Deliberately low-keyed art often resembles ruins, like neolithic rather than classical monuments, amalgams of past and future, remains of something “more,” vestiges of some unknown venture. The ghost of content continues to hover over the most obdurately abstract art. The more open, or ambiguous, the experience offered, the more the viewer is forced to depend […]
Art/Language
Wisdom from Hafiz
Tripping over Joy What is the difference Between your experience of Existence And that of a saint? The saint knows That the spiritual path Is a sublime chess game with God And that the Beloved Has just made such a Fantastic Move That the saint is now continually Tripping over Joy And Bursting out in […]
Descent, and Descent
The Death of the Painter At the end of his life he had money and attention, and certain towns were known in connection to his name. He was fastidious, and wore a tie, was photographed with brushes, with a bird. under the subtropical sky he forgave the things long done. He hardly saw his children, […]
The Untidy Activities
One Art The art of losing isn’t hard to master; so many things seem filled with the intent to be lost that their loss is no disaster. Lose something every day. Accept the fluster of lost door keys, the hour badly spent. The art of losing isn’t hard to master. Then practice losing farther, losing […]
Being Derailed by Vinyl and an Unfortunate Bedspread
Alain de Botton is a witty, well honed writer (his books include How Proust Can Change Your Life and The Art of Travel) so settling into an uninterrupted read of his most recent book, The Architecture of Happiness, was something to look forward to. De Botton is not an architect or an art critic per […]
It’s All About the Light
I’m back from Mexico, but I can still feel the intense white light that burnishes the back of your eyes after just a few hours in that unabashed sunlight. Baja California Sur is a glorious combination of two large arc themes, operatic in a visual sort of way. On one hand you are never far […]
That’s Just Pinter Being Pinter
Paul Benedict and Max Wright I saw an excellent production of Harold Pinter’s 1975 play, No Man’s Land, at American Repertory Theatre in Cambridge last night. While I respect Pinter’s larger than life influence on the theatre communities of both the US and the UK, he is not one of my favorite playwrights. My actor […]
Guidelines for Creating
One of my favorite bloggers posted the rules he gives to his writing students. These excellent guidelines for writers (and readers) are applicable as well to those of us who work in the visual arts. I have extracted from his posting below, but you can read the entire piece on his blog, Joe Felso: Ruminations. […]
What is Unfolding
Beginners How could we tire of hope So much is in bud now? We have only begun to imagine justice and mercy, Only begun to envision how it might be to Live as siblings. We have only begun to know the power that is in us. So much is unfolding that must complete its gesture. […]
Certainty vs Complexity
I can’t move on, not just yet…Still thinking about Tom Stoppard’s trilogy, Coast of Utopia, and about Isaiah Berlin’s insightful Russian Thinkers, the book that launched Stoppard’s interest in writing about this historical period in the first place. Here is another quote from Aileen Kelly’s excellent introduction to Berlin’s book, a quote that is so […]