Since the first recorded images to the pantheons of Greece and Rome to the contemporary art world's fascination with the human form, the human body has not only been a source of inspiration but also of expression for artists in all medium. The sculptures that we still admire from ancient times are just the starting point for a continued obsession with the perfection of the human musculature. That obsession was certainly the key note in the artistic development and output of photographer...

  Envy the lucky movie musical fan who found the companion book to BURLESQUE, the season's most flashy movie musical, in their Christmas stocking. This glossy tome, with an introduction by the film's diva legend Cher and a foreword by its breakout star, singer/dancer-turned-actress Christina Aguilera, is that rare example of a book that illuminates the film that it features.....something that used to be standard issue in the embrace between cinema and publishing, but is extremely rare t...

  Jazz is one of the only art forms that originated in America, although it can be argued that its influences and popularity are great overseas than in the country of its origin. For years, jazz artists who were treated poorly in their own country (spurned by the recording industry’s mainstream and and physically prevented from enjoying their success by the draconian Jim Crow laws that limited where they could eat, sleep and recreate), found creative and inspirational sola...

  In the introduction to SHIRIN NESHAT, a handsome and provocative monograph of the Iranian-American photographer and filmmaker published by Rizzoli International Publications, renowned art critic and historian Arthur C. Danto offers a Rosetta Stone translation of Neshat’s unique visual sensibility and artistic impulse. Quoting the 19th century German philosopher Hegel no less, he describes the concept of “absolute spirit”: a meditation on art, philosophy and revealed religi...

    Following short on the heels of the world premiere of Barbara Kruger’s multi-channeled video installation, “The Globe Shrinks” (2010) at Mary Boone Gallery in New York and the announcement by the Whitney Museum of American Art of an upcoming monumental site-specific piece at their proposed downtown location in the Meatpacking district, also in New York, the release in May of Rizzoli’s opulent, 300 page monograph on the work of Barbara Kruger could not be more tim...