Some ideas come in tangles, the kind that don’t disengage by applying analysis and logic. One of those is ethnocentrism in art. Brewing under the surface for some time, that particular net of knotted issues came into high definition in 1984 when Thomas McEvilley mounted his vociferous attack at the MOMA for its show, “Primitivism […]
Picasso
The Circle is Never Perfect
I’m on my way to New York City for a weekend full of the best kind of distractions—a book reading of The Enthusiast by college chum Charlie Haas (a very funny and endearing book that both my partner David and I loved, something that doesn’t happen often), tea at Lady Mendl’s in Gramercy Park, the […]
- Aesthetics
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In Search of the Unified Field
Demoiselles d’Avignon, by Picasso I mentioned a book a few posts ago that I wanted to talk about in more depth. David Galenson’s Old Masters and Young Geniuses offers a very useful “map” through the historical survey of the visual arts. Galenson is an economist, not an art historian, but his passion for art runs […]
Picasso and the Ocular Rape
Pablo Picasso in his Cannes studio, 1965. Photograph: Arnold Newman/Getty Images Like many other artists (and many of them female), I take a detached and ironic stance with Picasso. There’s no arguing his impact on the trajectory of contemporary art. But thanks to the compelling book, Old Masters and Young Genuises by David W. Galenson, […]
No Asylum of One’s Own Making
Sometimes Picasso nails it (like he does in this drawing) I Sing the Body Reclining I sing the body reclining I sing the throwing back of self I sing the cushioned head The fallen arm The lolling breast I sing the body reclining As an indolent continent I sing the body reclining I sing the […]