Touko Valio Laaksonen (8 May 1920 – 7 November 1991), known by the pseudonym Tom of Finland, was a Finnish artist who made stylized highly masculinized erotic art, and influenced late 20th-century gay culture. He has been called the "most influential creator of gay pornographic images" by cultural historian Joseph W.
Pablo Picasso painted Guernica in just five weeks in the spring of 1937.
Then living in Paris, Picasso, fifty-five, was already well-known. Born in Spain in 1881, he went to Paris in 1900; he had visited Spain in 1934 but would never return.
Creative Graffiti at the Urban Culture Festival in Germany
By Loredana Loy
A street art project by by KD Key Detail from Minsk, Belarus--created and featured at the IBUg 2013 Urban Culture Festival in Zwickau, Germany.
The project is entitled "Bon Appetit." Images speak louder than words. Links and photos below.
"An atmosphere of fear and anger spread across Myanmar this week as millions of people awoke to find out the military had taken control, ousting the elected government.
But how do you fight back in a country where protests have been violently suppressed before?
For some, it has meant putting pen to paper and taking the battle online.
A coalition of more than twenty national arts funders has launched an emergency relief fund that will provide millions of dollars to artists struggling financially in the wake of the COVID-19 outbreak in the United States, which has more than 400,000 confirmed cases of the virus. The Andrew W.
In Tunisia, a country gripped by economic uncertainty and still in the midst of rebuilding its identity after the Arab Spring, hip-hop culture is viewed as part of an ongoing dissident movement. Just a few events, such as the recent Mafia Wallitili Festival in the heart of downtown Tunis, offer the local hip-hop community an opportunity to share their values with the broader population.
Kanami Kusakima, also known as the woman who dances in Washington Square Park with the long black hair and the paint, was happy to allow the Mayor's Office of NYC use her image as a promotional tool for a "post-coivd" New York. Yet, she has had multiple encounters with police who want to shut her performance down.
Ghostbikes.org is intended to be a site for the worldwide cycling
community where those lost on dangerous streets can
be remembered by their loved ones, members of their local communities,
and others from around the world. They also hope to inspire more people to
start installing ghost bikes in their communities and to initiate
changes that will make us all safer on the streets.
Two artists have repurposed the presidential candidate’s campaign bus in order to critique his controversial views.
In October 2015, the artists David Gleeson and Mary Mihelic purchased a Donald Trump tour bus on Craigslist.
Add Colour (Refugee Boat) begins as an all-white boat in an all-white room. Ono’s instruction for this collective, participatory work reads: ‘Just blue like the ocean.’ You are invited to contribute your hopes and beliefs in blue and white.
The book bloc constitutes a line of demonstrators holding cardboard-polyurethane-and-foam shields that are made to resemble giant book covers. This tactic tends to be used in actions that oppose neoliberal reform of education and libraries, especially in the form of austerity measures.
Marcel Duchamp, father of the readymade, forced the world to consider mundane things as significant objects, worthy of greater-than-average contemplation — yet his bicycle wheel, shovel, and urinal didn’t come freighted with all that much history.
The Guerilla Girls are a group of feminist activist artists, who use facts, humor, and outrageous visuals to expose gender and ethnic bias and corruption in politics, art, film, and pop culture in their artworks. In 1989, they designed this billboard for the Public Art Fund (PAF) in New York, aimed to criticize the museum institutions for under-representing female artists and objectifying women.
Creative activism and the remaking of Palestine
While policy wonks and media pundits wallow in endless debates about Jewish settlements and the threat of terror, Palestinian groups are creatively exploring alternative ways to realise their national aspirations.
Chanel Miller is a Palo Alto–born artist and writer. She first came into the public eye as “Emily Doe,” the victim of a 2015 Stanford University sexual assault whose impact statement presented in court went viral. Miller relinquished her anonymity in 2019, when she published the acclaimed memoir, “Know My Name.” "I was, I am, I will be" is Miller’s first commissioned artwork for a museum and is on view through February 2022.
Asian Americans standing up for themselves, the Black Lives Matter movement, and their home: New York City
In 2020, as COVID-19 flared through New York City and NYC hospitals saw a spike of nearly 200,000 patients, Asian and Pacific Islanders (APIs) faced an added threat: blame, racism, and xenophobia.
By Andrea Long-Chavez
The recognizable figure of a Latino gardener is a common sight for most Southern California locals. But if you happen to see the cardboard painting of a gardener propped up against a chain link fence or hedge, chances are you’ve just seen the public art of Los Angeles-based artist Rarmio Gomez, Jr.
In 2016 an eye-catching sparrow was spotted in Scotland. The bird had ingested feed pellets from a nearby salmon farm, turning its feathers pink. Cramped in underwater feedlots, farmed salmon have no access to the prey that colour their flesh in the wild. Instead, they are fed artificial colourants mixed with supplements, drugs, and hormones, causing them to relentlessly produce the additive-filled flesh that fills supermarket shelves.
Decades of institutional corruption, elitist exploitation, and social abuses have been sewn into the political fabric of Iran’s dictatorial Islamic republic and have moulded Kermanshah-born fine art painter Nicky Nodoumi’s satirical motifs.
“So dramatic, so strong, so visual,” artist Stéphan Gladieu said of his first encounter with the revival of an ancestral folk art movement in Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of Congo. Kinshasa is the capital of Congo but also one of the many places American and European countries send their waste.
"Myanmar has been engulfed in protest since February 1, when Burmese army general Min Aung Hlaing seized control of the government in a military coup, refusing to accept to the landslide election victory of the National League for Democracy and its leader, Aung San Suu Kyi.
Doris Salcedo talked extensively with victims of the violence in Colombia. For the project titled Unland she spoke specifically with children who had witnessed the murder of their parents. This piece was a poetic response and representation of their testimony. Salcedo combined halves of tables together to make a whole. In the seam where the tables joined Salcedo meticulously sewed the tables together using white silk thread, dark hair and bone.
LOS ANGELES--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Activist and Academy-Award winning actress Susan Sarandon and Grammy, Emmy, and Tony Award-winning and Academy-Award nominated actress Cynthia Erivo starred in a new public service announcement (PSA) during the Oscars titled “Power to the Patients” which focuses on increasing awareness that hospital prices are now a patient’s right prior to receiving care.
In July 2015, the Empire State Building's famous light displays were used to draw attention endangered wildlife. Along with Cecil, whose death has sparked international outrage, a snow leopard, tigers, lemurs, and various snakes, birds and sea creatures were projected onto the building.