In the spirit of “everything is autobiographical,” I found a conversation (in the Telegraph) with architect Frank Gehry and filmmaker Sydney Pollack that is compelling in its honesty and reassuring in a “misery loves company” sort of way. When asked if things got easier as they got older, here are their responses: SP: It doesn’t […]
Painful Beauty
Chris Jordan’s photographic works are extremely memorable. He knows how to create retinal appeal to be sure, but he also packs a political wallop. Some of you may know of his photographs of the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, In Katrina’s Wake: Portraits of Loss from an Unnatural Disaster, published earlier this year. Circuit boards Another […]
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, […]
Good Use for Mediocre Looks
I’m a serious “not fan” of David Brooks, op ed writer for the New York Times. But his June 15th piece on the future of genetics is actually pretty funny: At this very moment thousands of people are surfing the Web looking for genetic material so their children will be nothing like me. They are […]
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 […]
Venice Redux
The New York Times’ website has a clip from Michael Kimmelman who is reporting on the Venice Biennale. He talks about feeling bored by the work at first, but the longer time he spent looking the more he liked what he saw. I was moved by his account of the Gonzalez-Torres installation: Mr. Storr [commissioner […]
Natalie Alper at Seraphin Gallery
(Image courtesy of Seraphin Gallery) Natalie Alper’s show at the Seraphin Gallery in Philadelphia was scrumptous. Big, lush strokes of metalic pigmented acrylic ribbon across a subtle underlayer of graphite marked canvas. And as her last painterly gesture, she sets this juicy field back just a bit from us by marking the surface with a […]
Richard Tuttle at Sperone Westwater
I caught the last day of Tuttle’s show at Sperone Westwater in New York last weekend. SW on West 13th Street is an open, multi-roomed white space. It could be daunting for someone whose works are often delicate and small. But Tuttle fills the galleries to the brim with intimately-sized wall pieces whose only similarity […]
Morphic Photography
Ferrofluid with permanent magnets underneath (Image courtesy of Felice Frankel) Here are two provocative examples of morphing developments in photography, especially in the age of digital (and signficantly, nearly cost free and unlimited) options. The first features Felice Frankel, author of Envisioning Science. Frankel has come a long way in bringing meangingful visual imaging into […]
Taiga in Philadelphia
All you Philadelphians (and those of you passing through town anytime between now and July 22 of this year): Terrific, terrific show of brush paintings by Ike Taiga and his wife, Tokuyama Gyokuran, at the Philadelphia Museum of Art. This is the first time their work has been featured in the United States, and once […]