Days begin and end in the dead of night. They are not shaped long, in the manner of things which lead to ends — arrow, road, a person’s life on earth. They are shaped round, in the manner of things eternal and stable — sun, world, God. –Jean Giono Western culture is grounded in linearity—of […]
Aesthetics
Our Eyes and Ourselves
New work, “Snap 1” and “Snap 2” (diptych), in my studio before being shipped out this week Three critics at the New York Times were given the assignment of naming their favorite paintings in New York Museums. The lists can be found on the New York Times site, but as critic Roberta Smith freely confesses, […]
Stella, Smee and Subjectivism
Chocorua IV, 1966. Fluorescent alkyd and epoxy paints on canvas. Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College © 2010 Frank Stella/ Artists Rights Socety (ARS), New York. Photo by Steven Sloman. In a recent review of the Frank Stella show, Irregular Polygons at the Hood Museum at Dartmouth College, Boston Globe art critic Sebastian Smee ended […]
In His Own Words: Anselm Kiefer
Installation view of Anselm Kiefer, Gagosian Gallery Anselm Kiefer’s show at Gagosian in New York—big, ambitious, devastatingly bleak and yet subtly redemptive—brought Kiefer to New York. (A more in depth response to the show is posted here.) In early November he appeared at the 92nd Street Y to speak with the curator Sir Norman Rosenthal. […]
The Darting Subtlety and Persistent Slowness of the Painter’s Eye
Sean Scully, “Wall of Light Beach” (2001). Oil on canvas. 40”× 50”. Private collection. Courtesy the Metropolitan Museum of Art In Robert Hughes’ The Mona Lisa Curse, there is a thoughtful exchange between Hughes and painter Sean Scully. Their brief conversation touches on many of the distinctions I have been writing about here over the […]
Desire is a Craft
“Kama”, a painting that was just recently sold Crispin Sartwell’s small book, Six Names of Beauty, is a personal meditation on a theme that continues to compel and evade comprehension. In that sense it is a literary journey that is refreshingly nonlinear, more rhizomatic than arboreal. Although Sartwell is a devotee of Arthur Danto, his […]
Kieferpalooza
Anselm Kiefer at Gagosian Kiefer pierces my circle of empathy, that field we all carry around us that determines who and what we care about. It is not that our work shares a similar sensibility. Hardly. Kiefer is a legend in his own time, and his art goes grand, epic and high concept as dramatically […]
- Aesthetics
- ...
Resting on Perception
Saul Bellow Art and meaning. Big topic, and one that just keeps morphing and moving through our relationship with art making in whatever form that takes. I’ve written on that complex topic a lot here, if only peripherally given its depth, but my interest in it is tireless. Leon Wieseltier’s New York Times review of […]
Leonardo Drew
Leonardo Drew’s show at the deCordova Museum is strong, clear and grounded. Drew has artistic tendencies I admire, the same ones that separate his approach and his work from the current art mainstream. His is a quiet defiance because there is no raised fist or defensiveness, just the masterful seduction into a world where a […]
A Mind of Winter
Eva Hesse, No Title, Oil on canvas. 20 x 20 inches. Verso on upper stretcher ‘August 1960 eva hesse Top.’ On lower stretcher ‘eva hesse 1960.’ Private collection, New York. Courtesy Hauser & Wirth I need to take one more thinking lap with the paintings by Eva Hesse on exhibit at the Hammer Museum. (I […]