Blade, 6 x 7″, egg tempera on calfskin parchment by Altoon Sultan, an artist who is an exemplar of Deliberate Practice. I am a horse for single harness, not cut out for tandem or teamwork…Full well do I know that in order to attain any definite goal, it is imperative that one person should do […]
- Aesthetics
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Belzing Into a Better Place
Carl Belz, my kind of thinker (Photo: www.berkshirefinearts.com) How do we currently write current art’s history? How, given its elastic chronology and ever-widening geographic reach, its self-consciously elusive look, the multiple urges and identities and media it comprises? How, in the absence of a canon of artists around whom a history might be structured, its […]
More of “The Best is Next”
Note: This was originally posted on Slow Muse in March 2011. It came across my screen this morning quite unexpectedly and just seemed so timely. Again. Grand master for a lifetime: Henri Matisse, photographed by Man Ray The nature of art making over the lifetime has been a recurring theme for me these last few […]
- Aesthetics
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Going with Surprise
My daughter Kellin, clamming at Duxbury Some people are more certain of everything than I am of anything. —Robert Rubin, In an Uncertain World Susan Cain used this quote at the start of one of her chapters in the very engaging Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World that Can’t Stop Talking. I am […]
Fragments, and a Coming Together
I have written about Mary Ruefle’s book of essays, Madness, Rack and Honey so many times here that I thought it would be apropos to share one of her poetic ventures as well. I keep my copy of the slight but beguiling A Little White Shadow nearby. It is a visual and poetic pleasure to […]
Wise Ones
George Saunders (Photo: The Guardian) Is it just my bias or is it truly hard to find an artist who is a gifted creator and also wise? Another personal bias (since we’re divulging these proclivities): It is my experience that wisdom comes from those who have figured out how to get out beyond the distracting […]
Solnitessence
Vascular bundle of a fern rhizome (Image from a fascinating website, Urbagram which addresses a set of interlinked concepts, models, speculations, probings, essays and artefacts based on urban systems.) I first encountered Rebecca Solnit quite by accident. About ten years ago I was making my usual pilgrimage to the lusciously overstuffed and highly iconic City […]
- Aesthetics
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Seeing as Making
David Esterly* studied philosophy at Harvard and Cambridge before the trajectory of his life changed and he became a professional limewood carver. In his book, The Lost Carving: A Journey to the Heart of Making, Esterly describes a challenging year at Hampton Court where he had been hired—an American no less—to repair the fire-damaged wood […]
Art and Meaning, Price-wise
Venus, by Ken Price I have had many exchanges over the years with other artists about the issue of meaning in art. It’s a topic that is continental in size and comes with a similar geographic diversity. Like large land masses, meaning can accommodate the needs of the “meaning is everything” crowd as well as […]
Subliming Vessel: Matthew Barney at the Morgan Library
Matthew Barney (Photo: Private collection, Courtesy of the artist and Gladstone Gallery, New York and Brussels) The Cremaster by Matthew Barney, a five part film cycle, was shown repeatedly during a retrospective of Barney’s work at the Guggenheim Museum in 2003. I drove down from Boston three times to see it and dragged my friends, […]