Boston Globe art critic Sebastian Smee was written a fresh and engaging review of the Fluxus show currently at the Hood Museum at Dartmouth. Generally known in the US through the work of artists and musicians like George Maciunas, John Cage and La Monte Young, the Fluxus movement capitalized on the high jinx, random access, […]
Each With Our Own Rauschenberg
Photo: Tony Cenicola/The New York Times The proliferation of memorials and remembrances of Robert Rauschenberg has begun. Michael Kimmelman’s obit in the New York Times and Michael McNay’s piece in the Guardian are both well wrought, describing this man who lived an extraordinary life and left an enormous and unforgettable body of work. But I […]
Charles Baxter: Against Epiphanies
A moment of light revelry in the Dale Chihuly exhibit at the MFA, Boston This following is an excerpt from an old (1997) Atlantic interview with Charles Baxter whose recently released collection of short stories is called Gryphon: Atlantic: In your essay “Against Epiphanies” you argue that a “character’s experiences in a story [don’t] have […]
Art and Health
Pyrre, from a new series of paintings (Graphite, gold pigment, wax medium on wood panel) Thoughts worth sharing by two artists I admire: *** Art is a guarantee of sanity. That is the most important thing I have said. –Louise Bourgeois *** What gets an artist out of bed is the possibility of actually making […]
Other Worlds
Warren Burger, by George Augusta My friend Carl Belz has written about his encounters with portrait art while heading up the Rose Museum at Brandeis a few years back. He was asked to recommend a portrait painter for the retiring chairman of the University’s Board of Trustees. ” I immediately suggested Andy Warhol,” Belz writes, […]
Going with Unexplained
A view from The Donkey Show (Midsummer Night’s Dream meets 80’s disco) ____ Nature does not stop to grieve, an observation that since time began has either appalled or inspired the human beings who have made it. Poppies sprout in bloody battlefields, and birds sing outside death-room windows. On one hand, the big thing that […]
Winter, the Unfinished, The Abandoned
Spring blossoms at the Arnold Arboretum, Boston *** The Sudden Spring The coyote had just spoken and lay down to rest in a snowdrift. March, like a fly awakened too early, droned between somnolence and a furious boredom. No one remembers the autumnal prophet, teller of drowsy stories to be continued… Winter, the unfinished, the […]
- Art Making
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Thingness
Kyaiktiyo Pagoda, featured in the film MANA: Beyond Belief, is a Buddhist pilgrimage site in Burma. Tradition claims that the boulder was placed on the cliff 2500 years ago by Burmese spirits. A gilded boulder sits on top and is believed to contain a hair of the Buddha. ______ This is a Wonderful Poem Come […]
- Books
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We’re All Bozos on This Bus*
I live with the nonchalance of the witless, clutching at unsupported convictions on matters political, religious, and social, about which we can know nothing except what we interpret from our impaired position behind the curtain, everything mediated by the brain, everything adrift in the cosmos. This dark edged sentence appeared in a recent email from […]
Yield and Surrender
Yet another excerpt from the interview with Ted Kooser (see the post below as well) in Guernica magazine. This one is about yield: If you can find two poems in a book, it could be a pretty good book for you. You know, two poems you really like. There are some poets who are fairly […]