Bless Jerry Saltz for keeping the cultural landscape lively. His Facebook page and passionate following are legendary and talked about everywhere (and sometimes with a derision that smells to me like rank envy.) His blend of the personal with a genuine advocacy for art and artists is unique in the high visibility cultural critic realm. […]
Something to Say
Green glass in my studio window Continuing on a theme of Fitzgerald… To have something to say is a question of sleepless nights and worry and endless ratiocination of subject – of endless trying to dig out the essential truth, the essential justice. As a first premise you have to develop a conscience and if […]
- Creativity
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Fitzgerald and Creativity
F. Scott Fitzgerald I have never been keen on the idea of a creativity elite. Since 1959 when C. P. Snow wrote his legendary essay “Two Cultures” about the breakdown in communication between the sciences (“the white coats”) and the humanities, other us/them dichotomies have emerged. Creativity is one of those, highlighted in recent books […]
Horses Into Ghosts
[the horses] I wanted to ask how do I do this how do I keep doing this how do I stop I once required the moon no once your voice moved the moon for hours across the skylight and the stove burned itself out and the stars followed suit eight hours passed and the moon […]
Cashew Fridays May Be What’s Keeping Him (So Keep Buying The Nuts!)
(Photo: Gabriela Maj/Getty Images) The rumors are not true. Jerry Saltz is neither leaving New York magazine nor is he shutting down Saltz Nation on his infamous Facebook page. This was his notice on the NY Mag site: Jerry Saltz Responds to Rumors of His Departure Yes, the rumors are true, and I’m leaving New […]
Choose Ye This Day
Outside a Hindu shrine in Maharashtra, India In the day-to-day trenches of adult life, there is actually no such thing as atheism. There is no such thing as not worshipping. Everybody worships. The only choice we get is what to worship. –David Foster Wallace If the world were merely seductive, that would be easy. If […]
More Advocacy Like This, Please
Dutch architects MVRDV’s design for a cantilevered holiday home in Suffolk, UK. We all admire heroic acts, but this is one I hadn’t expected. Author Alain de Botton (Consolations of Philosophy, The Art of Travel, among others) is commissioning architects to build purposefully experimental homes that he will make available for holiday rentals on a […]
Goes On Like Buddah
(Image: Courtesy of Sally Reed, Butter and Lightning) One of my favorite set of brains and eyes, Sally Reed, has initiated her first foray into the personal blogdominium with her new site Butter and Lightning. I’m excited. She’s my kind of thinker, with a wicked sense of the absurd while still keeping her heart wide […]
- Aesthetics
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Outside the Lines
Siva drinking World Poison, Nandalal Bose (Photo: National Gallery of Modern Art, New Delhi) I have been participating in an ongoing conversation with my friend Supratik Bose about the nature of creativity. Over dinner a while ago he told me he didn’t believe something could be deemed creative unless it demonstrated market value. Bose, trained […]
Hitting High Notes
After the St. Francis Dam Concrete mostly, fractured spans of handrails in their new rust, insistent brown rabbits. Downstream from the floodwave, now someone’s house, green lawn, the sun thick with its own agenda. More rabbits. Ghosts from here to the ocean though I know days aren’t made from holding back and watching bunnies. To […]