The Art Healer

Melamid in front of his “Art Healing Ministry” An article from the New York Times provocatively titled Can a Picasso Cure You?, went viral as soon as it was published. References to it were appearing repeatedly on Facebook and Twitter all day. First of all, the title is just too delicious to not stop and […]

Water Washing Over a Shelly Back

Soul What am I doing inside this old man’s body? I feel like I’m the insides of a lobster, All thought, and all digestion, and pornographic Inquiry, and getting about, and bewilderment, And fear, avoidance of trouble, belief in what, God knows, vague memories of friends, and what They said last night, and seeing, outside […]

Keeping it Fresh

Boston Globe art critic Sebastian Smee was written a fresh and engaging review of the Fluxus show currently at the Hood Museum at Dartmouth. Generally known in the US through the work of artists and musicians like George Maciunas, John Cage and La Monte Young, the Fluxus movement capitalized on the high jinx, random access, […]

Each With Our Own Rauschenberg

Photo: Tony Cenicola/The New York Times The proliferation of memorials and remembrances of Robert Rauschenberg has begun. Michael Kimmelman’s obit in the New York Times and Michael McNay’s piece in the Guardian are both well wrought, describing this man who lived an extraordinary life and left an enormous and unforgettable body of work. But I […]

Charles Baxter: Against Epiphanies

A moment of light revelry in the Dale Chihuly exhibit at the MFA, Boston This following is an excerpt from an old (1997) Atlantic interview with Charles Baxter whose recently released collection of short stories is called Gryphon: Atlantic: In your essay “Against Epiphanies” you argue that a “character’s experiences in a story [don’t] have […]

Art and Health

Pyrre, from a new series of paintings (Graphite, gold pigment, wax medium on wood panel) Thoughts worth sharing by two artists I admire: *** Art is a guarantee of sanity. That is the most important thing I have said. –Louise Bourgeois *** What gets an artist out of bed is the possibility of actually making […]