2:32 minutes (looped)
The Crime of Art is an animation by Kota Ezawa that appropriates scenes from various popular Hollywood films featuring the theft of artworks: a Monet painting in The Thomas Crown Affair (1999), a Rembrandt in Entrapment (1999), a Cellini in How to Steal a Million (1966), and an emerald encrusted dagger in Topkapi (1964). Ezawa uses his signature cartoon-like style to remix and reenact these crime scenes, leaving only the artworks as “real” objects (as they are depicted in the films), rather than illustrating them. Reversing fiction and reality in an unexpected way, this gesture invites the viewer to question the reliability of the visual footage. Ezawa describes his artistic oeuvre as “a form of image theft” and focuses on appropriation and mediation of images through his works. Borrowing scenes from Hollywood films, The Crime of Art is in line with the tendency of the artist to copy and to manipulate imagery that belongs to popular culture. By focusing on stolen art, Ezawa rethinks the conceptual underpinnings of his work in relation to the dilemma of theft and ownership. These become urgent questions at a time when the manipulation of digital images is a part of our daily lives, blurring the line between real and fake. Through this work, the artist also questions the fragile nature of the museums that “own” objects with major cultural significance—whether looted, exchanged, bought, or donated from other cultures and geographies—many of these objects carry with them problematic histories.
Kota Ezawa borrows images from the news, art history, and pop culture and turns them into cartoon-like stories. He produces flat and two-dimensional imagery via his light-boxes, works on paper, and animations. These works are often inspired by important moments in history, such as the assassinations of John F. Kennedy and Abraham Lincoln, the O.J. Simpson trial, and media coverage of former National Football League (NFL) player Colin Kaepernick kneeling during the national anthem as a symbol of protest. Ezawa’s animations, which he describes as “moving paintings,” make use of a labor-intensive technique that requires the artist to recreate each frame with close attention, producing hundreds of illustrations via digital drawing and animation software. He is best known for a signature style that embraces vibrant colors and simple forms, stripping detail from images to leave only essential attributes and environments. This reductive technique does not diminish the power of the image, as it turns to the familiar historical or cultural context to fill any gaps left by the artist’s erasures. However, the gesture also invites viewers to think about how these erasures might destabilize the reliability of public memories, highlighting the faulty process of collective remembering and what it tends to overlook.
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National Cohort for the Diversity in Arts Leadership (DIAL) Internship Program Selected for 2022 – 30 years of DIAL | Americans for the Arts Jump to navigation Americans for the Arts Arts Action Fund National Arts Marketing Project pARTnership Movement Animating Democracy Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Instagram YouTube Load Picture Home News Room National Cohort for the Diversity in Arts Leadership (DIAL) Internship Program Selected for 2022 – 30 years of DIAL Hello Guest | Login National Cohort for the Diversity in Arts Leadership (DIAL) Internship Program Selected for 2022 – 30 years of DIAL Monday, July 18, 2022 Americans for the Arts and its partners— New Jersey State Council on the Arts , Metro Arts: Nashville Office of Arts and Culture , Community Foundation of Sarasota County , Arts Connect International , and United Arts Council of Raleigh and Wake County —are thrilled to announce the interns selected for the 30th year of the Diversity in Arts Leadership (DIAL) program...
MUM , the acronym used to title a series of Rogan’s small interventions on found magazines, stands for “Magic Unity Might,” the name of a vintage trade magic publication...
While his works can function as abstract, they are very much rooted in physicality and the possibilities that are inherent in the materials themselves...
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In the series Horizons (2010), Lipps uses appropriation to riff on Modernism’s fascination with abstract form...
The Simpson Verdict is a three-minute animation by Kota Ezawa that portrays the reading of the verdict during the OJ Simpson trial, known as the “most publicized” criminal trial in history...
Paint and Unpaint is an animation by Kota Ezawa based on a scene from a popular 1951 film by Hans Namuth featuring Jackson Pollock...
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Half Dome Hough Transform by Trevor Paglen merges traditional American landscape photography (sometimes referred as ‘frontier photography’ for sites located in the American West) with artificial intelligence and other technological advances such as computer vision...
Review into British Museum thefts calls for fundamental reforms Art market Museums & heritage Exhibitions Books Podcasts Columns Technology Adventures with Van Gogh Search Search British Museum thefts news Review into British Museum thefts calls for fundamental reforms The Independent Collection Security Review urges the museum to take urgent action, including fully recording the collection and tough management changes Martin Bailey 13 December 2023 Share The report has been heavily criticised by Ittai Gradel, the Danish gems specialist who privately warned the British Museum about the theft in 2020 Photo: Jeff Whyte The independent review into thefts at the British Museum reveals serious problems with the institution’s governance...