Visual Art

Matthew Anthony Stokes
Film, Visual Art

Visual Poems, Silent Dances of the Maquette Theatre

Matthew Anthony Stokes solo show Camouflage opened in Los Angeles, which illustrates his unique multi-disciplinary background in performance, corporeal dramaturgy, dance, sculpture, assemblage, film, photography, and poetry. Multiple videos from the experimental MAQUETTE Theatre, which he co-founded, create a visionary alternative universe replete with silent dances and visual poems that “unveil” ephemeral sculpture, including costumes, sets and masks.

Francisco Forero Bonell, Colombian rock art
International Issues, Visual Art

Colombia: Stunning Indigenous Rock Art from Amazonia

Prehistoric paintings on vertical rock faces in an Amazonian wilderness in Colombia were recently photographed and filmed for western eyes. The pretense of this British filmmaker as the “discoverer” of the paintings is of course ludicrous. The once populous Karijona Tribe most likely painted these masterpieces, and continue to live uncontacted in the vast rainforest, and anthropologists and explorers have studied the region for hundreds of years.

Lauren Monroe Jr. artist, Blackfeet Tribe
Sustainability, Urban Art, Visual Art

Geo-Fauvism: Waking to the Wild Earth Through Visual Art

This is the first post in a series where I present the case for Geo-Fauvism, a growing movement of wild earth inspiration in art, literature, music and design. Taking off from the early 20th Century French art “Fauvists” or “Wild Beasts,” these cross-disciplinary creations respond to and react against the collapse of global environmental systems, the destruction of indigenous earth-based societies, and a narrowing of cultural opportunities in the mainstream corporatized media. Geo-Fauvists create to reconnect with the wild and heal humanity’s rift with the landscape, building a new community based on integration with the ecosystem.

Max Ernst, Dada, The Chinese Nightingale
Film, Visual Art

Dada as the Antidote to War and Capitalism

In the sobering aftermath of World War I in Zurich, Dada preached a radical-yet-whimsical philosophy of creativity, a self-styled anti-art. Random and meaningless by definition, calculatedly irrational by design, for a short time the movement spread like revolt to the US and across Europe, voicing the bizarre protest of a brave new community of artists and writers.

Matthias Grunewald, Isenheim Altarpiece
Sound, Visual Art

German Composer’s Paean to a Healing Work of Renaissance Art

One of the 20th Century’s most influential composers, Paul Hindemith created the neo-classical-folk-inspired symphony Mathis der Maler, based on the life of the mysterious 16th Century painter Matthias Grunewald, whose masterpiece associated Saint Anthony and the Virgin Mary with the miraculous cure of the epidemic skin disease called St. Anthony’s Fire.