section containing an article and photographs on his/her work and interview excerpts.