Alexander Trauner, Street scene in Paris, 1930 (Photo: Trauner Estate) The Surrealists were fascinated by chance, by the spontaneous event that might unlock the unconscious. They wandered the streets and let those chance encounters play out. André Breton‘s novel Nadja is based on just such a random encounter, and the character Nadja quickly comes to […]
Art
- Aesthetics
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An Enormous Absence to be Filled
What catches the eye and entices the imagination is a mystery. What snags me and holds my attention is often a surprise. Why does India endlessly compel? Why are fluid dynamics and ferrofluids so mesmerizing? The landscape of the desert, what is it about that barrenness that keeps pulling me in? And what is it […]
- Art Making
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Creative DNA
From my early days: Graphix 5, from 1977 David Cope is a Professor Emeritus of Music at the University of California at Santa Cruz (my alma mater). In a segment on Radio Lab over the weekend, he described an extraordinary project he began in 1981 when he was suffering from a serious case of composer’s […]
A Heart That Wants
Golasule, on display at the Bannister Gallery, Rhode Island College Having just come off a very acknowledging opening and show, I have been thinking a great deal about that last part of the arc of art making: connecting with others. Like many of my artist friends, I spend most of my time alone in my […]
Leaving Nothing to Chance: Rothko at the Whitechapel Gallery
Mark Rothko’s Light Red Over Black © 1998 Kate Rothko Whitechapel Gallery has played a memorable role in the London visual arts scene since its founding in 1901. It was one of the first publicly-funded galleries and host to Picasso‘s Guernica in 1938 (as part of an exhibit organized by artist Roland Penrose in protest […]
- Art
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The Facts and the Truth: Lucian Freud at the National Portrait Gallery
Benefits Supervisor (“Big Sue”) Resting “There are facts,” the painter Lucian Freud once said, “and there is the truth.” The current exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery in London follows less than a year after Freud’s death at 88. The show is a stark reminder that while Freud dealt with the facts of our all-too-human […]
- Antiquities
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History in a Box
A shamsa (literal meaning, “sun”) from the Met’s new Islamic Art wing One of my favorite books right now is Between Artists: Twelve Contemporary American Artists Interview Twelve Contemporary American Artists. I have so much more to say about this book, and hopefully I will write about it in more detail later on. But right […]
Repetition, the Ritual of Obsession
The inimitable Thomas Derrah plays Mark Rothko in the Speakeasy’s New England premiere of Red, by John Logan. The play runs through February 4th. In John Logan’s Tony award-winning play Red, Mark Rothko delivers a steady stream of tough love lessons on the meaning of art to his young studio assistant. Advice is rarely this […]
Pacific Standard Time: California Dreamin’ (On a Winter’s Day)
Julius Shulman’s iconic archictectural photographs capture California’s new sense of architecture, space and lifestyle. ______ Returning to my coverage of the Pacific Standard Time art exhibit/extravaganza in Los Angeles: LACMA’s sprawling multi-building expanse is a stop I make every time I am in LA. Their flagship PST show, California Design, 1930–1965: “Living in a Modern […]
Pacific Standard Time: Light and Space
Untitled, by Douglas Wheeler, 1969. Acrylic on canvas with neon tubing ______ More on Pacific Standard Time, currently on view in Los Angeles: The Southern California artists who congregated together into a loosely defined group called Light and Space in the late 1960s have gone on to be some of my favorites. The list is […]