While Edith Wharton had the good fortune to be born into a family of privilege, her native intelligence was another lucky card she drew from the pile that is a person’s intended lot in life. Rebecca Mead’s article about Wharton’s letters to her German governess, Anna Bahlmann, appeared in the June 29th issue of The […]
Sumptuous Failure
Sebastian Willnow/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images Failure. Just writing the letters that make up that loaded term shifts my energy. We live in a culture that is fixated on success, on winning, on being the best. When an English friend of mine first moved to the United States, this is how he described his new […]
Forché: Reunion
Reunion Just as he changes himself, in the end eternity changes him. —Mallarmé On the phonograph, the voice of a woman already dead for three decades, singing of a man who could make her do anything. On the table, two fragile glasses of black wine, a bottle wrapped in its towel. It is that room, […]
Only at Funerals, Weddings and Other Disasters: Maggi Hambling
(Photograph: Alicia Canter) Maggi Hambling, another sassy candidate for “ladette” along with Tracey Emin, is an English artist whose work I follow and whose approach to art and life is refreshingly direct. Here’s her kind of epigrammatic wit from a piece in the Guardian: Are you healthy? Early every morning, at least. I do a […]
Show Opening at Lyman-Eyer Gallery
Friday night was the opening of my ninth show with Lyman-Eyer Gallery in Provincetown. Hats off to Jim Lyman and Melissa for all they did, done with sprezzatura (“effortless effort”), to make the evening happen so smoothly and for selling three paintings. And to my carload of road trip buddies—Gerald, Karen and David—thanks for making […]
Elegies
Elegy, by William-Adolphe Bouguereau (1825-1905) who was in fact the most successful and popular painter of his era, the very embodiment of everything the Impressionists were fighting against. I’ve had some provocative back and forths with Lisa the Poet regarding what poems can and cannot do. Poetry that is about poetry: Valid? The abuse of […]
More Saltzian Logic
I’m basking in Saltzian wisdom. That would be Saltzism as in Jerry Saltz. Yesterday’s posting got me back in the groove, so here’s an excerpt from his “you’re speaking for me, man” book, Seeing Out Loud, Selected Essays: 2003-2007. (An updated version is set for release this September so hold on a few months if […]
Street Fighting Man
Jerry Saltz, critic extraordinaire Jerry Saltz, one of the better art minds around, has a lot to say about the current Biennale in Venice. And a lot of other international shows. As is often the case with Saltz, he just cuts through the bullshit and makes so much sense. His description of a particular malaise […]
When is Art?
Rooftops can be seen at the Fondazione Querini Stampalia through Mona Hatoum’s “Interior Landscapes,” with its cutouts of soldiers (Photo: Todd Heisler/The New York Times) A visually stunning slideshow of Venice during the current Biennale is available at the New York Times site. Here’s the intro lead in: Daniel Birnbaum, the curator of the 53rd […]
Per Kirkeby
“Mild Winter II” (Photo: Galerie Michael Werner) This weekend I found Laura Cumming’s review in the Guardian of the new Per Kirkeby show at the Tate Modern. (It is also posted on Slow Painting.) Well known in his homeland of Denmark, he’s a painter whose work does not get as much visibility (IMHO) everywhere else […]