Art Papers

The Far-off Elsewhere Exhibiting Pan-Africanism Text / Re’al Christian Paul Mpagi Sepuya, Daylight Studio, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, © Paul Mpagi Sepuya, image courtesy of the artist, Bortolami Gallery, New York, DOCUMENT, Chicago, Galerie Peter Kilchmann, Paris & Zurich, and Vielmetter Los Angeles Share: Look at the creole garden, you put all species on such a little lick of land: avocados, lemons, yams, sugarcanes … plus thirty or forty other species on this bit of land that doesn’t...

Leaving a legacy isn’t optional. We’re doing it every single day. —Alua Arthur, from her TED Talk “Why thinking about death helps you live a better life” This special issue of ART PAPERS is the synthesis and culmination of a three-year project, initiated in response to fatal budget shortfalls, to extend the life of the organization for a period that would allow for a dignified end.

This text initially appeared in ART PAPERS September / October 1998 Vol. 22.05 How can something as full and complete as a motion picture be regarded as a sketch, a form which by definition suggests incompleteness?

This text initially appeared in ART PAPERS September / October 1998 Vol. 22.05 “It was a bad film. I had learned to explore, but had not learned to reveal.” -Robert Flaherty, on his first, unsuccessful documentary “Art isn’t about providing answers, is it? It’s more about questions-asking thought-provoking, unexpected, unarticulated questions.” -Paul Graham, photographer Film history orbits around a potent anecdote.

Filmmakers Painting The Case of Jean-Luc Godard Text / Sally Shafto Jean-Luc Godard © SIPA PRESS Share: This text initially appeared in ART PAPERS September / October 1998 Vol. 22.05 “The best stimulant, the best model, is always and again painting, painting- the paradigm for solitary art making; the painter-the paradigm for creation.” – Jacques Aumont, L’Oeil interminable In recent years there has been much discussion of the influence of painting on the art of cinema.

Tools for Carving Away Mel Chin’s Revival Field and the Role of the Artist in Public Practice Text / Heather Bird Harris Mel Chin, Revival Field MN, Thlaspi Specimen, 1993 Share: I think the most important motivation as an artist is to use what James Baldwin has described as extracting the question that is buried within the answer. If the answer is, “The world will be inundated and destroyed by our own doings,” then what is the question that we have to ask now? In 1990, Mel Chin had an idea.

Monsters in the closet Learning to love David Altmejd's werewolves Text / David Velasco David Altmejd, The Lovers, installation detail, 2004 [courtesy of the artist and Andrea Rosen Gallery] Share: This text initially appeared in ART PAPERS July / August 2005 Vol. 29 Iss. 4 David Altmejd: I am really not interested in gore. What I make has to be positive and seductive. Instead of rotting, the characters in my work are crystallizing.

Organic Phenomena Bret Wood unearths David Lynch's Deepening Mysteries Text / Brett Wood “olhos de david lynch, 2008” by gabriel_marchi is licensed under CC BY 2.0. This image is a slightly cropped version of the original. Share: This text initially appeared in ART PAPERS September / October 1998 Vol. 22 Iss.

Shining, Appy ‘People’—Silvia Park’s Luminous Transpositions Text / Edward Austin Hall Share: Cover Image: Silvia Park, Luminous (Simon and Schuster) 2025 Decades ago, after realizing that the most poetic titles in the Western canon stem from the King James Version of the bible, many of them from Ecclesiastes, I read from that book of the Old Testament and discovered there a passage that I found jaw-droppingly unexpected: according to his circuits (Eccl. 1:6).

Last Year: 2025 –> 2026 Share: Two years ago, facing cataclysmic funding shortages, Art Papers launched Fire Ecology, an experimental, 3-year project to bring the organization to a gradual and controlled conclusion in 2026. Fire Ecology was always meant as an invitation to rethink and rework established structures so that they might better meet the needs of the communities they are meant to serve.