RELATED: Celebrated career criminal Banksy has apparently begun a monthlong residency in New York City as part of an exhibition his website is calling Better Out Than In, ”an entire show on the streets of New York.” Though the title makes reference to a work that surfaced last week in Los Angeles, the show’s first piece, pictured above, appeared today in Chinatown next to a stenciled toll-free line: 1-800-656-4271. When dialed, an automated service offers commentary on the piece in a soothingly parodic museum audioguide monotone. MORE

Photo by LAUREN LANCASTER DAZED & CONFUSED: No one captures the insanity, banality, and sheer boredom of a Christian right-wing presidential primary quite like Lauren Lancaster. Debunking the highly-polished media persona of Mitt Romney and his popular supporters, expect no less than hysterical housewives, sulky boy scouts, and a blonde distractedly picking away at something between her teeth.  Despite her former focus on nautical archaelogy and recent graduation, its no shock that Lancaster has already lensed some of the most inaccessible places on earth – Kabul, Iceland’s Westfjords – for the likes of The New Yorker and Time Magazine. In […]

  THE GUARDIAN: “Death is like going to Bloomingdale’s,” Andy Warhol once proclaimed – as benign and enjoyable as a trip to New York’s most famous clothing emporium. The revered pop artist, who would have turned 85 on Tuesday, has long since left for the great department store in the sky. But fans can now look in on Andy from anywhere in the world – because a webcam has been installed overlooking his grave. It’s been set up by the Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh, which oversees the artist’s archive and exhibits contemporary art. The new perpetual live feed is […]

  RELATED: A new exhibit created by a University of Pennsylvania professor and host of a popular public television show examines how wartime propaganda has been used to motivate oppressed populations to risk their lives for homelands that considered them second-class citizens. “Black Bodies in Propaganda: The Art of the War Poster,” opens Sunday and continues until March 2 at the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology. Lectures, film screenings and other programming will be rolled out over the course of the exhibit’s run. The exhibit’s 33 posters, dating from the Civil War to both World Wars and […]

In 1979 Utah filmmaker Trent Harris met and filmed a young Olivia Newton John impersonator named Groovin’ Gary — all feathered hair, Boogie Nights wardrobe and a disarming, ‘aw shucks’ naivete — who he filmed performing at a Salt Lake City talent show. In 1981, Harris decided to remake his documentary with a then-unknown Sean Penn in full-on Spicoli mode portraying Groovin’ Gary. For reasons unclear, he re-told the story of Groovin’ Gary a third time in 1985 with a then-unkown Crispin Glover (Back To The Future would come out later that year) as Groovin’ Gary. Combined, the three films […]

Photo by LYKKE LI Legendary multimedia artist David Lynch returns this summer with the follow-up to Crazy Clown Time, his acclaimed 2011 solo debut. THE BIG DREAM will be released July 15 in Europe on Sunday Best Recordings – the British label that signed Lynch two years ago. The album will be released the next day, July 16, in the U.S. by Sacred Bones, which will distribute THE BIG DREAM in America. The new album sees Lynch returning to primary songwriting and performance duties, writing 11 out of the album’s 12 tracks. Also included in the lineup is Lynch’s signature […]

  SALON: From 1953 to 1963 — a period that corresponds with the publication of his most celebrated works — Allen Ginsberg snapped photographs of his cohort of soon-to-be famous friends. These shots weren’t intended for exhibition; they were mementos, thrown in the back of a drawer. He unearthed them two decades later and had copies made, in the borders of which he scrawled relevant details in felt-tip pen. It is these photographs, amended with shots from the ’80s and ’90s, that are on display at New York University’s Grey Art Gallery. […] the pictures from the ’80s and ’90s greatly […]

Hitchhiker with his dog, ‘Tripper,’ on U.S. 66. Yuma County, Arizona, May 1972. (Charles O’Rear/National Archives) “Searching for the Seventies” now showing at the National Archives in D.C. (through September) showcases 90 remarkable photographs taken for a Federal photography project called Project DOCUMERICA (1971-1977) funded by, get this, the Environmental Protection Agency. To document a decade that saw the flowering of environmental consciousness — when people finally realized we’re not living on a rock but a living thing — the EPA sent a phalanx of professional photographers out across the fruited plain, following in the footsteps of the depression era […]

“Held By Nothing” by DAMENGINE

  The Philadelphia Live Arts Festival and Philly Fringe has a new name and a new secret hideout — underneath the Ben Franklin, across the street from the most-excellent Race Street Pier — and everyone’s invited! The nonprofit previously known as the Philadelphia Live Arts Festival and Philly Fringe has consolidated its name, thankfully, to FringeArts. Now you can tell your friends about it without running out of breath. (And the new name is a hell of a lot better than the even more reductive FArts.) The new Fringe digs were unveiled yesterday during a swanky press conference and pimped […]