Diana Nyad arriving in Florida (Photo: REUTERS/Andrew Innerarity) I spent the past weekend quietly contemplating third acts, those moments when the extraordinary emerges from someone in their later years. Like Diana Nyad‘s momentous swim from Cuba to Florida—110 miles—at the age of 64. She became the first person to make that swim without a shark […]
Art
- Aesthetics
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The Experience, Not Pointing to it
The Graces, David Salle, 1991 (Photo: Christie’s) Journalists are their own category of beings. While I respect the ones who do their art and craft with skill, I’d rather wrestle with a big game hunter. In the words of Adam Kirsch, “Goodness, which we praise so highly in life, is infertile terrain for a writer, […]
Solnitessence
Vascular bundle of a fern rhizome (Image from a fascinating website, Urbagram which addresses a set of interlinked concepts, models, speculations, probings, essays and artefacts based on urban systems.) I first encountered Rebecca Solnit quite by accident. About ten years ago I was making my usual pilgrimage to the lusciously overstuffed and highly iconic City […]
Art and Meaning, Price-wise
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 […]
- 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 […]
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 […]
Material Ephemera
Jakara 5, part of the exhibit, “Material Ephemera,” currently on view at UC Santa Cruz I will be away for a week for my show, “Material Ephemera,” on view through May 13 at the University of California at Santa Cruz, Porter College. I am speaking at the artist reception on Saturday, April 27. I am […]
- Art Making
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The Deeper Thing
Home is where one starts from. As we grow older The world becomes stranger, the pattern more complicated Of dead and living. Not the intense moment Isolated, with no before and after, But a lifetime burning in every moment And not the lifetime of one man only But of old stones that cannot be deciphered. […]