Venus, by Ken Price I have had many exchanges over the years with other artists about the issue of meaning in art. It’s a topic that is continental in size and comes with a similar geographic diversity. Like large land masses, meaning can accommodate the needs of the “meaning is everything” crowd as well as […]
Subliming Vessel: Matthew Barney at the Morgan Library
Matthew Barney (Photo: Private collection, Courtesy of the artist and Gladstone Gallery, New York and Brussels) The Cremaster by Matthew Barney, a five part film cycle, was shown repeatedly during a retrospective of Barney’s work at the Guggenheim Museum in 2003. I drove down from Boston three times to see it and dragged my friends, […]
- Aesthetics
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Epic Out, Epic In
Rama Burshtein, the Israeli director of “Fill the Void,” at right on the film set. (Photo: Vered Adir/Sony Picture Classics) Some art forms favor expansion. Those are the ones that ask—require?—you to untether yourself and be taken outward, into a nimbus that exists beyond the quotidian of terrestrial constraints. The epic experience in art is […]
- Aesthetics
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De Out and De In: Selected Passages from the Price Show Catalog
The Ken Price show catalog, Ken Price Sculpture: A Retrospective, is full of gems. Here are a few: Price tended to progress in loose series. “It’s the most enjoyable way to work. It’s a lot more satisfying than taking a single piece to completion before you begin the next one…You get a lot more feedback, […]
Price in Perfection
Every once in a while you encounter a show that feels, well, perfect. Where the work is exquisite and the container for presenting it is up to the job. This doesn’t happen frequently but it did on Sunday at the Metropolitan Museum’s installation of work by Ken Price. I was so moved by this exhibit […]
- Aesthetics
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Adventures in the Impossible
Songwriter Bob Russell ( “He Ain’t Heavy, He’s My Brother”, among many others) wrote these lyrics for Billie Holiday back in the 1940s: The difficult I’ll do right now The impossible will take a little while. The second line was the inspiration for the title of one of my favorite books, The Impossible Will Take […]
Images, Ideas and Tension
The first part of the Return from Parnassus, by Cy Twombly The image cannot be dispossessed of a primordial freshness, which idea can never claim. An idea is derivative and tamed. The image is in the natural or wild state, and it has to be discovered there, not put there, obeying its own law and […]
This Flashing Present
A subset of Rhapsody, by Jennifer Bartlett I usually don’t write about a book until I have finished it. Or at least done the gleaning. But my enthusiasm won’t be bridled. Although I am only 100 pages into The Flamethrowers by Rachel Kushner, I can’t NOT talk about this book. Every page is delicious. The […]
- Aesthetics
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Equipment for Looking
Table (Tisch), by Gerard Richter No.1: First Works of 362 Artists is a book based on the premise that most artists have a piece they consider their true first painting. Editors Francesca Richer and Matthew Rosensweig attended a lecture by Robert Storr in conjunction with the Gerard Richter retrospective at MOMA in 2002. Richter had […]
Meaning Afloat
The Great Salt Lake Shorelands Preserve, Layton Utah My mother grew up less than a mile from what is now a Nature Conservancy preserve on the Great Salt Lake. This landscape has fresh water and salt marshes, ten foot high grasses, ponds and pools, mudflats and fields. The colors and textures change constantly throughout the […]