Twelve inches by twelve inches by twelve inches, the cubic foot is a relatively tiny unit of measure compared to the whole world. With every step, we disturb and move through cubic foot after cubic foot. But behold the cubic foot in nature – from cor...

Not for sale in Poland! Although she is only now just coming into much deserved global renown, the Polish sculptor Alina Szapocznikow has long been recognized in her country as one of the most accomplished female artists of the twentieth century. C...

Joseph Beuys, Andy Warhol, Yves Klein, and Marcel Duchamp form an unlikely quartet, but they each played a singular role in shaping a new avant-garde for the 1960s and beyond. Each of them staged brash, even shocking, events and produced works that c...

"The Invisible Dragon" made a lot of noise for a little book When it was originally published in 1993 it was championed by artists for its forceful call for a reconsideration of beauty – and savaged by more theoretically oriented critics who dismisse...

Since its launch in 1999, "Afterall", a journal of art, context, and enquiry, has offered 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,...

The German-born, Chicago-based Latvian artist Peter Karklins creates small, pencil-and-paper drawings that capture the processes and energies just below the surface of all human life. The complexity of his organic forms is matched by the artist's met...

"Permission to Laugh" explores the work of three generations of German artists who, beginning in the 1960s, turned to jokes and wit in an effort to confront complex questions regarding German politics and history. Gregory H. Williams highlights six o...

The term "Neo-Dada" surfaced in New York in the late 1950s and was used to characterize young artists like Robert Rauschenberg and Jasper Johns whose art appeared at odds with the serious emotional and painterly interests of the then-dominant movemen...

In 1934, New York's Museum of Modern Art staged a major exhibition of ball bearings, airplane propellers, pots and pans, cocktail tumblers, petri dishes, protractors, and other machine parts and products. The exhibition, titled "Machine Art", explore...

"Afterall", a journal of art, context and enquiry, offers in-depth considerations of the work of contemporary artists along with essays that broaden how to understand it. "Issue 29" looks at the artistic economy and the different means that artists...