Cawdra 1, from a new series Maureen Dowd, the waspishly wicked op ed writer at the New York Times, has periodic moments of reverie between her excoriating defamations of politicians. In a column that appeared in December, she touched on a theme that has been a steady leitmotif of this blog: silence. As fiendish little […]
- Aesthetics
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The Proud and Futile Wake
Continuing the theme of music and its multifarious explorations… I follow with my eyes the proud and futile wake. Which, as it bears me from no fatherland away, bears me onward to no shipwreck. –Samuel Beckett, Molloy What an evocative quote to start Alex Ross‘ most recent book, Listen to This. His columns in The […]
Interstitial Delights and Other Joys
The Goat Rodeo ensemble (Chris Thile, Aoife O’Donovan, Yo-Yo Ma, Edgar Meyer and Stuart Duncan) performed Tuesday night at House of Blues. Photo: Jeremy Cowart Interstices are everywhere, in and around every field of expression. They can be found by diving into the margins between big obvious things. And sometimes those in between zones open […]
- Aesthetics
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Talking About What We Cannot
The “rag and bone shop” barn studio of my (nearly) lifelong friend, artist George Wingate. Our conversations here and in other venues over the last 40 years have been some of my favorites. My friend Robert Hanlon recently wrote me and said, “You are an expensive friend: you make me buy books!” Sorry Robert, but […]
Cling Film Conceptualism and Other Biennial Woes
From the deCordova Biennial, a work by Cambridge-based Joe Zane (Photo: Carroll and Sons Gallery)* OK. I haven’t seen the show yet. But Sebastian Smee‘s Boston Globe review of the newly-opened deCordova Biennial rang true of so many shows that I have seen lately: I thought we had outgrown smarty-pants biennials, filled with arcane and […]
We are Rashomon
Renate Ponsold, “Philip Guston, 1966, N.Y. Jewish Museum Retrospective” The past weekend was spent with my partner Dave’s family, gathering in Utah to remember his mother who passed away at 88. At her memorial service I was reminded once again that all of us have many identities and many versions of ourselves. The community where […]
Not Being Welcome
View of the Great Salt Lake near Smithson’s Spiral Jetty I was introduced to the writer Barry Lopez after reading his thoughtful introduction to John Fowles‘ timeless book, The Tree (more about that here.) One of the essays included in the collection, About This Life, describes a trip Lopez took to the remote landscape of […]
Nietzsche and Perspectivism
Illustration by Joon Mo Kang (New York Times) In John Logan‘s play Red, one of the first topics discussed by the painter with his studio assistant is The Birth of Tragedy by Friedrich Nietzsche. While Rothko waxes rhapsodic about the profundity of the ideas in the book he also takes time to brow beat his […]
- Creativity
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Quiet Please
Door into my zone of privacy, my studio I know, it is easy to feel a bit of smuggish pleasure when an above-the-fold article in the Sunday New York Times articulates just what you have been saying for years.* Certainly I am not the only artist out there voicing advocacy for the way of solitude. […]
Not Stopping, Thank You
This is a reprise of a theme I have written about here before, but I can’t not revisit it again after having recently seen vibrant, extraordinary shows by women artists in their 70’s and 80’s. Many women artists who were shorted on the visibility and acknowledgements granted their male peers are making up for lost […]