One of the best-known creatives to emerge from the turmoil of postwar Japan—a time marked by leftist resentment of capitalism as well as increasing openness with American aid and occupation—was Osamu Tezuka, who made manga into a modern product fashionable with young people. Although Japanese comics had already appeared in embryonic form before the Second…

American technology company iRobot launched its cleaning robot, the Roomba, in 2002; by 2012, more than ten million units had been sold, and the brand name has become a synonym for similar robots. Owners don’t expect their Roombas to develop emotional relationships with human beings like The Bicentennial Man, but their artificial intelligence does differentiate…

In a brightly decorated bedroom, a man and a woman are having intercourse on a narrow single bed. The woman is bent over and the man is half-kneeling behind her. Dressed in neon green stockings, both …

Nail art has a long history in China. As early as 3000 BCE, royals combined gum arabic, gelatin, beeswax, egg whites, and crushed flower petals to lacquer their digits—so it’s fitting that two new projects innovating the medium have sprung up here. Beijing artist Ye Funa’s “Curated Nails” is an ongoing platform considering the nail…

A latex or rubber fetish—in Beijing often called “catfish” after a particular brand—is a tool of restraint; depending on the area and degree of restraint, these smooth suits can highlight the sexual o…

Every two years, the Guggenheim Museum administers the Hugo Boss Prize. Funded by the eponymous German clothing company, the prize is presented to an artist “whose oeuvre constitutes an outstanding co…

Primitivism is a product of modernity. Modern master Pablo Picasso’s work between 1906 and 1909 drew on African tribal masks, Paul Gauguin obsessively depicted the natives of Tahiti, and Max Ernst’s s…

Comfort is a high priority, though it’s easy to parody. Many artists, in dialogue with the generic aesthetic of the contemporary, take the experience of everyday life and the bland, tranquil surfaces …

In a recent Guardian article about the fundamental chemical weirdness of water, science correspondent Alok Jha writes, “Water is not only attracted to itself but will stick to almost anything else it …

Click to play the internet rap playlist specially commissioned for the issue Two years ago a video surfaced online of a not-entirely-confident-looking Scandinavian teenager in a bucket hat and windbreaker rapping about “peeing on old people’s houses” over a loop of new-age singing and rattling drum machine beats. Now boasting more than four million YouTube…

With “South by Southeast,” Filipino curator Patrick Flores and Romanian curator Anca Mihuleţ propose the new interpretive dimension of “southeasternness” by looking at generalized geographic concepts …

Last year, when the pseudonymous French street artist Invader touched down in Hong Kong, his iconic tile minions appeared on several dozen facades throughout the city. Many were removed overnight, and the rest were invariably scrapped and sandblasted away within the week. Then, in May this year, documentation of the covert operation was exhibited at…

In 1995, Japan’s legendary Nobuyoshi Araki awarded a prize to a 17-year-old photographer, a rising star who called herself Hiromix. He praised her work: “Girls tend to hold nothing back, and don’t think too much. Without thinking too much, they let their feelings rule their actions.” This was likely meant as a compliment, but it…

IN 1906, NATIONAL Geographic published a series of 70 black-and-white photographs titled “Hunting Wild Game with Flashlight and Camera,” depicting scenes of deer congregating, hopping about, and resti…

“Reaching out, diminishing the distance, longing for the Other is dangerous, brave, and ultimately rewarding,” quips Belgian-born artist Koen Vanmechelen, the man behind the long-running Cosmopolitan …

Kim Kardashian shot a nude cover for the independent New York magazine Paper’s winter issue; reader reaction to the photo itself was dominated by questions of Photoshop. Today, anything modified in po…

A recent project at the Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden titled “Supermarket of the Dead” examines the growing prevalence of luxury items among the paper goods traditionally burned for ancestors. In Chinese custom, it is believed that in our departure we are left without worldly possessions and therefore our relations must provide us the necessary accoutrements—food, accommodation,…

In the ten days before and after the Labor Day holiday, Double Fly Art Center—the collective known for its signature brand of absurd slapstick and carnivalesque live events—rehearsed two clamorous pro…

The notion of the curator as artist is not new. In his editorial preface to curato­rial studies journal The Exhibitionist, Jens Hoffman pays tribute to Cahiers du Cinema. In the 1950s, André Bazin and…

In 2007 we knew Hatsune Miku only as a virtual pop star program. By 2010 we began to realize that a huge number of people had produced derivative work, marking a development in both the medium and in …