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Bob Duggan
Contributing Writer
Bob Duggan has Master’s Degrees in English Literature and Education and is not afraid to use them. Born and raised in Philadelphia, PA, he has always been fascinated by art and brings an informed amateur’s eye to the conversation.
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“Telling the history of art without the history of gay people is like telling the history of slavery without mentioning black people,” says David C. Ward, curator of Hide/Seek: Difference […]
On November 7th, Pope Benedict XVIconsecratedAntoni Gaudí’s weirdly wonderful masterpiece of religious architecture, the Sagrada Família (shown above). The Catholic Church tends to distrust anything modern these days, so seeing it […]
“I’ll be your mirror,” The Velvet Underground sang in the song of the same name, “Reflect what you are, in case you don’t know.” In The Moment of Caravaggio, Michael […]
It’s a sad fact of human history that the leadership regime most obsessed with art belonged to that of the Nazis. From Adolf Hitler the frustrated painter to obsessive collectors […]
For most art history students, the days of Dadaism and Surrealism seem like ancient history—two “-isms” buried beneath the quick succession of newer and newer “-isms” reigning ever since. Illustrator […]
Apparently you can teach some old dogs new tricks. In a piece by Digital Planet producer Colin Grant, artist David Hockney discusses his love affair with his iPhone and iPad […]
When Daedalus crafted wings of feathers and wax for his son Icarus, he included the warning to not fly too close to the sun. As anyone who knows Greek mythology […]
Any list of the most photographed people in history certainly has to include Marilyn Monroe. Just when you think we’ve seen every possible image of the iconic starlet, a new […]
In late August 1893, painter Paul Gauguin returned to Paris after spending the previous few years in Tahiti, the Polynesian paradise that propelled his art to a whole new level. […]
FDR's words about nothing to fear but fear itself proved anything but prophetic for comic book censors a decade later.
Buzz Bissinger titled his profile of then-Mayor of Philadelphia Ed Rendell’s efforts to save his city from the brink of fiscal disaster, A Prayer for the City. Philadelphia, my native […]
“Though this be madness, yet there is method in’t,” Polonius says in Act 2 of Shakespeare’s Hamlet after an exchange with the title character. After encountering the unique sculpture of […]
“I’m the plainest kind of fellow you can find,” painter Grant Wood told an interviewer in the 1930s, the height of his fame. “There isn’t a single thing I’ve done, […]
Art is good for the soul, but sometimes it can be bad for your health. Chinese artist Ai Weiwei’s Sunflower Seeds installation at the Tate Modern in London aroused curiosity […]
Until she was 10 years old, performance artist Marina Abramović believed her parents when they told her that her birthday was November 29th, “Republic Day” in her native Yugoslavia. They […]
Scrolling through the 2010 Power 100 of Art Review, I almost immediately had two reactions. First, I’m not on it! (Bloggers get little to no respect.) Second, so many of […]
In 1886, shortly after his dismissal as director of the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts in a cloud of scandal, Thomas Eakins changed the title of his 1880 painting Crucifixion […]
“What happens if a tree falls in a forest and no one hears it?” Willard Spiegelman asks intriguingly in a recent article in The Wall Street Journal. “What happens if […]
“I tend to think of the exhibitions I do as a loose accumulation of paintings with no single theme—like a variety show,” artist Glenn Brown said in 2007. “A comedy […]
The 18th century French Neoclassical painter Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres played the violin well enough to hold his own with “Sold His Soul to the Devil” good musicians such as […]