Random window in downtown Charleston West Virginia Thinking and feeling. Some cultures prioritize those two concepts in that order. Others reverse it. And of course it is never a case of this or that, black or white. Every tradition has its own blending of head and heart, the external and the internal, the rational and […]
Art
Sensory Intimacy, in Art and in Architecture
Sensuality afoot at the Metropolitan Museum The gift that just keeps giving…I don’t think there is a single page of my copy of Juhani Pallasmaa’s The Eyes of the Skin that isn’t marked up and annotated. Although Pallasmaa is an architect and writing primarily about that metier, his book is full of passages that are […]
- Aesthetics
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Doubters
Crossfield 1 by Jack Tworkov (Collection of Ms. Beatrice Perry) This has been a summer of enjoying the art reviews of Sebastian Smee in the Boston Globe. (Before coming to the Globe, Smee has wrote for The Australian, the Daily Telegraph, The Guardian, The Times, The Financial Times, The Independent on Sunday, The Art Newspaper […]
- Art Making
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Leave Them Kids Alone!
Is there just TMI when it comes to the creative process? Some think so, especially in the full tilt confessionalism of blogtown. On Mind the Gap, one of my favorite art/culture blogs, Wendy Perron from Dance Magazine is quoted on this topic: There’s an annoying new trend of blogging about the process of making a […]
Cynicism’s Antidote
International man of mystery, artist Banksy I am still carrying around a big chunk of Canada’s uncivilized wildness in me, and it just doesn’t sit well with culturally-induced cynicism. And art world cynicism is cynicism of a particular stripe, leaving one to search for a few gentle but targeted exorcisms to remove that nasty taste […]
Fascination or Feeling: Pick One
“Work of Art: The Next Great Artist” contestants, judges, host and mentor. (Photo: Bravo) Sebastian Smee, a most thoughtful and open-minded art critic who writes for the Boston Globe, has written a review of the oft-discussed, highly charged topic of Bravo’s new reality art series, “Work of Art.” For many of us, making art couldn’t […]
Enabling Through Limits
Icicle propagation on a building facade in Pittsburgh: Living with constraints A few months back I posted a quote from the artist Carroll Dunham that has a great deal of meaning for me: The most basic thing to say about painting: it’s a limiting condition within which absolutely anything goes. But it’s a negative premise. […]
- Art
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The Legend of Louise Gone Viral
Annie Leibovitz’s Louise Bourgeois Louise Bourgeois’ passing has set the ripples in motion in every direction. After my eulogizing post about her work and her life yesterday, I was even more curious about the stories about her that Jerry Saltz gleaned from his increasingly muscular Facebook Tribe. And I mean muscular in the most flattering […]
We Are What We See
Gordon Waters is an artist, teacher and good friend who now lives in Sydney. I’m a big fan of his work (you can see more of it here) and of the way he thinks about seeing and looking. When he shared this recent essay with me, I thought it would be an inspiring guest post. […]
- Art Making
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The Oleaginous Zone
Bless Jerry Saltz for keeping the cultural landscape lively. His Facebook page and passionate following are legendary and talked about everywhere (and sometimes with a derision that smells to me like rank envy.) His blend of the personal with a genuine advocacy for art and artists is unique in the high visibility cultural critic realm. […]