Jerry Saltz has written another memorable jeremiad about the ART WORLD (which has to be written in all caps these days given its out of proportion status) in the Village Voice this week. Seeing Dollar Signs: Is the art market making us stupid? Or are we making it stupid?, offers a point of view that […]
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Quiet Disasters
Fall of Icarus, by Breughel Musee des Beux Arts About suffering they were never wrong, The Old Masters; how well, they understood Its human position; how it takes place While someone else is eating or opening a window or just walking dully along; How, when the aged are reverently, passionately waiting For the miraculous birth, […]
Flow Comes to Town
The positive psychology movement contends that people are most content when they are fully engaged in a task for which they are well suited. Mihaly Csikzentmihalyi calls this state flow. According to his research, the best way to achieve happiness is to view it as a “by-product of absorption.” And as Csikzentmihalyi points out, it […]
Hiding, and Seeking
From Adam Zagajewski’s poem, The Self: It is small and no more visible than a cricket in August. It likes to dress up, to masquerade, as all dwarves do. It lodges between granite blocks, between serviceable truths. It even fits under a bandage, under adhesive. Neither custom officers nor their beautiful dogs will find it. […]
The Innocence of Trees
From Agnes Martin: My interest is in experience that is wordless and silent, and in the fact that this experience can be expressed for me in artwork which is also wordless and silent. Martin also talks about how she first began using the grid in her work: When I first made a grid I happened […]
The Artist Statement: Once More, with Feeling
The comment below was posted by Elatia Harris, wisewoman and friend, in response to my earlier posting about my discomfort with artist statements. I found her point of view worthy of a front row seat. “Words and I are not friends,” Georgia O’Keeffe famously remarked. And every artist who struggles with writing an artist’s statement […]
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In Search of Sardines
Why I Am Not a Painter I am not a painter, I am a poet. Why? I think I would rather be a painter, but I am not. Well, for instance, Mike Goldberg is starting a painting. I drop in. “Sit down and have a drink” he says. I drink; we drink. I look up. […]
Jason Moran
The first time I heard Jason Moran play jazz piano, it felt like I was listening to the soundtrack of my life. Maybe I should quality that: It sounded like the soundtrack of my creative life. When Same Mother was first released, I played it in my studio every day for months. It never grew […]
Artist Statements: Who Needs ‘Em?
Artists can no more speak about their work, than plants can speak about horticulture. Jean Cocteau Is it just me who finds artist statements painful to read? Yes, part of my discomfort is that artists are writing about their own work, and Cocteau has a point. I end up wincing at the awkward self-consciousness, and […]
The Uses and Abuses of Optimism/Pessimism
Randolph Nesse, responding to the Edge Question of the Year, What are you optimistic about?: Pessimism is not a problem, it is a useful emotional state. When the boat overturns a mile out to sea, optimism about one’s ability to swim to shore is deadly. When a hurricane is approaching, optimism is fine nine times […]