Although Ligon is famous for his text-oriented explorations of African American history, much of his recent art is like a tabloid TV show, exposing a secret world of interracial gay sex. Ligon's work, which spans several mediums, calls out the difficulties of growing up black and gay in middle-class
Gaping orifices stuffed full with skulls, orifices sprouting trees, fingers pointing towards orifices, orifices inside of which open still more orifices -- in short, an entire art of the orifice. Such is the production of Francesco Clemente, Neo-Expressionist painter and leading figure of the Italian
If Postmodernism raises low art to the level of high art, it also allows folks who control the media to cash in on subcultural trends: Rap, grunge, vogueing, whatever. Andy Warhol made a joke of it, but Keith Haring turned the tables. When this Graffiti artist lifted his brush to the walls of subways
A historian of the Swirling Surface, Foucault was not really a philosopher -- in fact, he completely rejected the concept of philosophy. His work is historiographic; he wrote histories of madness, of the medical clinic, of the modern prison, of sexuality. Yet, at the risk of angering his ghost, we mu