
Free Speech in the Art World
By Dushko PetrovichWhile it is impossible to take up every aspect of free speech in the art world, these texts—in both form and content—address some of the basic questions that surround this question today.
More »The Constitution protects our right to free speech, but its exercise is another matter entirely. In every direction, we are surrounded by varieties of speech that are decidedly unfree: advertising, self-censorship, pandering, cliché, euphemism, forced confessions, and on and on. Indeed, studying the sundry genres of unfree speech would be one way to approach the topic—to delineate, by process of elimination, a zone where speech was actually free.
The art world purports to be such a zone. One possible definition of art would be expression that attains a condition of freedom. The fact that the art world promises—however disingenuously—to be a space that preserves and elevates such expression makes it a space worthy of both vigilant protection and thoroughgoing investigation.
While it is impossible to take up every aspect of free speech in the art world, these texts—in both form and content—address some of the basic questions that surround this issue today. Having established and mostly maintained the right to free speech, we still have to work constantly toward its achievement, and I hope this publication helps pull in that direction. —Dushko Petrovich
While it is impossible to take up every aspect of free speech in the art world, these texts—in both form and content—address some of the basic questions that surround this question today.
More »Artforum is probably the best art magazine but it’s depressing that it’s gotten so bad and close to the others.
More »Why, in the absence of censorship, do we use our so-called freedoms largely to reproduce existing structures of oppression?
More »The Masses was founded as “a magazine whose final policy is to do as it pleases and conciliate nobody, not even its readers”.
More »I imagined that the fact that I was subject to economic realities was my failure and not the failure of larger systems of economic relations.
More »I loved magazines: their feel and scent, their full-bleed color photos and ultra-modern typefaces that could absorb me for hours.
More »If magazines are a resource, then we should expect certain things from them, and we should read them and discuss them and care about them.
More »People still want to experience and participate in dialogue in person, just like how they want to see art in person or watch a band perform live.
More »In March, Dushko Petrovich asked Martha Rosler a question on her Facebook wall, referring to a late-evening conversation in a bar from last December.
More »Representations of Contemporary Art of Iran from The Guardian to Facebook
More »The shift to sustainable culture is possible, but implementing the necessary changes cannot fall to individuals and the marketplace alone.
More »The contributions to this issue consider production and process, reveal cultural breadth, conceptual range, and possibilities of making, using, and thinking through textiles.
Guillermo Gómez-Peña asks, “Why are so many artists afraid of hard-core critique? Because our egos are frail?”
The twenty-one shotgun reviews by new and returning contributors collected here offer thoughtful impressions of fall and late summer exhibitions in the Bay Area, launching us into another exciting year of critical and engaging dialogue.