The many faces of India: A street in Mamallapuram in Southern India, 2008 The heart loves what it loves, and mine keeps coming back to India. So how grateful I am that after four years I am returning again. I could try to explain my attraction but that seems unnecessary given the land’s long history […]
- Aesthetics
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The Constellation of Things
The Yearling, by Donald Lipski, now installed in Denver In David Levi Strauss’ book, From Head to Hand, he begins the chapter on sculptor Donald Lipski with three quotes and this paragraph: The only works of art America has given are her plumbing and her bridges. –The Blind Man (1917) Why not look at the […]
- Aesthetics
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The Eye is Part of the Mind
Untitled (Seven Mountains) by Ursula von Rydingsvard (Photo by Ben Aqua) In the introduction to David Levi Strauss‘ book From Head to Hand: Art and the Manual, he points out that “in an increasingly mediated world, one of the most radical things artists can do is to use their hands.” He goes on to quote […]
- Art Making
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Creative DNA
From my early days: Graphix 5, from 1977 David Cope is a Professor Emeritus of Music at the University of California at Santa Cruz (my alma mater). In a segment on Radio Lab over the weekend, he described an extraordinary project he began in 1981 when he was suffering from a serious case of composer’s […]
A Heart That Wants
Golasule, on display at the Bannister Gallery, Rhode Island College Having just come off a very acknowledging opening and show, I have been thinking a great deal about that last part of the arc of art making: connecting with others. Like many of my artist friends, I spend most of my time alone in my […]
Acquire/Inquire: Bannister Gallery, Providence Rhode Island
Here are a few shots from last night’s opening for Inquire/Acquire* at the Bannister Gallery. Kudos to curator James Montford for bringing cohesion to four very different bodies of work. And thanks to all those who braved the snow in Boston (just as we were beginning to think we’d slide past this winter without any) […]
The Lure of the Minimal
John Pawson’s monastery in Bohemia The gap that exists between theory and practice is a challenge in so many pursuits, and Minimalist architecture is just one that struggles with that perennial problem. In 1908, Adolf Loos wrote a memorable essay, “Ornament and Crime,” that advocated for a more streamlined aesthetic. And yet to create that […]
Leaving Nothing to Chance: Rothko at the Whitechapel Gallery
Mark Rothko’s Light Red Over Black © 1998 Kate Rothko Whitechapel Gallery has played a memorable role in the London visual arts scene since its founding in 1901. It was one of the first publicly-funded galleries and host to Picasso‘s Guernica in 1938 (as part of an exhibit organized by artist Roland Penrose in protest […]
- Aesthetics
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Ken Price, The Glenn Gould of Object Makers
Ken Price: Bolivar, Fired and painted clay Ken Price passed away last week. He was one of the group of under-appreciated West Coast artist from the 60s whose works are finally being given the visibility they have long deserved. (This has been helped immeasurably by the mega-exhibit called Pacific Standard Time which I wrote about […]
Hockney at the Royal Academy, London
Earlier Hockney: Man Ray, 1973 Winter Timber (2009), from David Hockney’s A Bigger Picture exhibition at the Royal Academy. Photo: Jonathan Wilkinson Seeing (and writing about) the David Hockney show, A Bigger Picture, at the Royal Academy was (and is) hard. In some ways I have a sentimental place for Hockney that dates back to […]