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Artist Tom Sachs: 'Apple Could Never Make Anything as Shitty as the Things I...
Do you want to build a rocket ship but don't have the deep pockets of Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk, and Richard Branson? You might want to turn to the Rocket Factory, "a trans-dimensional manufacturing...
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Tom Sachs: Taking NFTs Where No Man Has Gone Before
Do you want to build a rocket ship but don't have the deep pockets of Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk, and Richard Branson? You might want to turn to the Rocket Factory, "a trans-dimensional manufacturing...
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Brickbat: Candygram
In 1986, Bill Heine installed a sculpture of a 25-foot shark crashing through the roof of his home in Oxford, England, to make an anti-war, anti-nuclear statement. He did it without getting the...
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Art Curator Accuses Princeton University of 'Anti-Intellectual Surrender to...
Last December, Princeton University was slated to host an exhibition of 19th-century Jewish American artwork provided by Leonard Milberg, a Princeton alum and patron of the arts. Milberg pulled out,...
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Why Did Pandemic Authorities Treat Tattoo Shops Like Titty Bars?
"There's a huge libertarian streak that runs through the tattooing community," says Paul Smith, who co-owns Red Stag Tattoo in Austin, Texas. "Tattoos are a way of claiming yourself and putting images...
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Agnieszka Pilat: 'I Didn't Realize People Still Think Socialism Is a Good Idea.'
What sorts of paintings will be hanging in the museums of the future? Agnieszka Pilat is betting that we'll be looking at what she calls "heroic portraits of machines"—fine-art renderings of the...
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Zap Comix Were Never for Kids
In 1969, in an atmosphere of simmering animus toward youth culture, an undercover agent from the New York Police Department's Public Morals Squad visited two bookstores to buy copies of Zap No. 4....
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Landmark Shark Attack
In 1986, Bill Heine installed a sculpture of a 25-foot shark crashing through the roof of his home in Oxford, England, without getting the approval of local planning officials. His son, Magnus...
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The Dirty Pictures That Revolutionized Art
Starting in the 1960s, a maverick band of young cartoonists like Robert Crumb, Art Spiegelman, Trina Robbins, and Gilbert Shelton starting churning out comic books the likes of which had never seen...
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Brian Doherty: From MAD Magazine to Maus
Dirty Pictures: How an Underground Network of Nerds, Feminists, Misfits, Geniuses, Bikers, Potheads, Printers, Intellectuals, and Art School Rebels Revolutionized Art and Invented Comix, by Reason...
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The Ballad of Rachel Maddow, Eddie Chiles, and J.R. 'Bob' Dobbs
Next week, Alex Wagner takes over the MSNBC slot once held by Rachel Maddow, who now broadcasts only on Monday evenings. (Wagner will handle the other four nights of the week.) Let's mark the occasion...
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Artificial Intelligence Will Change Jobs—For the Better
The ramifications of advances in artificial intelligence (A.I.) are being felt further afield than anyone expected. A.I. perhaps entered the public consciousness in the 1990s thanks to chess...
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Should Free-Speech Absolutists Defend Vandalism of Precious Artwork?
A couple of climate activists caused global outrage by throwing soup at Vincent van Gogh's painting Sunflowers. Should free-speech absolutists join in? While other forms of peaceful protest are...
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Growing Up Underground With Steven Heller
As a teenager growing up in Greenwich Village in the late 1960s, Steven Heller improbably became the art director of pioneering alternative publications such as The New York Free Press, Screw...
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Steven Heller: Growing Up Underground
As a teenager growing up in Greenwich Village in the late 1960s, Steven Heller improbably became the art director of pioneering alternative publications such as The New York Free Press, the pioneering...
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Farewell to the Mother of Modern Feminist Cartooning
Aline Kominsky-Crumb, a great and trailblazing cartoonist, died this week in her home in France at age 74 from pancreatic cancer. Kominsky-Crumb grew up in Long Island, and the agonies and...
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New Movie Lists Honor Jeanne Dielman and 2001, Snub TikTok
Sight and Sound magazine has again issued two lists of the allegedly greatest films ever made—one lineup based on a poll of critics, the other on a poll of directors. At a time when movie listicles...
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Colorado's Anti-Discrimination Law Forces Artists To Echo the State's Message
Lorie Smith is a conservative Christian and a website designer who thinks she should be able to engage in her chosen occupation without compromising her moral beliefs. But that is illegal in Colorado,...
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Dwarf Fortress, the Deepest, Most Insane Computer Simulation Game Ever, Just...
For a brief, beautiful moment on Steam this week, the top-selling computer game was Dwarf Fortress. It was beating out Call of Duty: Modern Warfare II, the massively popular first-person shooter game...
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Beyoncé, Lizzo, and Taylor Swift Give In To the Speech Police
During the summer of 2022, two of the biggest pop artists, Lizzo and Beyoncé, were lambasted on Twitter by Australian activists for using the word "spaz" in their songs. "Spaz" is shorthand for...
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A College Fired a Professor for Showing a Painting of Muhammad. Now, It Could...
In December, Hamline University spurred outrage after the college fired an art history professor for showing a 14th-century painting of the prophet Muhammad in an Islamic art class. While the school...
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She Lost Her Job For Showing a Painting of Muhammad in Class. Now, She's Suing.
Hamline University, a liberal arts college in Saint Paul, Minnesota, has come under fire in recent weeks after it refused to renew the contract of an adjunct professor who had shown images of the...
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Don't Let Disney Monopolize A.I.-Generated Art
Disney and the rest of Hollywood have been eerily quiet about the launch of Stable Diffusion, despite the fact that this open-source A.I. software will happily spit out high-quality images of iconic,...
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No, the World Is Not Heading Toward 'Mass Extinction'
Have you heard? The world is about to end! 60 Minutes recently featured Paul Ehrlich, author of the bestseller, The Population Bomb. "Humanity is not sustainable," he said. Why would 60 Minutes...
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After Muslim Students Complained That an Art Exhibit Was 'Harmful,'...
Yet another Minnesota college is embroiled in a controversy after a group of Muslim students expressed outrage over "offensive" art. Last month, Macalester College—a liberal arts college just two...
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Photos Show the Transformation of Great Britain
Not so long ago, Great Britain was deemed "the sick man of Europe." The 1970s were plagued by inflation, labor union strikes, and a rise in government spending as a percent of GDP. Now, a new...
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Sex, Lies, and Social Media
Do we use social media—or does it use us? That's one of the fundamental questions posed by artist Dave Cicirelli in a series of works produced in different media—including social media, in real...
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Dave Cicirelli: Does Selfie Culture Destroy Real Individualism?
Do we use social media—or does it use us? That's one of the fundamental questions posed by artist Dave Cicirelli in a series of works produced in different media—including social media, in real...
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Copyright Is the Latest Battle in the War Over A.I.
Increasingly sophisticated artificial intelligence (A.I.) is inching further into the mainstream, and nobody is quite sure what to make of it yet. Students protested after university administrators...
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Ayn Rand Would Hate the New Spotify Video Feed
In the opening chapter of Ayn Rand's The Fountainhead, protagonist Howard Roark tries to explain to the flummoxed dean, who's kicking him out of college for his heterodox views on architecture, why...
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Feds Say A.I.-Generated Art Is Ineligible for Copyright
The U.S. Copyright Office (USCO) has issued guidance clarifying that material created solely by artificial intelligence (A.I.) cannot be copyrighted. Under the new rule, though applicants may claim a...
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What Are the Bots Doing to Art?
Millions of people are currently flocking to Amsterdam to see the works of Johannes Vermeer, a show which is sold out for its whole run. These paintings are paradigms of art, the sort of thing that...
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'It's Like Stockholm Syndrome': Gloria Álvarez Is Trying To Save Latin...
There's a socialist wave in Latin America. Mexico, Chile, Peru, Bolivia, and Brazil recently elected leftists. These politicians at least distance themselves from thugs like Hugo Chavez and Fidel...
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Stefan Sagmeister: An Artist Who Believes 'Now Is Better'
Is the world getting better? Or is it on the verge of collapse? Stefan Sagmeister emphatically believes that things are looking up, and his art exhibition "Now Is Better" showcases a bold new way to...
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'Now Is Better,' Says Legendary Designer Stefan Sagmeister
Is the world getting better? Or is it on the verge of collapse? Stefan Sagmeister emphatically believes that things are looking up, and his art exhibition "Now Is Better" showcases a bold new way to...
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Supreme Court: Andy Warhol's Prince Prints Not 'Transformative' Enough for...
The Supreme Court ruled this week on Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc. v. Goldsmith, and the decision could have a transformative effect on copyright law. The ruling was so heated, it...
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Clea Conner: America Needs More and Better Debates
In On Liberty, John Stuart Mill wrote, "he who knows only his own side of the case knows little of that." He was laying out the case for robust, good-faith, and systematic debate as essential to an...
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Peter Bagge: From Adam Smith to Punk to Grunge
Adam Smith turns 300 this week, and the July issue of Reason commemorates his life and legacy with a great set of articles by fantastic economists such as Deirdre McCloskey and Nobel Prize–winner...
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Review: Computer-Generated Art, Decades Before Midjourney
As the image-making powers of computer programs such as Midjourney startle and delight the masses, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art launches an exhibit of art made by or with computers in their...
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I Used ChatGPT To Make Pokémon Versions of Trump, Biden, and RFK Jr.
Earlier this week, I used ChatGPT and its image generator DALL-E to create Pokémon-style characters of President Joe Biden, former President Donald Trump, and independent character Robert F. Kennedy,...
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Review: Banksy's Iconic Art on Display in London
On November 21, 2023, a BBC reporter unearthed a 20-year-old interview in which the pseudonymous street artist Banksy disclosed his first name (Robbie) for the first time. The British graffiti artist...
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AI Fraud Act Could Outlaw Parodies, Political Cartoons, and More
Mixing new technology and new laws is always a fraught business, especially if the tech in question relates to communication. Lawmakers routinely propose bills that would sweep up all sorts of First...
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Robin DiAngelo Thinks The Creation of Adam Epitomizes White Supremacy
Robin DiAngelo is an author, academic, and lecturer who specializes in antiracism. Her work gained attention following the birth of the Black Lives Matter movement, and she became a celebrated speaker...
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Town Says Burger Joint's Mural Can't Show Any Burgers
Is a painting of a giant burger a sign or a mural? The answer to that question could determine whether Steve Howard can keep some half-finished burger art on the side of his restaurant or be forced to...
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Ethan Mollick: How Will AI Change Us?
"I discovered something remarkably similar to an alien co-intelligence," wrote Ethan Mollick in his new book Co-Intelligence: Living and Working with AI, describing the "sleepless nights" he...
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'AI Bullshit' Makes Poets Mad
Joanna Andreasson/DALL-E4 When the conceptual poet Lillian-Yvonne Bertram began to experiment with large language models (LLMs) in 2018, they discovered unexpected poetry inside ChatGPT-2. "The prompt...
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The Best of Reason: 'AI Bullshit' Makes Poets Mad
This week's featured article is "'AI Bullshit' Makes Poets Mad" by Leigh Stein. This audio was generated using AI trained on the voice of Katherine Mangu-Ward. Music credits: "Deep in Thought" by CTRL...
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Guernica's Recovery From Ruin
Before Mariupol, before Gaza, before Hiroshima and Nagasaki and Dresden and the Blitz, there was Guernica. The little Basque town in northern Spain was once the byword for state cruelty following the...
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