Beck and Philip Glass in Los Angeles (Photo: Catherine Opie for The New York Times) The political campaign seasons that seize up our nation’s mindshare every four years have become a gladiator’s spectacle of showmanship and theatrics. The truth, whatever that may be, is not what anybody hears or expects from the political campaign process. […]
Aesthetics
Empowered, Innocent and Sometimes Lonely
Orhan Pamuk’s new book catalogs the objects in his Museum of Innocence.(Photo: Refik Anadol) Holly Brubach has written a compelling take on novelist Orhan Pamuk‘s latest book, The Innocence of Objects. This latest publication is a catalog of the contents of a museum Pamuk conceived in tandem with the writing of his last novel, The […]
Other Coast Art
Marsha Cottrell, A Black Powder Rains Down Gently On My Sleepless Night (detail), 2012; iron oxide on mulberry paper; Courtesy the artist; © Marsha Cottrell If you are contemplating a trip to San Francisco in the next year, do it before June 2013. That’s when the entire SFMOMA will close down til early 2016 for […]
In Praise of Small Art
Small art featured in Brett Baker’s online show of small works: Blades, 6 x 7 inches, egg tempera on calfskin parchment stretched on panel, by Altoon Sultan. (This painting hangs in my house and pleases me deeply every day.) Artist Lori Ellison posted the following essay on Facebook in response to notice of Brett Baker’s […]
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Charting Territory
Harry Beck’s map of the London Underground. With slight modifications and changes, his original design is still the lingua franca of transporation mapping. Our minds create maps of every place we go. Apparently all animals do this, not just us. And those cognitive maps are not necessarily accurate or drawn to scale. Like the iconic […]
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Whole Body Art
Close up view of one of my recent paintings A book I have referenced here before is From Head to Hand: Art and the Manual, by David Levi Strauss. (Previous posts referencing the book highlight artists Ursula von Rydingsvard and Donald Lipski.) Strauss writes in a way that his responses to a particular artist’s work […]
Hybrid Vigor
Najeev 1, from a new painting series I found an extraordinary essay by Steve Baker titled “To go about noisily: clutter, writing and design.” I’ve been mulling over the issues he raises for several weeks and I am still formulating my thoughts on this topic. Clutter: It’s a much more complex topic than those hoarder […]
Enchantment
Gerhard Richter‘s abstract paintings are a visual feast of complexity and depth. Using a massive squeegee that he carefully pulls across an enormous paint-laden surface, Richter enables the imagery to bubble up from below. The visual effect is stunning. While a whole generation of painters have emulated his oleaginously lush technique, nobody does it quite […]
Riding the Continuum
Rhizom, by The Fundamental Group (Photo: The Fundamental Group) The Fundamental Group, an up and coming Berlin architecture and design studio started by Gunnar Rönsch and Stephen Molloy, was named after the concept from algebraic topology that describes complicated 3D surfaces. The Fundamental Group’s mathematically inspired approach to design would appear to be in opposition […]
Visual Thinking
Ludwig Wittgenstein Two recently encountered passages have provoked my thoughts about the power—and what may be a slow decline in—visual thinking. Ray Monk‘s article in the New Statesman, Ludwig Wittgenstein’s passion for looking, not thinking, points to Ludwig Wittgenstein‘s unique visual orientation. (He is compared with his fellow philosopher Bertrand Russell who, much to his […]