(Photo: Tate © The artist) Robert Storr, dean of the School of Art at Yale and commissioner of the 2007 Venice Biennale, has written about the Per Kirkeby exhibit at the Tate Modern. The first paragraph of Storr’s commentary is actually one of the most succinct and accurate descriptions I’ve read of the current “exercises […]
Aesthetics
Lasse Antonsen: The Layers of Meaning
(Photo courtesy of Lasse Antonsen) Painter extraordinaire and friend Marcia Cannistraro (to whom I will always be indebted for giving me her studio when she moved out of Boston) stopped by this weekend and introduced me to Lasse Antonsen. Lasse’s exhibit, The Continuous Translation, was completing its run at the Artist’s Foundation Gallery at the […]
Pizza, Panoramas and Foreclosures
The curator Larissa Harris with the Panorama in a foreclosure exhibit at the Queens Museum (Ruth Fremson/The New York Times) In the early 1980s I worked for a start up that was developing presentation graphics software. Hard to believe, but there really was a time when no one had access to Power Point or Illustrator, […]
More Saltzian Logic
I’m basking in Saltzian wisdom. That would be Saltzism as in Jerry Saltz. Yesterday’s posting got me back in the groove, so here’s an excerpt from his “you’re speaking for me, man” book, Seeing Out Loud, Selected Essays: 2003-2007. (An updated version is set for release this September so hold on a few months if […]
Street Fighting Man
Jerry Saltz, critic extraordinaire Jerry Saltz, one of the better art minds around, has a lot to say about the current Biennale in Venice. And a lot of other international shows. As is often the case with Saltz, he just cuts through the bullshit and makes so much sense. His description of a particular malaise […]
When is Art?
Rooftops can be seen at the Fondazione Querini Stampalia through Mona Hatoum’s “Interior Landscapes,” with its cutouts of soldiers (Photo: Todd Heisler/The New York Times) A visually stunning slideshow of Venice during the current Biennale is available at the New York Times site. Here’s the intro lead in: Daniel Birnbaum, the curator of the 53rd […]
Per Kirkeby
“Mild Winter II” (Photo: Galerie Michael Werner) This weekend I found Laura Cumming’s review in the Guardian of the new Per Kirkeby show at the Tate Modern. (It is also posted on Slow Painting.) Well known in his homeland of Denmark, he’s a painter whose work does not get as much visibility (IMHO) everywhere else […]
Light Seekers
Highlights from a much needed getaway to New York: *** Charlie Hass (Photo, Narrative Magazine) Watching Charlie Haas carry off the best book reading event ever with his performance (I don’t use that word lightly) from his new novel, The Enthusiast. I heartily recommend this book to anyone who needs their spirits enthused. (Learn more […]
Brilliant Mind Meets Freakish Individuality
Yayoi Kusama Yayoi Kusama, now 80, is having a show of her recent work at Gagosian in New York. For a long time Kusama has been an enigmatic figure in the art world. She is famous for her obsessive dots and loops, covering furniture and entire rooms with stuffed “penises.” Diagnosed with the obsessive compulsive […]
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Tracey, Say It Isn’t So
Tracy Emin at the White Cube Gallery (Oli Scarff/Getty Images) Tracey Emin has cordoned off sex and sexuality as a major trope of her oeuvre. She has been outrageous, flagrant, outspoken and nakedly raw in her expression of pure id-ness. So turning 50 changes all that? Come on Tracey, can’t you love ideas AND sex? […]