A lot of people are talking about Holland Cotter’s recent article in the Times, about a return to real art values indicated by the current economic collapse. Most seem to be saying “hear hear!” At least they are out here in the hinterlands, which is funny, because no one here makes any real money off [...]
I already burned most of my bridges in Dallas, demonstrating absolutely zero aptitude for political correctness on this blog, so let me not pretend now to hide any sense of my mild, if still distastefully smug satisfaction on just reading of the demise of Gerald Peters Gallery’s Dallas operation (he’s still said to be pedalling [...]
Denver was a great town to grow up in (or near), but I intuited early on (by, like, age 5) that the place was long on open space and natural beauty, and short on cultural refinement. But heck, less than a hundred years before I was born (right downtown in actual fact), Denver City was [...]
I recently made passing comment on the pitfalls of art/mental jadedness. But jade is actually gorgeous. They used to wrap Chinese emperor corpses in it to insure immortality. A pinch of well honed skepticism can be the antidote to many forms of muddledness. But in the interest of keeping the heart humidity from becoming [...]
A week in Dallas was just enough to leave with the bloom still on the rose of my affection. We headed in one long day’s drive to Abiquiu, New Mexico. We spent a few days in a stone house down the road from Richard Tuttle, whose house I heard cost a fortune, and now shines [...]
I recently got back to Chicago from three weeks on the road. The semi-annual Christmas trip home to Denver, by way of Dallas for other family and friends, with a sanitizing few days in Northern New Mexico. I casually tossed in a couple museum visits. Seeing art can sometimes seem more like work, which is [...]
Franklin Jones, aka Adi Da, died on Thanksgiving at his compound in Fiji, age 69. I had written about his adventures in art a few months back. He apparently keeled over from a massive coronary, while making art no less. A message released by his groupies said that he would lie, or more properly sit, [...]
Franklin Jones, aka Adi Da, died on Thanksgiving. I had written about his adventures in art a few months back. He apparently keeled over from a massive coronary while making art. A letter from his groupies said that he would lie, or more properly sit, in state for two weeks, unless he started to decompose [...]
I just saw two shows at one museum that were nearly perfect foils for one another, each helping inform and reveal the strengths and weaknesses of the other. The MCA seems to be rolling out one art world A-list superstar exhibition after another. The highly publicized (if generally loathed) Koons show was up from Spring [...]
Hey everyone. Long time no blah. I simply have just had nothing to report. Sure, I’ve seen some shows n shit, and I’ve liked some stuff, and not. Teaching has been chewing up the weeks and months, and the little artsy bastards often amaze. Maybe its the Barack effect, but I’ve been close to tears [...]
During the day, when my fingers can’t take zip-tying steel cable anymore (the latest sculptural (mis?)adventure), I’ve been reading Gaston Bachelard. At night, after zazen, I’m reading the autobiography of the first Zen master to live and teach in the US, Sokei-an Sasaki. The overlap is striking. “Knowing must be accompanied by an [...]
Dallas-ites and friends David and Amanda Hanson were up in Chicago this weekend. David used to work for Disney, and later Paul McCarthy. Now he designs robots, recently collaborated with David Byrne, and once again was just featured at Chicago’s Wired-magazine sponsored Nextfest . Nextfest is the preeminent US “see the future – today!” expo, [...]
I’ve been reading an early text by Victor Burgin , the conceptual artist, theorist, writer, and one time Turner Prize short-lister (’86). The work from the 80’s that I had cut teeth on has the advertising-critique gloss and airless neo-Marxist flavor that sort of made it blend into the 80’s woodwork, and fail to get [...]
The discussions around this whole Hirst auction thing already seem passé, even before the auction has happened, as if it was all years ago and you’re just rereading the coverage, having stumbled across it accidentally. And that in itself indicates something. A glitch in the matrix. So unremarkably inevitable. It’s like that story about United [...]
The discussions around this whole Hirst auction thing already seem passé, even before the auction has happened, as if it was all years ago and you’re just rereading the coverage, having stumbled across it accidentally. And that in itself indicates something. A glitch in the matrix. So unremarkably inevitable. It’s like that story about United [...]
How utterly unfashionable these sentiments are! Take em or leave em. Apologies in advance to Sean Carroll. “Art is a privilege, a blessing, a relief…I had to pursue it, even more than the privilege of having children. The privilege is the access to the unconscious. I had to be worthy of this privilege, and [...]
How utterly unfashionable these sentiments are! Take em or leave em. Apologies in advance to Sean Carroll. “Art is a privilege, a blessing, a relief…I had to pursue it, even more than the privilege of having children. The privilege is the access to the unconscious. I had to be worthy of this privilege, and [...]
So one of the most interesting things to me reading this "End of Art" discussion of Duchamp was simply seeing that famous picture of him playing chess with the nude woman again, at the Walter Hopps-curated retrospective in Pasadena that effectively solidified Duchamp’s place in the art firmament. Kuspit was using it to illustrate Duchamp’s [...]
So one of the most interesting things to me reading this "End of Art" discussion of Duchamp was simply seeing that famous picture of him playing chess with the nude woman again, at the Walter Hopps-curated retrospective in Pasadena that effectively solidified Duchamp’s place in the art firmament. Kuspit was using it to illustrate Duchamp’s [...]
Well, one month down in Chi Town. I think I’m finally starting to settle in. I’m teaching too many classes, but that’s got the ol’ bean cookin, as I bone up on some theory and comb through library art stacks hunting for illuminative tomes for the homies (the Art Institute libraries leave me speechless with [...]
