What accounts for the popularity of tattoos across time and multiple civilizations? They're found on all continents, save for Antarctica. Some have even been discovered on Egyptian mummies and cave dwellers frozen in the tundra.
The Moon is such a constant presence in human arts & culture, it's easy to forget it's just an accident of astrophysics that we Earthlings happen to have one, and only one.
There are times when the emotionally freighted source of a creative work is more powerful than the art it inspired. Such is the case with "Daria Martin: Tonight the World," a new installation at the Contemporary Jewish Museum.
Portraits of LGBTQ+ artists shine at Frameline this year, starting with the sparkling festival opener "Vita & Virginia," which brings erotic life and poetic license to the decade-long, lesbian love affair between two literary lights of the 20th century.
"About Things Loved: Blackness and Belonging," a small but potent academic exhibition at the Berkeley Art Museum, puts outstanding artworks by black artists from Africa and the African Diaspora center stage.
Among the cognoscenti, the 19th-century Japanese tradition of tattooing, which emerged during the late Edo era, is considered the best, prized for its detail, complexity, and subtle shifts in vibrant hues and sophisticated compositions.
"Andy Warhol — From A to B and Back Again" is a wide-ranging retrospective of 40 years of prodigious output from the influential gay artist, now at SFMOMA.
"You cannot reach the end (or get to the bottom) of Warhol," Whitney Museum curator Donna De Salvo recently commented. Some visitors to "Andy Warhol — From A to B and Back Again" may feel the same.
The legacy of European colonialism, its damage to indigenous populations in the Caribbean, and its lingering wounds and influence inform "Coffee, Rhum, Sugar & Gold: A Postcolonial Paradox," a new exhibition with an intriguingly original premise.
In "With (out) With (in) the very moment," a small new exhibition at the San Francisco Arts Commission Main Gallery, a group of San Francisco-based artists muse on leading a thriving creative life in the shadow of AIDS.
There couldn't be a better moment than this for "Queer California: Untold Stories," an original exhibition at OMCA that wears its inclusive spirit proudly on its sleeve as it brings facets of LGBTQ+ cultural, artistic and political history to light.
