In 1991, Matthew Barney exploded onto the New York art scene with all the force of his often insanely physical videos. Just eight years later, a New York Times article dared to crown him "the most important artist of his generation." The occasion was the release of "Cremaster," one of a cycle of five

Epic, Perverse, Quirky, Surreal

Olia Lialina is a brazen new voice whose emergence is owed to the World Wide Web. An artist and polemicist, she is seemingly everywhere in on- and offline discussions concerning the development of Internet art, or as she calls it, "net.art." From her home base in Moscow (Lialina is Russian-born), she

Melancholy, Net art, Political, Quirky, Rebel, Technology

David Lynch has been charged with making incomprehensible films. In fact, they make perfect sense, but not necessarily to us. An exemplary scene in "Fire Walk with Me" (1992) shows this: Two investigators are to receive their assignment from a very odd-looking woman named Lil. What they receive from

Anxiety, Dreamy, Enigmatic, Hallucinatory, Perverse, Quirky, Surreal, Surrealist film

Slinky, kinky, and plastic. These are the descriptors that Joe Colombo's version of a utopian space-age future calls to mind. In the 1960s, sci-fi fantasies gave rise to molded curves, tubular furniture, and synthetic fabrics. The Italians and Scandinavians were at the forefront of the design revolut

Fantastic, Playful, Pop/surrealism/anti-design, Quirky, Round