The New York Times’ architectural critic Nicolai Ouroussoff captured it all in the title of his review: The Chanel Pavilion: Clear folly in lean times. Look how quickly everything in our lives has shifted. In just a matter of weeks, the vox populi has traded its old laissez-faire lens for a sharp edged one, one […]
Year: 2008
Equipment for Living
The back page essay in the New York Times Book Review can sometimes be the highlight of my Sunday morning newspaper tussle. And these days, just weeks from the culmination of this all-consuming political season, it is a serious tussle getting through two papers, each the thickness of small pillows. This past Sunday Lee Siegel, […]
- Aesthetics
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Gillian Jagger: In Between
Installation at Violet Ray Gallery One of the old lions of the art world, Gillian Jagger, got a high five from John Perreault’s Artopia this week. She IS amazing. Can an artist be too original, too ambitious? Gillian Jagger, in my book, is truly an original, one of the most original artists I have ever […]
Mahmoud Darwish
While I was in India last August, the beloved Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish died in a Houston hospital after complications from heart surgery. Darwish published over 20 volumes of poetry and prose about his life as a Palestinian exile. His is a singular, extraordinary voice. Darwish’s poem, “Under Siege,” is a long poem, full of […]
Inbreath, and Out
Installation views With curator Kate Fleming Friday night was the artist reception for my show at 38 Cameron Gallery in Cambridge. It was a wonderful night for me, full of feelings of gratitude, camaraderie, completion. So many elements came together to make this night memorable–Kate Fleming’s exceptional curating, the dedicated staff at 38, the lively […]
Not Tonight
A Dreaming Week Not tonight, I’m dreaming in the heart of the honeyed dark in a boat of a bed in the attic room in a house on the edge of the park where the wind in the big old trees creaks like an ark. Not tomorrow, I’m dreaming till dusk turns into dawn – […]
- Art Making
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The Thinking Gaze
The Frieze Fair, the UK’s biggest art fair, is currently open in London. A lot of the coverage of this high profile event has focused on how the global financial crisis will impact high roller art sales. That’s not the channel I’m watching, but a recent article in the Guardian by Sarah Thorton had something […]
The Long Arc
The ever clever and often contrarian Malcolm Gladwell has a piece in this week’s New Yorker that brings a refreshing perspective to the old saw about artistic genius residing primarily in the young. As I’ve gotten older I’ve paid increasingly more attention to the creative breakthroughs that happen after 50. And it may surprise you […]
Onion Love
Valentine Not a red rose or a satin heart. I give you an onion. It is a moon wrapped in brown paper. It promises light like the careful undressing of love. Here. It will blind you with tears like a lover. It will make your reflection a wobbling photo of grief. I am trying to […]
- Aesthetics
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Tara Donovan
I’ve been a big fan of Tara Donovan for several years, and I am very excited to see her new show at the ICA in Boston this week. I bought the catalog for the show in anticipation, and it is excellent–authored by Nicholas Baume, Jen Mergel and Lawrence Weschler (LW is a particular personal favorite.) […]