Deliberately low-keyed art often resembles ruins, like neolithic rather than classical monuments, amalgams of past and future, remains of something “more,” vestiges of some unknown venture. The ghost of content continues to hover over the most obdurately abstract art. The more open, or ambiguous, the experience offered, the more the viewer is forced to depend […]
Art Making
The Rag and Bone Shop
In the spirit of “everything is autobiographical,” I found a conversation (in the Telegraph) with architect Frank Gehry and filmmaker Sydney Pollack that is compelling in its honesty and reassuring in a “misery loves company” sort of way. When asked if things got easier as they got older, here are their responses: SP: It doesn’t […]
Painful Beauty
Chris Jordan’s photographic works are extremely memorable. He knows how to create retinal appeal to be sure, but he also packs a political wallop. Some of you may know of his photographs of the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, In Katrina’s Wake: Portraits of Loss from an Unnatural Disaster, published earlier this year. Circuit boards Another […]
Descent, and Descent
The Death of the Painter At the end of his life he had money and attention, and certain towns were known in connection to his name. He was fastidious, and wore a tie, was photographed with brushes, with a bird. under the subtropical sky he forgave the things long done. He hardly saw his children, […]
Good Use for Mediocre Looks
I’m a serious “not fan” of David Brooks, op ed writer for the New York Times. But his June 15th piece on the future of genetics is actually pretty funny: At this very moment thousands of people are surfing the Web looking for genetic material so their children will be nothing like me. They are […]
Venice Redux
The New York Times’ website has a clip from Michael Kimmelman who is reporting on the Venice Biennale. He talks about feeling bored by the work at first, but the longer time he spent looking the more he liked what he saw. I was moved by his account of the Gonzalez-Torres installation: Mr. Storr [commissioner […]
Natalie Alper at Seraphin Gallery
(Image courtesy of Seraphin Gallery) Natalie Alper’s show at the Seraphin Gallery in Philadelphia was scrumptous. Big, lush strokes of metalic pigmented acrylic ribbon across a subtle underlayer of graphite marked canvas. And as her last painterly gesture, she sets this juicy field back just a bit from us by marking the surface with a […]
Richard Tuttle at Sperone Westwater
I caught the last day of Tuttle’s show at Sperone Westwater in New York last weekend. SW on West 13th Street is an open, multi-roomed white space. It could be daunting for someone whose works are often delicate and small. But Tuttle fills the galleries to the brim with intimately-sized wall pieces whose only similarity […]
Hype-Proof
Serra installation in the Sculpture Garden at MOMA For all the hype around the Richard Serra show at MOMA, I was still in awe, pure awe. There’s no way to not be, these works are insanely beautiful, massive, haunting, playful, and unforgettable. Seeing these with your inner child in full command is my best recommendation. […]
Take Me With You, Sigmar
Carol Vogel’s written and video reports (New York Times) on Sigmar Polke’s preparations for the upcoming Biennale have me longing, deeply longing, to see this new body of work, “The Axis of Time.” (One painting from that series is posted on Slow Painting.) Vogel visited him in his Cologne atelier and feasted on a studio […]