World on a Page
What I love, so much, about Anne Carson is how much world she packs onto a paper page. Below is page 2.5 from “Autobiography of Red” an orbit-altering read.
Poems Heavy as Poached Game
Scenes from Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Sharon Olds’ first book of poems “Satan Says.” In the background, Paola Pivi’s solo exhibit at the Miami Beach Bass Museum.
The Universal Teat
If you have not read “Grapes of Wrath” and for some reason plan on doing so, stop reading this. If, on the other hand, you would like to be spared the load but are curious about its classical buzz, read on. “Grapes of Wrath” is like a fat Oreo: delicious chocolate crunch on each end, […]
Moving for Love
I don’t usually post twice in a day, but the lines in Ada Limón’s poem above are so beautiful and it is raining so hard that I couldn’t bear to witness alone.
Nonnegotiable Time
Neko Case, a the vocalist in cult band “The New Pornographers,” is one of one hundred artists, entrepreneurs and writers interviewed for “In the Company of Women,” a surprisingly unsappy coffee table book. Pictured above is what she had to say about time and making it to make art. I agree.
The Most Important Work at the 2016 London Frieze
For some reason I wrote (most of) the post below over six months ago and never published it. For some other reason I thought about it today. Perhaps it is because I finally went to get my moles checked by a scrubbed-clean dermatologist who reminded me of Oscar Wild’s Dorian Gray. And, the most important work (in my […]
Magical Thinking
For a few weeks this book has been on my mind. Didion, Didion, Didion. And her “Year of Magical Thinking,” written during the first year she mourned her husband’s sudden death. This for me has proven to be a year of magical thinking, a year of metamorphosing concrete barricades into trampolines via transformative thought. Magical […]
Bon Voyage
I can think of few things I enjoy more than buying a new book at an airport. The thought of being trapped in the air inside a metal tube for hours with nothing to do but read or watch bad movies is thrilling. The more so with a brand new glossy book upon my lap. […]
Break Point Break
British artist Fiona Banner turned the opening scenes of the cult classic Point Break into a huge canvas with red words. The point? Convey the break, the chiasm between what is experienced visually and mentally. Suspense is lost. Impact becomes flaccid. Scenes become silent. In the case of high-voltage action, Banner implies that sometimes the […]
The Difference between Coolness and Artness: What Turns Everyday Objects into Art
Inevitably, many of the highlights at this year’s London Frieze are works that turn common objects into art. To enter the Fair, visitors must walk by a courtyard and up a narrow hallway where Martin Soto’s pantyhose installation cuts the sky into the vaulted Gothic cathedral lines of a sacred place of worship. The Gagosian is the first gallery one meets, featuring the works of Edmund […]
No to New Neon
Neon art began in the 1960’s when an artist named Dan Flavin first displayed it in a New York gallery. Back then neon was street, current and controversial. Indeed, The New York Times compared it to Marcel Duchamp’s urinal: “When Dan Flavin first brought [neon] into art galleries during the 1960’s, he was, in effect, doing what Marcel Duchamp had […]
(Un)Signed
The event of reading, of unearthing meaning applicable to life, is the only event of art. When reading is truly reading, then reading and writing are the same thing. Signs such as the one pictured above and below are not unevents in the event they transform walking into reading and reading into, eventually, writing.
Le Cahier Pharmacie
Voilá our very own drugstore notebook making its début at the uber fashionable shop Colette. Guess we are on to something: a sign to keep trucking.
The Best Gallery in Paris
After three days of intense art immersion, I took the early afternoon off to browse the book stalls along the Seine. Here, I found what I consider to be the most beautiful works of art in the entire ville. A child-drawn cover on Raymond Quenueau’s “Zazie dans le métro,” one of my favorite books of […]
Warhol Wisdom
Words to live by on display at the Banksy/Warhol exhibit at Amsterdam’s MoCo Museum.
The Book of/from the Sky
Oh my goodness, the written word. But what if it is made to mean nothing? In China, a person is literate if she can read 4,000 characters. So artist Xu Bing invented 4,000 “fake” characters to render a person illiterate. He spent four years making his installation, pictured above, and now on display at Austin’s […]
Mid-March Motivation
March is one of those months that feels like a thirty-day supply of Wednesdays. All of a sudden it’s March, yes. But then it stays March for such a long time. And, we are only now on day ten. Perhaps March feels slow because it’s still too early to tell if our dreams for the […]
Steal Like an Artist
I encountered the book “Steal Like an Artist” in a library this week and thought its advice fitting for a Friday afternoon. Its ten rules for becomming a successful artist make the task seem as easy as copying and pasting. I was especially surprised by rules 3 and 4. Surprised that someone earnestly wrote […]
Crisis at Thirty
There is an undocumented age crisis that occurs in the early thirties. Indeed, the onset of this decade might mark the actual “coming of age.” Eighteen is still shrouded by the incredulous, protective shield of childhood, as is any age before twenty nine. But thirty-three is different. It is lucid and stunned and dismayed at […]
Wind Sculpture Rain Poem
Polish artist Jerzy Kedziora’s tight-rope sculptures had an active day recently. The sculptures are currently hanging outside of the Museum of Contemporary Art of North Miami’s campus, where I got to see them bounce during a typical tropical mid-summer afternoon Miami shower.