For all the would-be burners out there who were unable to snag a $475-ticket to this year’s festival—yes, the 40-second window didn’t work for most—this DART page is devoted to the phenomenon known as Burning Man. Since 1986, revelers from far and wide have trekked to the temporarily constructed Black Rock City, located in Black Rock Desert, for a week of art, music, dancing, … Read the full Story >>
Ai Weiwei, the most visible and outspoken Chinese artist of our time, was detained by the Chinese government on April 3rd. The official reasons given are vague and Mr. Ai remains missing. The artist was to have been in New York yesterday for the unveiling of his installation of Circle of Animals/Zodiac Heads at the Pulitzer Fountain on Fifth Avenue and 59th Street. Due … Read the full Story >>
Nick Cave’s Soundsuits—those larger-than-life kinetic wearable sculptures—are so furred, feathered and tinseled that viewers want to get up and dance. Colorful and festive to look at, they have been translated into a 360-plus-foot-long mural in glass mosaic plus video. Now the largest mosaic in the NYC transit system, commissioned by MTA Arts & Design, they occupy the long tunnel that joins the Bryant Park and the … Read the full Story >>
Award-winning graphic novelist Peter Kuper combines his appreciation of classic architecture with a lifelong fascination with insects in the new exhibition INterSECTS: Where Arthropods and Homo Sapiens Meet, opening January 14, 2022 in the third-floor Stokes Gallery of The New York Public Library’s Stephen A. Schwarzman Building on Fifth Avenue and 42nd Street. Kuper, a longtime DART subscriber and collaborator, met me by … Read the full Story >>
Melvin Dismukes keeps a .38 caliber handgun around. He doesn't know where it is, exactly, because he has other weapons available. He worries about people looking for revenge. In 1967, Dismukes, a black man, was a private security guard called to work during racially charged rioting that shook the city. He became embroiled in what came to be called the Algiers Motel Incident, when … Read the full Story >>
In an interview for It’s Nice That, Christoph Niemann (1970) said, “A drawing is like when you describe something to a reader in three sentences.” In a few words, the artist/author/animator, who mainly works from Berlin, captured the essence of what is illustration at its best. On Thursday, February 29, he will be in New York for an exhibition of his Photo Graphics at Janet … Read the full Story >>
The past year saw a number of significant developments - in photographic technology, certainly, but also in the worlds of publishing and fine art. This fall PPD noted that Mark Zuckerberg's Meta unveiled its first pair of augmented reality (AR) glasses, called Orion, which, Zuckerberg predicted, would at last jump start the metaverse. Meanwhile, Apple's new iOS18.1 featured AI capabilities that the company hoped … Read the full Story >>
Tonight, noted writer, critic and curator, Vince Aletti, will be in conversation with graphic designer Ruth Ansell and creative director Sam Shadid about his latest book, ISSUES: A History of Photography in Fashion Magazines, at The Cooper Union. He recently conducted this exclusive interview for DART by email. Above: Spread from the April 1965 issue of Harpers Bazaar; photos © Richard Avedon Peggy Roalf: … Read the full Story >>
How many pictures do you look at each day? How many make you wonder about the beauty and fragility of life? Consider New Zealand-based photographer Sarah Simmons's photograph of a newborn named Tiger. His twin, named Johnny, had died in utero, but Tiger's mother wanted to go ahead with the portrait session she'd booked with Simmons. The photographer shot Tiger wrapped in a cloth … Read the full Story >>
Leading the photo news this week was the death of Dutch photojournalist Jeroen Oerlemans, 45, who was killed in Surt, Libya, on October 2 while on assignment for the Belgian magazine Knack and other publications. Oerlemans was reportedly shot in the chest while covering a battle between pro-government forces and ISIS. This week we also reported that two photographers, Laura Pannack and David Ryle, … Read the full Story >>
Brooklyn-based music and performing arts photographer Dan Robinson recently wrapped work on a documentary short film that follows UK-based singer-songwriter Samm Henshaw through his debut album and world tour "Untidy Soul." Says Robinson: My work lives in a middle ground of true-to-life, raw, documentary-style imagery but has a refined commercial touch to it. I like using mixed media and textural elements in my work. … Read the full Story >>
Ward Schumaker, a San Francisco-based artist known for the iconic illustrations he's created for books and magazines, has recently been making one-of-a-kind hand painted books. Encouraged by his wife, artist Vivienne Flesher, he has devoted much of his time over the last five years to this pursuit. In an email interview, Ward talked about the art and process of making books - and … Read the full Story >>
By now you may have already seen it: On Monday, HBO's Vice News aired a 22-minute documentary providing a disturbing behind-the-scenes look at last weekend's rally of white supremacists in Charlottesville, Virginia, where a counter-protester, Heather Heyer, was killed. Footage from the video, featuring white supremacists chanting phrases like "Jews will not replace us," was also shown widely on cable and network news coverage … Read the full Story >>
Was it a case of petty retaliation or legal intimidation? Or both? This week we learned that CBS Broadcasting Inc. filed a lawsuit against photographer Jon Tannen for allegedly posting images from a television show on social media. The complaint, noted PDN, appears to be an attempt to retaliate against Tannen for trying to protect his own copyright; in February, Tannen, a New York … Read the full Story >>
Peggy Roaf: When did you realize that you had the ‘artist gene,’ and what caused you choose illustration? Francesco Ciccolella: I’ve been drawing and painting ever since I can remember. I grew up speaking German to my mom and Italian to my dad so switching between languages has always felt sort of natural to me. At some point, perhaps during my graphic design studies, … Read the full Story >>
The DART Summer Invitational, Pimp Your Sketchbook, continues with West Coast artist Malado Baldwin’s epic sketchbook projects. Grenoble self-portrait with African masks, Modigliani, 1995 / 2015. On view at Hackett Mill Gallery, San Francisco: August 23rd- October 19th 2018. Looking back, I’ve been working with the sketchbook format for more than twenty-five years. As a teenager, sketchbooks were a sacred, private place to reflect … Read the full Story >>
As an art school student at Cooper Union during the pre-digital era, I was given a twin-lens reflex camera to play around with. It was medium format and simple to use. One crisp autumn day I spooled in a roll of 120 Tri-X and headed to Washington Square Park. The camera didn’t have a light meter—and neither did I. All I knew about picture-making … Read the full Story >>
Peggy Roalf: Which came first, the pen or the brush? Veronica Miller Jamison: I love this question. Right now, for me, the brush comes first. I love putting down large strokes of color and the challenge of communicating objects with just a few passes of the brush. The way color behaves as you move the brush from one side of the page to the … Read the full Story >>
There's hardly anything more stately than a fabulous residence photographed by a great architectural photographer. Think of Julius Schulman's photographs of the Kaufmann Desert House designed by Richard Neutra in Palm Springs; or Todd Eberle's shots of Mitch Glazer & Kelly Lynch's equally grand house in the Hollywood Hills, designed by John Lautner. Anyone who enviously pours over the "Home" section of the … Read the full Story >>
The online world erupted yesterday when Vanity Fair released the cover of its new issue, featuring a portrait of Caitlyn Jenner, the former Bruce Jenner, shot by Annie Leibovitz. From BuzzFeed to the Wall Street Journal, the story of the day was the VF cover. The Huffington Post topped its front page with the cover and a single-word headline: "Herstory." Aside from Jenner's story … Read the full Story >>
