We all know about the works that don’t go well and never find their way to completion. I have a strong memory of many paintings that ate up enormous amounts of my energy, time and expensive materials but just refused to turn the corner and come back into the fold of the finished. They are […]
Month: March 2011
Yanking the Chain
Portrait of Eleanor Heartney. Pencil on paper by Phong Bui. Eleanor Heartney, art critic and author of Art & Today as well as monographs on Liza Lou, Kenneth Snelson and Roxy Paine among others, has written a short but hard hitting piece on artnet that asks many of the tough questions not being addressed in […]
Moorings in the Infinite Void
An excellent article about the Anselm Kiefer show (which I referenced in an earlier post) by poet and art critic Sue Hubbard is up on 3 Quarks Daily. It is sized for reading in one sitting, something I highly recommend to anyone interested in Kiefer, painting and/or contemporary art issues. Here’s a passage about the […]
Neko Does Dillard
Amanda Katz’s interview in the Boston Globe with personal favorite Neko Case produced this fabulous passage: Annie Dillard is my favorite because she doesn’t write like a woman or a man. You know how hunters spray that stuff on them so deer can’t smell them? It’s almost like she can become invisible, as far as […]
A Season Inside
Death and the Powers uses new performance techniques and an animated set, including a musical chandelier with dozens of Teflon strings that can be played by the performers. (Jill Steinberg) What is it about live theater that is so compelling? Don’t answer that question, just indulge me while I ask it over and over again. […]
Mind-In-Making
Monologue of Ice, 24 Hours, by Atta Kim This is a follow on to my earlier post about Grain of Emptiness at the Rubin Museum, a show that features works by artists who have been influenced and inspired by Buddhism. From the catalog introduction by Mary Jane Jacob: To make the most of experience and […]
Art and Longing
Anselm Kiefer’s ‘I Hold All the Indias in My Hand’ (Photo: Charles Duprat) Anselm Kiefer is mounting a show at the White Cube gallery in London titled Des Meeres und der Liebe Wellen (The Waves of Sea and Love). With a nod to a 19th century Austrian writer, the theme of the show references the […]
Zumthor: Essentialist of the Sensual
The Therme Vals, by Peter Zumthor (Photo: ArchNow!) Michael Kimmelman’s New York Times piece about the architect Peter Zumthor is full of nuggets worth keeping on hand, easily accessible. I first began paying attention to Zumthor after visiting his Kolumba museum in Cologne. It was such an unexpected blend of old and new (Zumthor incorporated […]
Being Awake
Nee Nej 2, from a new series of paintings I worked on this winter I’ve posted this poem here already, several years ago. It resurfaced in me this morning and it feels like a perfect fit for the mood of my mind and spirit, heavy with the events of the last week. But that undeniable […]
Emptiness is What Can’t Be Emptied Any More
Wolgang Laib and Milkstone The Rubin Museum of Himalayan Art is like the pocket-sized Shinto shrines that can be found all over Tokyo—an oasis of calm in a complicated and complexifying urban landscape. I have been a member since it opened in 2004 and spend time there on almost every trip to New York. The […]