From Agnes Martin: My interest is in experience that is wordless and silent, and in the fact that this experience can be expressed for me in artwork which is also wordless and silent. Martin also talks about how she first began using the grid in her work: When I first made a grid I happened […]
Month: January 2007
The Artist Statement: Once More, with Feeling
The comment below was posted by Elatia Harris, wisewoman and friend, in response to my earlier posting about my discomfort with artist statements. I found her point of view worthy of a front row seat. “Words and I are not friends,” Georgia O’Keeffe famously remarked. And every artist who struggles with writing an artist’s statement […]
- Art/Language
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In Search of Sardines
Why I Am Not a Painter I am not a painter, I am a poet. Why? I think I would rather be a painter, but I am not. Well, for instance, Mike Goldberg is starting a painting. I drop in. “Sit down and have a drink” he says. I drink; we drink. I look up. […]
Jason Moran
The first time I heard Jason Moran play jazz piano, it felt like I was listening to the soundtrack of my life. Maybe I should quality that: It sounded like the soundtrack of my creative life. When Same Mother was first released, I played it in my studio every day for months. It never grew […]
Artist Statements: Who Needs ‘Em?
Artists can no more speak about their work, than plants can speak about horticulture. Jean Cocteau Is it just me who finds artist statements painful to read? Yes, part of my discomfort is that artists are writing about their own work, and Cocteau has a point. I end up wincing at the awkward self-consciousness, and […]
The Uses and Abuses of Optimism/Pessimism
Randolph Nesse, responding to the Edge Question of the Year, What are you optimistic about?: Pessimism is not a problem, it is a useful emotional state. When the boat overturns a mile out to sea, optimism about one’s ability to swim to shore is deadly. When a hurricane is approaching, optimism is fine nine times […]
The Wikimuseum of Contemporary Art (aka Chelsea)
Jerry Saltz repositions Chelsea’s excess and sprawl, offering a useful reframing of the place so many love to hate: Staggering numbers of people now complain about how “big” and “out of control” the art world, especially Chelsea, is. True, 300 galleries in one neighborhood is daunting. Still, it’s absurd to claim, as many do, that […]
Architect in a Box
Akhil Sharma, from an interview with Frank Gehry: One story that Mr. Gehry told me and which made him chuckle was that of a friend who is a chiropractor and who asked him to help her lay out her office. “I love doing that kind of stuff,” Mr. Gehry said. The friend came over and […]
The real hunger
The enemy of the sublime, it turns out, is “the rush that is modernity.” There’s no time to sit and stare. “Blue Arabesque” bemoans our mortal need for industry, the demands made by flesh for food and shelter, the mind’s need of occupation. Eternally dissatisfied, caught in the relentless march of time, humankind is always […]
- Body
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Met Bodies
The holiday crush of visitors at the Met Museum was daunting, so we took refuge in the antiquities. What kept catching our eye was bodies–the timeless and fascinating seduction of the human form, ubiquitiously present in the expression of art from the very beginning. Thank you Bryce Aragon for your companionionship on this Met meander. […]