Ferrofluid with permanent magnets underneath (Image courtesy of Felice Frankel) Here are two provocative examples of morphing developments in photography, especially in the age of digital (and signficantly, nearly cost free and unlimited) options. The first features Felice Frankel, author of Envisioning Science. Frankel has come a long way in bringing meangingful visual imaging into […]
Contemplative
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 […]
Joseph Cornell
Cornell could take you into the universe in the space of a thimble. Robert Lehrman, Cornell collector An extensive Joseph Cornell retrospective is currently on view at the Peabody Essex Museum in Salem Massachusetts. Seeing the range, depth and subtlety of his work left me speechless. I spent hours in the show but will have […]
Lynn Davis
Many of you know that in addition to writing this blog, I maintain another blog called Slow Painting that filters through websites, publications and blogs for compelling excerpts. Slow Painting is a customized assemblage of art-related news, ideas and concepts as defined by my sensibilities. Every so often a Slow Painting find is so provocative […]
Physicality and Intimacy
Nicole Long, poet and friend, sent me this quote from Henri Nouwen: A few times in my life I had the seemingly strange sensation that I felt closer to my friends in their absence than in their presence. When they were gone, I had a strong desire to meet them again but I could not […]
Indra’s Net at 88th and Fifth
Alyson Shotz, The Shape of Space, 2004. Cut plastic Fresnel lens sheets and staples. Highlight from a recent visit to the Guggenheim Museum: In the lobby, the first thing you see is a beguiling wall of light which turns out to be Fresnel lenses stapled together. I sat with and walked around this curtain of […]
Mark Strand: A Suite of Appearances
A Suite of Appearances In another time, we will want to know how the earth looked Then, and were people the way we are now. In another time, The records they left will convince us that we are unchanged And could be at ease in the past, and not alone in the present. And we […]
The Longing for Calm Repose
In this contemporary technological world, we have all become travelers. We struggle with teachings that have slipped into disarray, searching for guideposts that are no longer there, markers that have faded from disuse, signs that no longer fulfill their function. We desperately, secretly, or even unconsciously, long for the image of calm repose, wisdom, and […]
Landscape and Contemporary Art: Agnes Martin
My work is non-objective like that of the Abstract Expressionists. But I want people, when they look at my painting, to have the same feelings they experience when they look at landscape, so I never protest when they say my work is like landscape. But it’s really about the feeling of beauty and freedom that […]
The Path and the Destination
Bill Viola, artist extraordinare and seeker, was asked to select objects from the Asia Society’s collection a few years ago for a show called The Creative Eye. Here he responds to the 17th century Gandavyuha Manuscript from Nepal: . . If you engage in travel you will arrive. -Ibn Arabi (1165-1240) When the need to […]