Diebenkorn has been a flagship artist for me. I saw the first showing of his Ocean Park series while I was still in college, and seeing those luminous paintings was a turning point in my aesthetic education. I have never lost interest in this work, and every time I find one hanging in a museum–they […]
Landscape and Contemporary Art: Brice Marden
In a conversation with Brice Marden, Denise Green asks if he responds to one kind of landscape more than another: I’ve been more drawn toward the trees than the landscape space. I’m more interested in picking up the energy, rather than the details of the landscape. I want to transmit that kind of energy that […]
Landscape and Contemporary Art: Agnes Martin
My work is non-objective like that of the Abstract Expressionists. But I want people, when they look at my painting, to have the same feelings they experience when they look at landscape, so I never protest when they say my work is like landscape. But it’s really about the feeling of beauty and freedom that […]
Reading the Land
Kathleen Petyarre is one of the better known Aboriginal painters, and deservedly so. Her works are both complex and yet sublimely minimalist, suggesting both the macro and the micro view of the land around her. Many of her paintings pay homage to her dreaming ancestor Arnkerrth, the thorny or mountain devil lizard. Kathleen’s paintings, like […]
Explorations in Landscape and Art
As I continue to explore how Aboriginal art expresses a deep and complex relationship to the land, I am also interested in how the art/land relationship shows up in our Western cultural tradition. Ross Bleckner, typically described as an American abstract painter, takes a lot of his imagery from his experience with nature. From an […]
Ocularcentrism
Johnny Warangkula Tjupurrula I’ve been back from Australia for two weeks, but my intoxication with Aboriginal art continues unabated. My night dreams and daytime ponderings are populated with images and senses that are not of this hemisphere. For years I have studied Aboriginal art though reproductions. As is the case with any artist whose work […]
Ramanujan as Poet: Watching for the Last Step That’s Never There
The multifaceted Ramanujan (see my earlier posts about him) is also a poet. This poem continues to explore many of the same themes as his essay, “Is there an Indian way of thinking?” Chicago Zen i Now tidy your house, dust especially your living room and do not forget to name all your children. ii […]
The Path and the Destination
Bill Viola, artist extraordinare and seeker, was asked to select objects from the Asia Society’s collection a few years ago for a show called The Creative Eye. Here he responds to the 17th century Gandavyuha Manuscript from Nepal: . . If you engage in travel you will arrive. -Ibn Arabi (1165-1240) When the need to […]
Subliminal Knowledge
The Twins, Castor and Pollux Dorothea Rockburne I think the reason I paint, or that I do whatever I do, is to deal with (I don’t think of it as unconscious) subliminal knowledge. And I do think that one has knowledge about things that haven’t occured yet, and I try to work for those kinds […]
Kabir: Swaying Between
Between the conscious and the unconscious, the mind has put up a swing: all earth creatures, even the supernovas, sway between these two trees, and it never winds down. Angels, animals, humans insects by the million, also the wheeling sun and moon; ages go by, and it goes on. Everything is swinging: heaven, earth, water, […]