One of the many unexpected gifts that has come to me from blogging these last three years is connecting with like-minded people who I would never have met with just my physical presence as a vehicle. One of the best networkers I know writes a blog called Virgin in the Volcano and it was through […]
Wallace Shawn’s Pugnacious Wisdom
Wallace Shawn has been a figure of admiration for me ever since I saw My Dinner with Andre, a movie that exemplifies Robert Benchley’s claim that the world is divided into two groups—those that divide the world into two groups, and those that don’t. My experience is that anyone who knows the film either loves […]
Over the Top, and Then Some
Some critics claim that everything is autobiographical. That’s a thought I keep at the back of my mind and try on for size when I’m reading, looking or listening. And as online sensibilities and trends keep moving the markers on the borderline between what is public and what is private, I’m advocating for permission to […]
Edith Wharton: Portrait of the Artist as a Young Woman
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 […]