Did you know that Ayn Rand had a theory of art? No? Neither did I! But I discovered it recently, thanks to a tip from painter Abigail Markov. It's encapsulated in the hefty 539-page treatise What Art ...

The June 2025 issue of e-flux journal “examines the shifting relationship between theory and art over the past thirty years.”1 The issue’s editorial dispenses with any demonstration of this ...

Could there be a unified theory of art? As someone who is a casual follower of the sciences and once happily attended a lecture in Boston by Stephen Hawking in which he amusingly illuminated some of ...

This is the second part of a two-part essay on conspiracy theories. The first part is here. Earlier, I looked at how “conspiracy thinking” could be made sense of in relation to a broader spectrum of ...

And anyone who has studied art theory or contemporary art is probably familiar with a masterful book he edited called The Anti Aesthetic. Put out by the Bay Press in 1983, the slim, purple, 150 page ...

I think I can remember my first ever life-drawing class in college during my foundation year of drawing theory. A bright high-ceilinged room surrounded by white-papered windows. Talking Heads were on ...

This is difficult, because I feel deeply conflicted in some ways about the Jewish Museum’s Mirroring Evil exhibition (opening March This is difficult, because I feel deeply conflicted in some ways ...