Venice removed a controversial white statue of a naked boy holding a frog by US sculptor Charles Ray from the entrance of the Grand Canal on Wednesday, sparking criticism from art lovers, AFP reports. The 2.4-metre (7.8-foot) high statue, commissioned by French billionaire collector Francois… Read More
Artists, curators, critics and academics fear that the new constitution threatens censorship of the arts and culture in Egypt. “Long Live Free Art”, the rallying-call title of an exhibition that closed in Cairo on 15 January, succinctly expressed the Egyptian art world’s growing resistance to… Read More
“The original got the whole world laughing. Now artist Anish Kapoor has gone Gangnam Style — in a protest against censorship. The Turner Prize winner gathered top British artists and performers at his Camberwell studio to make a version of rapper Psy’s hit video, in… Read More
China is dominating the news this week, but the country is not just an economic power house, it also has a booming art scene way beyond media darling Ai WeiWei and all of these artists are working under enormous pressure. Here we have a documentary… Read More
I think those technology platforms [the internet and social media] constantly put the government on trial. And every event, every policy they make, people will laugh about it, and they will make fun about it. This is amazing for the younger generation. – Ai Weiwei… Read More
Chinese authorities are revoking the business license of a design company associated with famed dissident artist Ai Weiwei. A posting on the blog of legal consultant Liu Xiaoyuan said the district commercial affairs department had informed Ai WeiWei on Sunday that it was pulling the… Read More
One painting shows a peasant crucified above a hole in the shape of Romania. Another of a man holding a book is painted in the style of Pablo Picasso. Neither work would not have been displayed in public during the communist era, when censorship was… Read More
Long before Iranian cartoonist Mahmoud Shokraiyeh was sentenced to 25 lashings for drawing a parliament member in a soccer jersey, 19th-century caricaturist Honoré Daumier and his colleagues at the weekly Paris journal La Caricature endured prison sentences, fines, and litigation for their scathing portraits of… Read More
As the trial of the Russian feminist punk band Pussy Riot winds its way to a close this friday, the group’s members — Maria Alyekhina, Yekaterina Samutsevich and Nadezhda Tolokonnikova — are facing three years in prison for charges of hooliganism and incitement of religious… Read More
In one of his first on-camera interviews following his release from detention in 2011, Ai Weiwei discusses the potential for artists to express themselves online and encourages artists to be more aware of shifts in social media. This episode is filmed in Ai’s Beijing studio—where… Read More
