…Exploring the role of the prankster as artist, activist and social observer and the significance of the prank in society.
Welcome to Art of the Prank, produced and edited by Joey Skaggs. Here you will find insights, information, news and discussions about art, pranks, hoaxes, culture jamming & reality hacking around the world – past, present and future – mainstream and counter culture. You are invited to contribute to its development. May your journey be filled with more than your expectations.
JOEY SKAGGS SATIRE AND ART ACTIVISM,
1960s TO THE PRESENT AND BEYOND
A new series of short oral history films,
produced and directed by Judy Drosd and Joey Skaggs
ART OF THE PRANK, THE MOVIE:
Andrea Marini’s award winning feature documentary about
New York artist and activist Joey Skaggs
This “sticky” post will be here for a while. Scroll down for other posts.
Remembering Kusama: In 1968, artist, Yayoi Kusama joined Joey Skaggs’ Hippie Bus Tour to Queens. In a satirical ironic reversal, the group toured neighborhoods and snapped photos of suburbanites mowing their lawns and washing their cars. When the group stopped at Hillside’s Nirvana head shop in Queens, the “Group Image” band played while Kusama painted polka dots on the naked dancers.
Read The Guardian’s Obituary here:
Yayoi Kusama, Japanese artist who became a global superstar, dies aged 97, by Tim Jonze and Sian Cain, August 26, 2026.
Why you don’t take your guillotine to a gun fight…
Man arrested after guillotine is found in pickup truck near Capitol, by Kyle Stewart and Raquel Coronell Uribe, NBC News, August 25, 2026.
In 2024, Joey Skaggs’ New York City Annual April Fools’ Day Parade featured “Democracy at the Guillotine” on a mobile billboard truck, therefore avoiding a showdown with the law.
A self-described Italian archeologist “makes” history, literally.
‘A sucker born every minute’: The man who duped tourists with a fake Greek amphitheater, by Julia Buckley, CNN, August 24, 2026.
Of the eight TripAdvisor reviews of the amphitheater near Arcugnano, in Italy’s northern Veneto region, all give fulsome, five-star praise.
In conjunction with Alice Neel’s portrait of Joey Skaggs at the “Alice Neel: Beautifully Imperfect” exhibition at the Serralves Museum in Porto, Portugal, July 16, 2026 to January 17, 2027, Skaggs was asked to write a letter to Alice Neel from his perspective today. As display in the gallery with other artist’s letters, here is his:
“Dear Alice,
It’s been sixty years since our chance meeting at the Sonnabend Gallery in New York. You were sixty-seven, and I was twenty-two. We immediately connected over our shared rage about the war in Vietnam. We were in the minority in those days, but we were both accustomed to that. You made your statements through paintings, while I took my critique to the streets.
A lot has changed since you were here, but much of what outraged us then still remains. The world has not become a simpler or kinder place.
I’ve been wondering who you might choose to paint now if you were still alive. In the spirit of our shared social sensibilities, I decided to merge our approaches and instructed AI to create a satirical portrait of President Donald Trump in your style.
It’s outrageous, I know, but I bet you’re laughing!
With love, Joey Skaggs.”
Follow this link for the story of how the portrait of Joey Skaggs by Alice Neel came to be.
Who are you going to believe, me or your lying poll?
Website behind widely shared fake election polls run by 21-year-old, by Sophie Sullivan, Anna Betts and Sam Levine, The Guardian, August 20, 2026.
Exclusive: Rahil Prakash tells the Guardian: ‘I wanted to see if fake polls could penetrate the ecosystem that easily’
A 21-year-old recent college graduate was behind an anonymous website that put out widely shared fake election polling in Wisconsin, Nevada and California, the Guardian can reveal.
The website, Median Strategies, abruptly shut down and withdrew its polling earlier this week following questions from a reporter from the Los Angeles Times. In an unsigned statement, it described a “short-term social experiment” to examine how fake polling “could enter and spread through the political information ecosystem without independent verification”.