Doug Harvey - The Art of the Prank

Author: Doug Harvey

Since graduating with an MFA in painting from UCLA in 1994, Doug Harvey has written extensively about the Los Angeles and International art scenes and other aspects of popular culture, primarily as the art critic for LA WEEKLY, the largest circulation free weekly newspaper in America, and Art issues, the highly respected LA-based journal of art and contemporary culture, which ceased publication in 2002. His writing has also appeared in Art in America, The New York Times, Modern Painter, ArtReview, and numerous other publications. He has written museum and gallery catalogue essays for Jim Shaw, Jeffrey Vallance, Camille Rose Garcia, Tim Hawkinson, Lari Pittman, Georganne Deen, Margaret Keane, Big Daddy Roth, Thomas Kinkade and many others. Harvey's curatorial projects have ranged from many traditional gallery exhibitions (including the October 2005 First Annual LA Weekly Biennial: State of Emergence at Track 16 Gallery in Los Angeles and the forthcoming Aspects of Mel's Hole at Santa Ana's Grand Central Art Center) to CD compilations of sound art, programs of found and experimental films, performance events, experimental radio, artist's comic books and zines (including Less Art which continues to be published sporadically, and is currently being transformed into a cable access television series), and an LA solo gallery exhibit determined by raffle. He has also been part of the curatorial collective creating the exhibition content and design at the Museum of Jurassic Technology in Culver City, CA. Mr. Harvey also continues to maintain an active art career, exhibiting his visual art (painting-based multimedia) locally and internationally, and participating in international experimental sound, radio, and filmmaking communities. He lives and works in Los Angeles.

LESS ART RADIO ZINE 001

Beginning Sunday, December 8th 2013 at 12 Noon, LA artist/critic/curator Doug Harvey will be hosting a biweekly hour-long radio show on pirate station KCHUNG. An audio version of his long-running (but intermittent) “˜zine LESS ART, Doug Harvey’s Less Art Radio Zine will feature a weekly guest artist with a body of sound art and/or a really interesting record collection, as well as whatever remarkable audio documents demand to be shared. (This date also marks the expansion of KCHUNG”™s original programming schedule to Sunday mornings — adding a dozen new programs to its already extensive battery of DIY DJs.)

Continue reading “Doug Harvey’s Less Art Radio Zine”

In the midst of their ‘Yes, Bush Can!’ campaign, the busy pranksters spread faux Republican cheer on their way to L.A. for the opening of their new movie. Reprinted from the LA Weekly, September 23, 2004, Photos by Dan Ollman.

“Bush stood right over there,” says Laurel. “They built a platform for him and three governors and the secretary of the interior, and surrounded them with firemen made up with fake soot to look like they”™d just been fighting fires.” Laurel, a member of ecological activist group the Oxygen Collective, is gesturing to a ridge overlooking a partially charred meadow on the outskirts of Medford, Oregon. “We had a busload of farmers and children with a few banners. They weren”™t expecting us, but they were prepared. The whole time, we were circled by Coast Guard helicopters with machine guns pointed at us. That”™s when Bush unveiled his Healthy Forests Initiative.”

This lesson in George Bush”™s poisonous environmental policies is actually a collateral benefit of our visit to this historical spot “” I”™m here as an embedded reporter with the Yes Men”™s “Yes, Bush Can!” campaign as they film a music video for “The Smokey the Log Theme.” Smokey the Log is the “Yes, Bush Can!” campaign”™s new pro-lumber mascot for the USDA Forest Service, replacing the obsolete namesake bear. Yes Man Mike Bonanno, looking like an escapee from a Syd and Marty Krofft production in a giant anthropomorphic latex log costume, clambers on top of a blackened stump. “Now dance!” commands his cohort, Andy Bichlbaum. “Dance and jump to the ground!” Able to see out only through one armhole, and constricted by faux log to well below the knees, Mike gamely jigs around the sawed-flat surface of the old-growth conifer, but when it comes time to dismount, he teeters and tumbles appropriately but painfully to the forest floor. Continue reading “The Yes Men Are Coming! The Yes Men Are Coming!”