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 […]
The Wikimuseum of Contemporary Art (aka Chelsea)
Jerry Saltz repositions Chelsea’s excess and sprawl, offering a useful reframing of the place so many love to hate: Staggering numbers of people now complain about how “big” and “out of control” the art world, especially Chelsea, is. True, 300 galleries in one neighborhood is daunting. Still, it’s absurd to claim, as many do, that […]
Architect in a Box
Akhil Sharma, from an interview with Frank Gehry: One story that Mr. Gehry told me and which made him chuckle was that of a friend who is a chiropractor and who asked him to help her lay out her office. “I love doing that kind of stuff,” Mr. Gehry said. The friend came over and […]
The real hunger
The enemy of the sublime, it turns out, is “the rush that is modernity.” There’s no time to sit and stare. “Blue Arabesque” bemoans our mortal need for industry, the demands made by flesh for food and shelter, the mind’s need of occupation. Eternally dissatisfied, caught in the relentless march of time, humankind is always […]
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Met Bodies
The holiday crush of visitors at the Met Museum was daunting, so we took refuge in the antiquities. What kept catching our eye was bodies–the timeless and fascinating seduction of the human form, ubiquitiously present in the expression of art from the very beginning. Thank you Bryce Aragon for your companionionship on this Met meander. […]
Weighing in on Beauty, part 2
A few more insights on beauty… To feel beauty is a better thing than to understand how we come to feel it. Santayana When I think of Art, I think of Beauty. Beauty is the mystery of Life. It is not in the eye, it is in the mind. In our minds there is awareness […]
Getting Hammered
But for once I wasn’t thinking in words; I was hammered by the image. I couldn’t explain what the picture expressed, what I intuited from it. But that it spoke, I had no doubt. Patricia Hampl, from Blue Arabesque Patricia Hampl’s book delves into her life changing experience of encountering a painting by Matisse at […]
Bilbao-ing Boston
The new ICA is the lastest museum version of the hit tune, “if you build it, they will come.” Bostonians have been waiting to fall in love with something architecturally new and exciting, (a population still recovering from earlier adventures in architecture that failed, like City Hall) so the ICA is awash with visitors. This […]
Weighing in on Beauty
The whole idea of beauty was not embarrassing to me, as it was for a lot of people. Its one of the things that was encouraging about Rothko, that he didn’t seem to be embarrassed about it, either. Brice Marden The best book on the subject of beauty is still Uncontrollable Beauty, edited by Bill […]