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 […]
Art
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 […]
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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 […]
Pacific Standard Time: Begin the Rewrite
Ocean Park No. 67, 1973, Richard Diebenkorn. The Doris and Donald Fisher Collection courtesy of The Estate of Richard Diebenkorn Ocean Park No. 26, 1970, Richard Diebenkorn. Nerman Family Collection courtesy of The Estate of Richard Diebenkorn Pacific Standard Time, the sprawling art exposition that includes encampments at 60 different venues in the Los Angeles […]
The Other Coast, Reconsidered
Buster, by Billy Al Bengston (Courtesy of the artist) When I was coming of age as an artist in California in the late 60s and early 70s, the culture of contemporary art was centered unquestionably in New York City. Art Forum, Art in America et al gave small and occasional nods to what was happening […]