Images of emergence: Hall’s Pond in January The gestation of a project or a body of work—how it starts, forms and then comes into existence—is mysterious and unpredictable. Some jump into their fullness quickly, in a flash. My poet friend Nicole Long describes this process as egg-like: A whole thing that emerges out of us […]
The Innocence of Trees
[Note: Recently I went in search of a particular post on Slow Muse from several years ago. In the process I found so many others that dealt with topics that are still, all these years later, speaking to me. So I have decided to start a recycling series. From time to time I’ll share content […]
Virtuosity
Painting at Lascaux After writing Sunday’s post I kept being nagged by this additional passage from Denis Dutton‘s New York Times op ed piece: One trait of the ancestral personality persists in our aesthetic cravings: the pleasure we take in admiring skilled performances. From Lascaux to the Louvre to Carnegie Hall — where now and […]
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Sagacity
Thomas Nozkowski, Untitled 7-95, 1997, oil on linen on panel, 16×20”. (Image courtesy of Max Protetch Gallery) My two major sage sources over the last few months have been Philip Guston and Thomas Nozkowski. Both artists are recognized for being extremely intelligent and cerebral; yet the power of their work is visceral and immediate. For […]
Handmadeness
Denis Dutton, the recently deceased author of The Art Instinct: Beauty, Pleasure, and Human Evolution, wrote an op-ed piece in the New York Times a few years ago in response to the auctioning of one of Damien Hirst‘s infamous medicine cabinets: The pricey medicine cabinet belongs to a tradition of conceptual art: works we admire […]
Energizing the Space
Detail view of David’s Death of Marat. Brussels, Royal Museums of Fine Arts. The background was intentionally unfinished. In the preface to a book of poetry by Dylan Thomas, the poet said he was going to publish this group of poems so he would have to quit futzing with them. Once in print, he would […]
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Letter to a Young Artist
Thomas Nozkowski, Untitled (7-72), 1995, Oil on linen on panel, 40.6 x 50.8 cm, Max Protecht Collection, © Thomas Nozkowski / Courtesy PaceWildenstein, New York. Some people have moderation built in, like a personality module fully loaded from birth. Those are the lucky souls who can sit in front of a bowl of chocolate covered […]
Nozkowski: Working from a Feeling
Thomas Nozkowski, Untitled (7-107, LA III), 1998, oil on linen on panel, 22×28” (Photo: BOMB Magazine) Thomas Nozkowski is an artist I follow and have been interested in for some time. But I began diggging deeper into his work and his point of view after reading the review of his show at Senior & Shopmaker […]
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A Stop Between Uncertainties
Fragment of “Gareska”, part of a recent painting series Most of us know that feeling of rubberbanding: the rapidity with which you can move from loving what you are doing to finding it completely unacceptable. The writer Anne Lamott (who has written in depth about writing itself in books like Bird by Bird) advises her […]
The Micchelli Litmus Test
William Powhida, “A Guide to the Market Oligopoly System” (Photo courtesy of Felix Salmon) The artisphere has been awash these last few weeks with opinions about art fairs, the brazen commercialization of fine art, changes in powerbrokering, and what’s hot. These topics are perennials that come and go like the cold virus that takes up […]