John Cage, from “William Gedney Photographs and Writings” One of the most important books of my summer was about John Cage: Where the Heart Beats: John Cage, Zen Buddhism, and the Inner Life of Artists, by Kay Larson. (Read my initial post about the book here.) I have been a long time fan and admirer […]
Art Making
- 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, […]
- Aesthetics
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Entrance
Wasp’s nest: Entrances abound, but are hidden Not Writing A wasp rises to its papery nest under the eaves where it daubs at the gray shape, but seems unable to enter its own house. –Jane Kenyon This poem is so succinct and so artfully constructed. Haven’t we all had that daubing frustration of madly circling […]
- Art Making
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Scully Nuggets
Two from Sean Scully: The power of a painting has to come from the inside out, not the outside in. It’s not just an image; it’s an image with a body, and that body has to contain its spirit. A painting, really, is made by its reason for being there. What’s behind it decides everything. […]
- Art Making
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Priming
Close up view of a painting by Yayoi Kusama on view in Chelsea. This is a gentle reminder for me of the rhythm of the hand moving, the ritual of a mark being made A preoccupying theme for me lately has been the compelling (and at times, compulsive) nature of art making as well as […]
Making, Matter and Unity
“Surfaces seduce and entities evolve: It is exquisite getting lost in the mysterious pageant of the making.” (Close up of a recent piece) I spend a lot of time alone. But being isolated for most of the day doesn’t mean the mind stops chattering. It chatters constantly, but the dialogue is either internal (between entities […]
Sunging
Image of a house on a mountain top, Sung Dynasty Guston could easily play with the notion that the working artist aspired to be a demigod and, as such, would have to experience a peculiar kind of hubris—Guston’s own idiosyncratic hubris. This was one of his most distinctive leitmotifs, expressed in another way when he […]
- Art Making
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Doubting and Other Chance Encounters
Alexander Trauner, Street scene in Paris, 1930 (Photo: Trauner Estate) The Surrealists were fascinated by chance, by the spontaneous event that might unlock the unconscious. They wandered the streets and let those chance encounters play out. André Breton‘s novel Nadja is based on just such a random encounter, and the character Nadja quickly comes to […]
Moonscaping
George Wingate viewing “Candara” at the show in Providence (photo by Robert Hanlon) George Wingate, artist and life long friend made a trip down from Wenham to see the show at Rhode Island College, “Acquire/Inquire.” He sent me the photograph above with these simple words: standing before the moon. Oh that I could evoke that […]
- Aesthetics
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The Eye is Part of the Mind
Untitled (Seven Mountains) by Ursula von Rydingsvard (Photo by Ben Aqua) In the introduction to David Levi Strauss‘ book From Head to Hand: Art and the Manual, he points out that “in an increasingly mediated world, one of the most radical things artists can do is to use their hands.” He goes on to quote […]