Small art featured in Brett Baker’s online show of small works: Blades, 6 x 7 inches, egg tempera on calfskin parchment stretched on panel, by Altoon Sultan. (This painting hangs in my house and pleases me deeply every day.) Artist Lori Ellison posted the following essay on Facebook in response to notice of Brett Baker’s […]
Author: Deborah Barlow
- Aesthetics
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Charting Territory
Harry Beck’s map of the London Underground. With slight modifications and changes, his original design is still the lingua franca of transporation mapping. Our minds create maps of every place we go. Apparently all animals do this, not just us. And those cognitive maps are not necessarily accurate or drawn to scale. Like the iconic […]
West Coasting
Sally and Meehan I am back home in Northern California for the wedding of my beloved friend, documentarian extraordinaire Sally Rubin, with her partner Meehan Rasch. I will also be spending time with several artist friends including Holly Downing* and Tim Rice**. I am back on Slow Muse after October 1. Laos III, by Holly […]
- Aesthetics
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Whole Body Art
Close up view of one of my recent paintings A book I have referenced here before is From Head to Hand: Art and the Manual, by David Levi Strauss. (Previous posts referencing the book highlight artists Ursula von Rydingsvard and Donald Lipski.) Strauss writes in a way that his responses to a particular artist’s work […]
Hybrid Vigor
Najeev 1, from a new painting series I found an extraordinary essay by Steve Baker titled “To go about noisily: clutter, writing and design.” I’ve been mulling over the issues he raises for several weeks and I am still formulating my thoughts on this topic. Clutter: It’s a much more complex topic than those hoarder […]
Enchantment
Gerhard Richter‘s abstract paintings are a visual feast of complexity and depth. Using a massive squeegee that he carefully pulls across an enormous paint-laden surface, Richter enables the imagery to bubble up from below. The visual effect is stunning. While a whole generation of painters have emulated his oleaginously lush technique, nobody does it quite […]
Riding the Continuum
Rhizom, by The Fundamental Group (Photo: The Fundamental Group) The Fundamental Group, an up and coming Berlin architecture and design studio started by Gunnar Rönsch and Stephen Molloy, was named after the concept from algebraic topology that describes complicated 3D surfaces. The Fundamental Group’s mathematically inspired approach to design would appear to be in opposition […]
Begin Again
John Cage, from “William Gedney Photographs and Writings” One of the most important books of my summer was about John Cage: Where the Heart Beats: John Cage, Zen Buddhism, and the Inner Life of Artists, by Kay Larson. (Read my initial post about the book here.) I have been a long time fan and admirer […]
Visual Thinking
Ludwig Wittgenstein Two recently encountered passages have provoked my thoughts about the power—and what may be a slow decline in—visual thinking. Ray Monk‘s article in the New Statesman, Ludwig Wittgenstein’s passion for looking, not thinking, points to Ludwig Wittgenstein‘s unique visual orientation. (He is compared with his fellow philosopher Bertrand Russell who, much to his […]
- Art Making
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Field Work
The Sower, by Vincent Van Gogh My longtime readers are familiar with my view of an art making world that is so striated that the layers often never even touch each other. For the alien who arrives on earth wanting to crack the code on what is going on with these humans and contemporary art, […]