Hurricane Katrina’s devastation of New Orleans, the international financial crisis, protests in London, the Berlusconi scandal, an earthquake in Haiti, an oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, the tsunami in Japan, the killing of Osama Bin Laden, revolution at home and abroad - the headlines of the past decade have been a true roller-coaster ride. Self-proclaimed news junkie Fred Tomaselli has been responding to these earth-shattering events through a fascinating series of artworks collected here for the first time. Tomaselli superimposes his signature psychedelic aesthetic on the front page of the New York Times, setting up a striking contrast between the paper’s sober depictions of reality and the artist’s vivid interventions. Readers will delight in comparing the actual headlines, captions, and articles that surround the images with Tomaselli’s trippy, highly detailed interpretations. This series has already captured the attention of cultural and journalistic luminaries, including the award-winning author Lawrence Weschler. Filled with gorgeous reproductions of works that range from tongue-in-cheek satire to unmitigated outrage, this timely volume is certain to appeal to art lovers as well as street-smart consumers of today’s headline news. AUTHOR: Lawrence Weschler director of the New York Institute for the Humanities at New York University. He has been a staff writer at the New Yorker and is a contributing editor to McSweeney’s and the Threepenny Review. He is the author of numerous books, including Mr. Wilson’s Cabinet of Wonder, which was shortlisted for the Pulitzer Prize and National Book Critics Circle Award.
Fred Tomaselli is based in Brooklyn, New York. His work resides in many international collections, including those of the Museum of Modern Art, New York; the Los Angeles County Museum of Art; and the Sintra Museum of Modern Art, Portugal.
100 illustrations