New York’s Park Avenue Armory’s current major exhibition is a retrospective of Martin’s Creed’s work over two decades. Viewers will experience films and installations of nipples stiffening and softening, flaccid penises firming, and a young woman squatting to defecate. One room’s back door opens and closes, inviting one to explore a small, dark opening. The […]
Does Martin Creed Speak for All of Us? Read More »
“Weary of liberty, he suffered himself to be saddled and bridled, and was ridden to death for his pains.” Goethe, The Sorrows of Young Werther.
The Fable of the Horse Read More »
Rounds one and two, I hope, of a good discussion of Rand’s philosophical fiction. Sarah Skwire: “Ayn Rand, John Steinbeck, and Fiction with a ‘Message’: The Problems with Didactic Fiction.” Onkar Ghate: “Is Ayn Rand a Writer of Didactic Fiction?” One interesting sub-issue to me arises from the fact that many readers do experience Rand’s
Skwire versus Ghate on Rand’s fiction Read More »
You may have noticed that things in the art world are a little, well, off these days. The artists we hear most about are those like vomit girl, also known as Millie Brown, who drinks colored milk and then makes herself throw up on the canvas. Or Jeff Koons, who gets millions for intentionally-banal objects,
Taking Modern Artists at Their Word [Good Life series] Read More »
[Re-pinning for this season’s festivities.] We all know the tale of Ebenezer Scrooge. Or do we? Charles Dickens’s A Christmas Carol has generated an astonishing variety of interpretations, and as with most rich tales the interpretations often tell us as much about the interpreter as the original story. The legend of Robin Hood is a
Will the real Scrooge please stand up? Read More »
How I Write by Bertrand Russell I cannot pretend to know how writing ought to be done, or what a wise critic would advise me to do with a view to improving my own writing. The most that I can do is to relate some things about my own attempts. Until I was twenty-one, I
Bertrand Russell’s “How I Write” — text Read More »
Over ten years ago, some of us were complaining that the postmodern art world had become repetitive — and worse, boring — as it was merely recycling the same old tropes about nothingness and waste products. Two images making the social-media rounds this week: Nothing in Paris: Rectal explorations in São Paulo: So I repeat:
The State of the Art World, late 2015 edition Read More »
Excerpt: “Your personal vision is something to handle with great care, like holding a point of light in the cradle of your hand.” Read more at Newberry’s site.
Michael Newberry, On Being an Artist Read More »