From the very beginning, Damien Hirst: The Complete Spot Paintings 1986-2011, was always going to be the target of much contempt. An embodiment of savvy self-promotion, Damien Hirst has become the world’s richest living artist, and with that, a scapegoat for the pompous market and inflated celebrity status representing all that is wrong with contemporary art today. This latest publicity stunt – a gargantuan worldwide[.....]

L.A. Expanded: Notes from the West Coast A weekly column by Catherine Wagley When essayist Geoff Dyer, whose main goal always seems to be sating his own curiosity, debuted his New York Times book column last week, he did so with a perfectly paced takedown of art historian Michael Fried. Fried famously “exposed” the melodrama of minimalism in the late 1960s, and that’s what he[.....]

L.A. Expanded: Notes from the West Coast A weekly column by Catherine Wagley “Giving a camera to Diane Arbus is like putting a live grenade in the hands of a child,” Norman Mailer infamously remarked in 1971, less than one year before Arbus died and over nine years after she snapped a photo of a scrawny blond boy who actually did have grenade in hand.[.....]

The biggest snow job in history is how high art in Western culture has largely been about ogling T&A under the guise of mythological allegory. Work by academic art stars like Bouguereau and Cabanel from the Paris Salon look like soft-core porn, and everybody knows that old master subjects like The Three Graces and The Judgement Of Paris are mostly a front for putting the[.....]

It’s the burning question floating around London’s artworld these days. The number of smug souls who have entered James Turrell’s giant sphere at Gagosian Gallery slowly grows as the days pass, while others desperately long to get inside and experience first-hand what the buzz is all about. For decades, the illustrious Californian artist has used light as his medium. His aspirations have never been modest.[.....]

Today on DS, we bring you an article from our friends at DaWire. Carla Acevedo takes a look at Dan Colen’s controversial new show at Gagosian Gallery’s 24th Street space. The most talked about and controversial show of the New York City Fall season: Dan Colen’s inaugural solo debut at Gagosian titled Poetry. Walking around Chelsea during the opening weeks of the season, it was[.....]

Through the process of documenting America’s foundation through both mythology and quotidian objects, photographer Taryn Simon reflects on the heart of national identity by capturing that which is often obscured. Her recent series An American Index of the Hidden and Unfamiliar (2007), investigates objects and scenes that are often literally and metaphorically out of visual reach by the average citizen in the United States. For[.....]