By the early 1960s, theorists like Levi-Strauss, Lacan, Foucault, and Barthes had created a world ruled by signifying structures and pictured through the grids of language, information, and systems. Artists soon followed, turning to language and its...

Alice Aycock (b. 1946) emerged onto the New York art scene in the 1970s and is best known for her large-scale public sculptures that often combine an industrial appearance with references to weightlessness as well as to science and cosmology. Aycock...

Jackson Pollock's revolutionary 'drip paintings' put American art on the map, representing the first real break with the formal structures of European art. But it was not only his vibrant canvases that made him a celebrity during his life and a legen...

British artist Michael Landy (b. 1963) is known primarily as an installation artist. His work, along with others associated with the Young British Artists (YBAs), was first catapulted to the world spotlight when it was featured in the notorious Sensa...

Not for sale in Estonia! From its origins in the mail art movement through to its "destruction" of "The 1984 Miss General Idea Pavillion" in 1977, the Canadian collective General Idea constructed a comprehensive body of work as a performative ficti...

The contemporary art world has been challenged and invigorated by outsider art – works by self-taught practitioners who, by definition, have little to do with mainstream art production, but are nonetheless actively engaged with the visual culture of...

On October 27, 1960, art critic Pierre Restany named a group of Paris-based artists the "Nouveaux Realistes" (New Realists) in a founding declaration that stated, "The New Realists recognize their collective singularity. New Realism = new perceptual...

Founded in 1989, the influential Delhi-based artists' organization Sahmat has offered a platform for artists, writers, poets, musicians, and actors to create and present works that promote artistic freedom and secular, egalitarian values. A companion...

"Afterall", a journal of art, context, and enquiryoffers in-depth considerations of the work of contemporary artists, along with essays that broaden the context in which to understand it. Published three times a year, "Afterall" also features essays...

Mike Kelley, Paul McCarthy, and Raymond Pettibon – these Southern California artists formed a "bad boy" trifecta. Early purveyors of abject art, the trio produced work ranging from sculptures of feces to copulating stuffed animals, and gained notorie...