John Pawson’s monastery in Bohemia The gap that exists between theory and practice is a challenge in so many pursuits, and Minimalist architecture is just one that struggles with that perennial problem. In 1908, Adolf Loos wrote a memorable essay, “Ornament and Crime,” that advocated for a more streamlined aesthetic. And yet to create that […]
Aesthetics
Leaving Nothing to Chance: Rothko at the Whitechapel Gallery
Mark Rothko’s Light Red Over Black © 1998 Kate Rothko Whitechapel Gallery has played a memorable role in the London visual arts scene since its founding in 1901. It was one of the first publicly-funded galleries and host to Picasso‘s Guernica in 1938 (as part of an exhibit organized by artist Roland Penrose in protest […]
- Aesthetics
- ...
Ken Price, The Glenn Gould of Object Makers
Ken Price: Bolivar, Fired and painted clay Ken Price passed away last week. He was one of the group of under-appreciated West Coast artist from the 60s whose works are finally being given the visibility they have long deserved. (This has been helped immeasurably by the mega-exhibit called Pacific Standard Time which I wrote about […]
Hockney at the Royal Academy, London
Earlier Hockney: Man Ray, 1973 Winter Timber (2009), from David Hockney’s A Bigger Picture exhibition at the Royal Academy. Photo: Jonathan Wilkinson Seeing (and writing about) the David Hockney show, A Bigger Picture, at the Royal Academy was (and is) hard. In some ways I have a sentimental place for Hockney that dates back to […]
- Aesthetics
- ...
A Show and a Sojourn
Gola, mixed media on canvas, 48 x 54″, included in the show, “Acquire/Inquire” at Rhode Island College, March 2012 I will be showing my latest body of work at an upcoming exhibition at Rhode Island College next month. I am looking forward to seeing these pieces outside of my studio and all the visual clutter […]
- Aesthetics
- ...
The Proud and Futile Wake
Continuing the theme of music and its multifarious explorations… I follow with my eyes the proud and futile wake. Which, as it bears me from no fatherland away, bears me onward to no shipwreck. –Samuel Beckett, Molloy What an evocative quote to start Alex Ross‘ most recent book, Listen to This. His columns in The […]
- Aesthetics
- ...
Talking About What We Cannot
The “rag and bone shop” barn studio of my (nearly) lifelong friend, artist George Wingate. Our conversations here and in other venues over the last 40 years have been some of my favorites. My friend Robert Hanlon recently wrote me and said, “You are an expensive friend: you make me buy books!” Sorry Robert, but […]
Cling Film Conceptualism and Other Biennial Woes
From the deCordova Biennial, a work by Cambridge-based Joe Zane (Photo: Carroll and Sons Gallery)* OK. I haven’t seen the show yet. But Sebastian Smee‘s Boston Globe review of the newly-opened deCordova Biennial rang true of so many shows that I have seen lately: I thought we had outgrown smarty-pants biennials, filled with arcane and […]
Not Stopping, Thank You
This is a reprise of a theme I have written about here before, but I can’t not revisit it again after having recently seen vibrant, extraordinary shows by women artists in their 70’s and 80’s. Many women artists who were shorted on the visibility and acknowledgements granted their male peers are making up for lost […]
- Aesthetics
- ...
Output/Yield Ratios
Crooked timber and all that jazz Kingsley Amis, from his review of Don DeLillo‘s latest book in the New Yorker: When we say that we love a writer’s work, we are always stretching the truth: what we really mean is that we love about half of it. Sometimes rather more than half, sometimes rather less…I […]