De Kooning’s “Weekend at Mr. and Mrs. Krisher,” lithograph, 1970 _______________ More on De Kooning, Part 2 Another issue that emerged from spending the day at the De Kooning exhibit is a theme that I have written about here before: epic vs lyric; working large vs working small; the proclivity to grandiosity in contrast to […]
Art
- Art Making
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Scaling Solitude
The lone wise one, from the caves at Ajanta, India I increasingly apply a sliding scale to assess most situations. It is one way of skirting the tendency in contemporary dialogue to Manichaean, black and white with nothing in between, either/or thinking. This is similar to how Asperger’s Syndrome is now being evaluated—you can have […]
- Aesthetics
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Guarding the Gate
From a film about Anselm Kiefer, “Over Your Cities Grass Will Grow” I have referenced my favorite description of artists here before, but it bears repeating: Artists are continually torn between the urgent need to communicate, and the still more urgent need not to be found. —D. W. Winnicott As intimately as I know that […]
Seguinland
Marin Island, Small Point Maine, by John Marin One of my first memories of moving to the East Coast from a childhood in California was discovering Maine. My first 10 years as an expatriated West Coaster were spent in Manhattan, but almost every summer I made the trek Down East on my way to a […]
- Art Making
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Decision Fatigue, Studio Style
Something does happen in the body when you are truly out of digital reach. No cellphones, computers or televisions. And in that digital silence, life takes on a different texture. In the splendid isolation of the Maine coast, worries and concerns begin unpacking and gently floating off your bow. In the words of Yeats, peace […]
Effort-Filled Effortlessness
Petit Interieur a la table de Marbre Ronde Sebastian Smee of the Boston Globe has been doing a series all summer called Frame by Frame where he focuses his attention on one particular work of art. These pieces are brief but insightful, a serialized reminder that Boston is full of masterpieces hanging in permanent collections. […]
With an Eye Always in Reserve
Man Ray, Observatory Time, The Lovers Peabody Essex Museum’s current show, Man Ray and Lee Miller, Partners in Surrealism, is part art exhibit and part psychological portrait of a relationship between two artists. While they were only together as a couple (in a very loosely defined sense) for a few years—from 1929 to 1932—the ramifications […]
Harrows and Harvests
Cover of Gillian Welch’s last recording, The Harrow and the Harvest Life has rhythms and frequencies. Lots of them. And as I get older I am increasingly sensitized to the need to pay attention to what those are. Time to consider biodynamic agriculture? I’d say we need to consider biodynamic living. Plowing through to a […]
Standing Alone: More on Solitude
The view of Coolidge Point near Manchester Massachusetts and home to my friend Laurel, a hermit artist extraordinaire. Being a 21st century Thoreauian is a singular stance. More on the theme of isolation, solitude, quiet (see the earlier post Where it Works.) Online artists and friends Walt Pascoe, Luke Storms and Holly Friesen directed me […]
- Art Making
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Where it Works
A shelf of visual stimulants in my studio The artistic value of hermiting and the need for isolation has been an ongoing theme on this blog, so of course I was intrigued reading Tony Perrottet‘s essay in the Sunday New York Times Book Review about writers, isolation—self-inflicted and otherwise—and the discipline needed to work. (Curiously, […]