In his 2011 video, “Liberaceón,” Chris E. Vargas inserts radical, queer rhetoric into the arguably apolitical, high zest that was Wladziu Valentino Liberace’s life. HBO’s biopic about Liberace is headed to Cannes this month. Jacqueline Clay’s article was originally published September 5, 2011. History, like most things, is subjective. What is culled from individual accounts is accepted as fact and eventually translates into some kind[.....]

#Hashtags provides a platform for longer reconsiderations of artworks and art practices outside of the review format and in new contexts. Diogenes, founder of the School of Cynics in ancient Greece, is considered by some to be the first anarchist. Critical of society’s beliefs and structures, which he regarded as oppressive and hypocritical, he espoused a philosophy of being close to nature by living as[.....]

In contemporary U.S. culture, abstract art is difficult for many to grasp because it so completely defeats the imposition of language on art that cultural meaning falls away. If abstract art asserts meaning at all, it does so elliptically, circling around, not toward, the identifiable expression of objects, events, people, experiences, emotions, or ideas that representational art depicts. In a sense, then, abstract art is[.....]

Arts organizations in 2013 strive for more than visitors and ticket buyers. Take a look at just about any arts nonprofit’s mission statement and you’re likely to see community building, engagement, and education listed as top priorities. Public lectures and digital content production top the list of methods, but every once and a while an organization tries something more unique; here in Los Angeles, for[.....]

There are so many things to look at in a museum–but that doesn’t mean that art doesn’t exist in unplanned and accidental encounters. Today #Hashtags reprints one of our favorite essays from last year, on the topic of uncurated looking. It was miraculous to me, only because I had never seen the space behind the doors. Yet, it was shameful, as if I had seen[.....]

Watching “Five Broken Cameras” and “How to Survive a Plague”—two outstanding documentaries nominated for yesterday’s Academy Awards—it’s easy to be reminded of what a gift this kind of attention can be for the community or person being featured. Yet watching Emad Burnat’s young son Gibreel stand center stage with his own camera, filming the Docuday audience during Saturday’s question-and-answer session, it’s also hard to shake[.....]

Four days ago, a hacker named Guccifer broke into former President George W. Bush’s email account, letting loose upon the world three stolen photographs of Bush’s newest hobby, painting. Besides gravitating toward more standard fare, such as landscapes, Bush seems to have surprised art critics with two self-portraits that, in the words of Hrag Vartanian at Hyperallergic, “demonstrate to us a more inward looking Bush,[.....]