An excellent article about the Anselm Kiefer show (which I referenced in an earlier post) by poet and art critic Sue Hubbard is up on 3 Quarks Daily. It is sized for reading in one sitting, something I highly recommend to anyone interested in Kiefer, painting and/or contemporary art issues. Here’s a passage about the […]
Aesthetics
Neko Does Dillard
Amanda Katz’s interview in the Boston Globe with personal favorite Neko Case produced this fabulous passage: Annie Dillard is my favorite because she doesn’t write like a woman or a man. You know how hunters spray that stuff on them so deer can’t smell them? It’s almost like she can become invisible, as far as […]
Mind-In-Making
Monologue of Ice, 24 Hours, by Atta Kim This is a follow on to my earlier post about Grain of Emptiness at the Rubin Museum, a show that features works by artists who have been influenced and inspired by Buddhism. From the catalog introduction by Mary Jane Jacob: To make the most of experience and […]
Art and Longing
Anselm Kiefer’s ‘I Hold All the Indias in My Hand’ (Photo: Charles Duprat) Anselm Kiefer is mounting a show at the White Cube gallery in London titled Des Meeres und der Liebe Wellen (The Waves of Sea and Love). With a nod to a 19th century Austrian writer, the theme of the show references the […]
Emptiness is What Can’t Be Emptied Any More
Wolgang Laib and Milkstone The Rubin Museum of Himalayan Art is like the pocket-sized Shinto shrines that can be found all over Tokyo—an oasis of calm in a complicated and complexifying urban landscape. I have been a member since it opened in 2004 and spend time there on almost every trip to New York. The […]
A New York Minute
George Wingate, friend and artist, soaks in the Pat Steirs at Cheim & Read After several recent trips to Chelsea’s ghetto of galleries that have felt empty and unsatisfying, my visit this past weekend offered up some moments worth remembering. People were everywhere, enjoying a Saturday without rain, snow or blistering cold. The High Line […]
Bill Walton
Installation view Show announcement (Photos: Fleisher/Ollman Gallery) I spent the weekend in and near Philadelphia, a city I have always enjoyed visiting*. It has much to recommend it—a great museum, proximity to the Barnes Foundation (soon to be housed within its own city limits, a fraught topic I’d rather not get in to at this […]
- Aesthetics
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Slow Looking, Boredom and Contemporary Art
Frank Auerbach, Reclining Head of Gerda Boehm, private collection Over the fall months James Elkins, the prodigiously prolific writer about art, art history, criticism and art appreciation, wrote a series of pieces for the Huffington Post. (I wrote about his series here.) One of those articles as a title—Are Artists Bored By Their Work?—that is […]
- Aesthetics
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Landsatting
Circular fields of green on the desert sands of Saudi Arabia, watered by pivot irrigation (Photo: Corbis) Landsat image of Southern Nebraska Field in Wadi-el-Watan, Egypt, imaged by a SPOT satellite. The circular pattern shows where a centre-pivot irrigation system has been used to water crops. Source : Spot Image Midwest from the air Midwest […]
Painting Well
“Rag and bone shop” table surface in my studio The New York Times Book Review last week had a simple headline: “Why Criticism Matters”. The editors set the stage by describing our current age as one where opinions are “offered instantly, effusively and in increasingly strident tones”—by anyone, anytime. So in that context it is […]