Artist Tim Rice in his North Berkeley studio In Christopher Bollen‘s recent joint interview with Jerry Saltz and Roberta Smith—the leading power couple in the world of art critics—the topic of studio visits came up. Neither Smith nor Saltz do them, and they listed a number of reasons why. Here is Saltz’s response: I think […]
Art World
- Aesthetics
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Refuge in the Not
Motoi Yamamoto (Photo: My Modern Met) Roberta Smith‘s response to the recent art auctions, Art Is Hard to See Through the Clutter of Dollar Signs, included a quote that has taken on a life of its own and is showing up everywhere online. After describing the spectacle of all time high prices and hedge fund […]
Into the Back Pages
Early morning in Small Point Maine I just returned from a long weekend in Small Point, Maine. This quiet outcropping surrounded by the Atlantic on three sides has been my favorite migratory site for many years. Annual visits here are like the kitchen wall where penciled lines mark a child’s growth. This landscape is my […]
- Aesthetics
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Belzing Into a Better Place
Carl Belz, my kind of thinker (Photo: www.berkshirefinearts.com) How do we currently write current art’s history? How, given its elastic chronology and ever-widening geographic reach, its self-consciously elusive look, the multiple urges and identities and media it comprises? How, in the absence of a canon of artists around whom a history might be structured, its […]
- Art Making
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Field Work
The Sower, by Vincent Van Gogh My longtime readers are familiar with my view of an art making world that is so striated that the layers often never even touch each other. For the alien who arrives on earth wanting to crack the code on what is going on with these humans and contemporary art, […]
Hughes in the Afterlife
Robert Hughes (Image Courtesy of Robert Pierce) Since Robert Hughes‘ death on Monday, the flinging has been steady. Quotes from his writing are all over Facebook and Twitter, and fortunately many of his pithy put downs are well within the 140 character limit. Yes he was controversial. Yes he pissed a lot of people off. […]
Wheat and Chaff
The unstoppable nature of art making…from a recent installation in Chelsea Adam Davidson‘s piece in the Sunday Times magazine, How the Art Market Thrives on Inequality, explores that rarefied world of art auctions, blue chip galleries, U.H.N.W.I’s (Ultra High Net Worth Individuals) and sky high prices. In a sentence: “The art market, in other words, […]
- Art Buying
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Going Direct
Moira Dryer In the last few weeks I have had a number of conversations with artists and gallerists (using that term freely) about changes that are coming at us, each with its own velocity. Some are moving like a sea change, some are seismic. But the old forms are morphing, of that I am certain. […]
- Aesthetics
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Northern Exposure: SFMOMA
Francesca Woodman, Polka Dots, Providence, Rhode Island, 1976; gelatin silver print; courtesy George and Betty Woodman; © George and Betty Woodman A few highlights from a day spent at the San Francisco Museum of Art, a visit that followed the feast that was Pacific Standard Time in Los Angeles over Thanksgiving… Francesca Woodman‘s life was […]
- Aesthetics
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Stella, He Da Man
The way I prepare for a show is to go into hermit mode: Sequester yourself in the art cave and don’t come out until the work is ready. That also means that most of the conversations I am having these days are with non-sentient beings (i.e., my paintings). It is in a small way like […]