The great American singer Aretha Franklin died at the age of 76 on August 16, the same day my appointment as interim editor of BURNAWAY was announced. One of the first people I thought of after hearing the news of Franklin’s death was Atlanta artist Paul Stephen Benjamin, who used footage of the singer’s 1977 performance…
Then Achilles, in tears, moved far away from his companions, and sat down on the shore, and gazed out over the wine-dark sea. (Iliad, 1. 351-353, trans. Stephen Mitchell) What color is the sea? Perhaps a silver-pewter at dawn, or a deep blue, or a warm green-blue, depending on the particular day, depth, and geographic…
With a population of around 90,000, Asheville, North Carolina, is a large town rapidly turning into a small city. Over recent years, it has been optimistically dubbed (or self-dubbed) “Beer City,” “Craft City,” “Climate City,” “Foodtopia,” and most charmingly “the Paris of the South.” Lonely Planet and Forbes have both designated the Blue Ridge Mountain…
Our new column “Theory Decoded” looks at art theory and aesthetics across a spectrum ranging from the ancient to the contemporary, and from the well-known to the obscure and overlooked. Each column decodes a particular theory or theorist in contemporary terms, using as little headache-inducing jargon as possible. If your first response to an artwork…
Located in the heart of downtown, Athens’s newest space to view contemporary artwork is actually two distinct galleries, Tif Sigfrids and Howard’s. Though it’s fairly uncommon for more than one gallery to occupy the same physical space, at least in this neck of the woods, the arrangement allows for gallery owners Tif Sigfrids and Ridley…
Poet and “Army brat” Ann Fisher-Wirth spent her childhood in Washington D.C., Germany, Pennsylvania, Japan and California, but her new collaborative book with photographer Maude Schuyler Clay gives the appearance that she was born and raised in Mississippi. Each of her 47 poems – all of which explore connections between Mississippians, the environment and home…
Driving into Montgomery for my first visit since moving away from Alabama over a decade ago, I was struck by how wide and empty the streets were, the number of buildings with peeling paint and For Rent signs browning in the window, and the plethora of ornate plaques marking pivotal moments in our nation’s Civil…
PBS revamps the 1969 BBC art history series “Civilisation” to make way for a post-modern audience.
Heffernans recent book extolls the virtues of the Internet as a form of art-making. Our reviewer considers it the latest iteration of our urge towards rapture, and asks whether our cocooned online existence advances this search or just numbs us to the pain of its continued failure.
Conyers-based artist Saige Rowe performs in vibrant, texturally rich videos shown in exhibitions in Atlanta and New York.
In Magic and Loss: The Internet as Art, Virginia Heffernan does for the Internet what Susan Sontag did for photography, Arthur Danto did for painting, and Lester Bangs did for rock music. In this important new book, Heffernan aims to build a complete aesthetics—and poetics—of the Internet, and knocks it out of the park. She…
In response to our review of “Trumped Up” at Gallery Luperca, the exhibition curator e-mailed the author, Erica Ciccarone, taking her to task on a number of points. She thought his comments were insightful and well-stated, and suggested he publish it as a Letter to the Editor. BURNAWAY offers Robert Scobey’s letter, with his permission, as…
