Bob Duggan
Contributing Writer
Bob Duggan has Master’s Degrees in English Literature and Education and is not afraid to use them. Born and raised in Philadelphia, PA, he has always been fascinated by art and brings an informed amateur’s eye to the conversation.
Even before Occupy Wall Street invaded the National Mall in Washington, DC, and closed down the National Air and Space Museum, Andy Warhol had already occupied several other museums for […]
“Knowledge is limited,” Albert Einstein once said, “imagination encircles the world.” A new program at the CERN physics laboratory, home to the Large Hadron Collider, takes Einstein’s words as their […]
For most people, there’s little difference between graffiti and street art. To those within that circle, however, there’s a whole world of difference—even enough to drive them to destroy the […]
Is it better to burn out, as Neil Youngsang, than to fade away? When it came to the drama of the Abstract expressionists, Jackson Pollock burned out like a supernova […]
How many times will Bob Dylan be accused of plagiarism of one kind or another? The latest accusations blowing in the wind involve not Dylan’s style or songs, but rather […]
When I searched earlier this month for exhibitions related to the 10th anniversary of the September 11th attacks, I quickly realized that I had bitten off more than I could […]
Crack open any standard text on modern art since the end of World War II and you’ll read how New York City took over as the art world capitol from […]
By the time the Persians destroyed the Roman military garrison at Dura-Europos in 256 AD, the city high above the Euphrates River existed for almost six centuries since its founding […]
Unfortunately, Facebook’s rules against certain kinds of material, specifically nudes, threaten to censor artists who depict the human body
Mention the school of Pop Art to casual art lovers and you’ll immediately get the response, “Andy Warhol.” Warhol sucks up most of the oxygen in any discussion of Pop, […]
“If you’ve just had a bad week at the office,” suggests Keith Broomfield in a recent article in The Scotsman, “then spare a thought for 19th-century artist John Everett Millais […]
I spent today, the 10th anniversary of 9/11, at a party—my niece’s ninth birthday party. Her birthday is 9/9, but there was a chance that she would have been born […]
One of my favorite post-9/11 images came from the brush of comic book artist Alex Ross. Ross’ painting of Superman looking up at crowd of first responders and saying “Wow” […]
One of my favorite post-9/11 images came from the brush of comic book artist Alex Ross. Ross’ painting of Superman looking up at crowd of first responders and saying “Wow” […]
Just a few weeks after September 11, 2001, the owner of a vacant storefront on Prince Street in Soho taped a picture of the lost World Trade Center in the […]
It seemed to me as if politicians began using the phrase “pre-9/11 thinking” too soon after the day itself. Even a decade later, Dick Cheney in his recent memoir condemns […]
On the morning of September 11th, 2001, artist Elena del Rivero was in her native Spain, far away from her second home in New York City. When the towers fell, […]
The tag line of Picture This is “Looking at art leads to thinking about life.” That idea has never been truer than during the week ahead of us.
For its central and seemingly endless role in the history of the Western world, Rome more than earns the nickname of “Eternal City.” For centuries that history has sparked the […]
In the wake of the Dr. King Memorial kerfuffle, I’ve been thinking more and more of how public art is a state of mind as much as a physical thing […]
The international summer of troubled and/or troubling public art continues and, I hope, concludes with the unveiling of the Martin Luther King, Jr. National Memorial, which was to officially take […]
The phrase “too big to fail” still rings hollowly and painfully for everyone who remembers the 2008 bailout of the reeling U.S. financial system that was termed necessary to avoid […]
His statue has stood outside the York Art Gallery for a century now, but most passersby don’t know the name of William Etty or the works that once made him […]
He made more money as a handyman than as an artist, but Vincenzo Peruggia’s personally responsible for making the Mona Lisa what it is today. Leonardo da Vinci painted Lisa […]
The recent controversy in Manila over local artist Mideo Cruz’s Kulo exhibition raises the question of how far an artist can go in terms of religious art in a religious […]
After winning the Iowa straw poll and becoming the early leader for the GOP nod for the 2012 presidential race, Michele Bachmann (shown above, on the left) might be looking […]
When sculptor Seward Johnson’s 26-foot-tall tribute to Marilyn Monroe came under public scrutiny after last month’s unveiling in Pioneer Court in Chicago, he knew there would be a blow-up of […]
Homelessness in America is hard to picture for those of us who haven’t experienced it. Statistics on homelessness, like the definitions of the term, vary, but some estimate that 3.5 […]
Bought by the MoMA in 1948, the same year it was painted, Andrew Wyeth’s Christina’s World entered the American art pantheon seemingly once it was dry. For more than half […]
In the May-June 2011 issue of the international art magazine Flash Art, performance artist Marina Abramović began a regular column titled “Marina’s Diary,” in which she plans to document her […]