In his article in The Smart Set, Michael Lind writes about how Millennials are disinterested in the fine arts: “…Trends in American painting ever since the plate paintings of Julian Schnabel are not a big subject of debate among Millenials. As far as I can tell, very few college-educated people under the age of 50…
Paintings, Shop Talk, Studio Corner, Uncategorized
In the studio 6/7/15
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Grandfather was turned against the wall for a long time; I just didn’t like the direction it was going. Since then I’ve completely altered the background by adding the landscape through the window, and the green curtains. I wanted to make a painting that didn’t look ‘modern.’ I used to think about categories of subject…
Bio, Uncategorized, Vermilion, OH
The Betty Jane
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It’s been a slow boating season so far. The Betty Jane has some serious leaks in the fresh water system. (You can see the bilge water pouring out at the bow.) When I first discovered the water, I feared there was a serious problem, such as a compromised hull. Luckily, the problem with the fresh…
aesthetics, Culture
What has happened to art criticism?
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In his Spiked article, What has happened to art criticism?, J.J. Charlesworth investigates the decline of art criticism over the past 30 or so odd years. He misses professional, culturally alert, independent, and historically informed criticism. Criticism has been replaced by what he calls ‘art writing.’ Art writing is that amorphous, subjective, non-judgmental style one sees everywhere in the art…
aesthetics, Art Museums, Culture, Politics
‘Works of art may be offensive”
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I read this laugh-out-loud piece in the NY Times. The blog post by Jeffrey Kindley is directed toward the college-age population of delicate hothouse plants who require trigger warnings on art and other cultural artifacts. Columbia university students who found Ovid’s Metamorphosis ‘offensive and triggering’ provide a recent example. Surrounded by Disturbing Art I was triggered…
Status
Problems solved in dreams.
I have prophetic dreams, only they NEVER pan out–they’re just memorable dreams. My wife, on the other hand, has insights and flashes that DO pan out. It’s eerie.
Problems are sometimes solved in my dreams. Does that happen to you? Waking up in an eureka! moment when the solution is crystal clear? I attribute this to my penchant for letting things percolate. Some problems, in life and art, take time to work out. As I fall asleep, I reflect on a problem in the hope that its solution will come to me while I sleep. Sometimes this technique works; sometimes it doesn’t. Sometimes the solution comes to me even when I don’t prime the pump. That happened last night.
I dream of paintings–new paintings–too. When that happens, I rush to the studio to get as much down as I can before I forget about it. I’ve finished paintings while under the impulse of a dream.
Paintings, Shop Talk, Studio Corner, Uncategorized
In the studio 5/17/15
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Yesterday’s session with Taking Note was my 6th, according to my trusty studio journal. It’s coming along–so far so good. With such a simple design, the drawing has to carry the load. Well, that’s true for all my paintings, but in the more complicated ones there are other things that can make or break them, such…
Link
The Whitney Museum recently opened its new digs in Chelsea. My first (tiny) apartment in New York was in Chelsea (20th & 8th), of course, that was before Chelsea became an art center. I plan to pay my first visit this summer.
I read a slashing review, A Monument to Tastelessness, by THEODORE DALRYMPLE in the City Journal. Dalrymple is a doctor and an author. I enjoyed his book about Africa, Zanzibar to Timbuktu. The review, subtitled The new Whitney Museum looks like a torture chamber, is scathing. He also excoriates Michael Kimmelman’s piece in the NY Times, A New Whitney, saying, “I have seldom read a piece of criticism in which the fundamental question was avoided in so pusillanimous a fashion.”
As I have yet to visit the museum, I’ll withhold comment. Dalrymple is an incisive thinker. His experience as a doctor to the poorer classes in Africa and Europe infuse his writing with an interesting perspective, although his liberalism is old fashioned by today’s standards, That’s fine by me because so is mine.
Here is a different review–a typical art world fawning-type review–of the new museum.