Kieferland

Anselm Kiefer in the documentary, “Over Your Cities Grass Will Grow.” (Photo: Alive Mind Cinema) _____ Rubble is the future. Because everything that is passes. There is a wonderful chapter in Isaiah that says: grass will grow over your cities…Isaiah sees the city and the different layers over it, the grass, and then another city, […]

Cultural Dreamings

Hans Hollein, façade from Strada Novissima, The Presence of the Past, 1980. Biennale of Architecture, Venice. From the show at the Victoria & Albert Museum Reviewing a new show of architecture at the Victoria & Albert museum, Postmodernism: Style and Subversion, Guardian writer Hari Kunzru describes a movement that has its roots in the theoretical […]

Guarding the Gate

From a film about Anselm Kiefer, “Over Your Cities Grass Will Grow” I have referenced my favorite description of artists here before, but it bears repeating: Artists are continually torn between the urgent need to communicate, and the still more urgent need not to be found. —D. W. Winnicott As intimately as I know that […]

The Gershwins’ Porgy and Bess

Adaptation and interpretation. It’s an issue that visual artists only deal with occasionally. But this is a topic that looms large in musical performances and in theater. And what is given license at any given time to be adapted and “updated” is often not clear cut or logical. The keepers of our collective theatrical wisdom—from […]

Vogel 50×50

Richard Tuttle’s matrix of drawings on display at the Portland Museum; closer view The inimitable Vogels (of Herb and Dorothy fame and featured in earlier posts here and here) have initiated Vogel 50×50, a program that has placed 2500 pieces from their collection in individual museums in each of the 50 states. Fifty Works for […]