Movie review: Nightcrawler
For an artist, Nightcrawler is a fascinating movie. Nightcrawler, released in 2014 and starring Jake Gyllenhaal, is about a bottom feeder, Lou Bloom (Gyllenhaal), who discovers the world of crime…
Turpentine diaries 3/3/19
Bah! I am grinding my way (trying to anyway) through a volume of Clement Greenberg’s essays. In case you haven’t heard of him, Greenberg was once considered the preeminent writer…
Ketman
People who are out of step with the prevailing authority practice ketman to avoid trouble. Ketman is a way to dissemble. At a minimum people practicing ketman must self-censor their…
David Hockney at 77
David Hockney at 77 is still in the game. In a long, sympathetic article in The Guardian, Hockney maintains that he is and has always been a workaholic. I have no…
Avant-garde and kitsch
In this podcast, I look at Clement Greenberg’s influential article from 1939, ‘Avant-Garde and Kitsch.’
Woolybear
The annual Woolybear Festival in Vermilion was yesterday. The weather wasn’t perfect but that didn’t stop 100,000 festival-goers from converging on the little town of 10,000. I went armed with…
The new Whitney
The new Whitney. 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…
Podcast-academic art
I pick up last episode’s discussion about Clement Greenberg and the avant-garde and kitsch, and talk about academic art. Artists mentioned: Gerome, David, Bouguereau, Ingres, and Thomas Couture.