tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-72193526660429540642024-03-13T15:33:16.760-04:00quirkblogChristopher Quirkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00322514362857272534noreply@blogger.comBlogger36125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7219352666042954064.post-28725197611401867312022-08-09T11:13:00.004-04:002022-08-09T11:13:25.101-04:00Quirkblog on Medium<p>I've moved most of the blog posts over to Medium. You can read them, along with new articles <a href="https://christopherquirk.medium.com">here</a>. </p><p>In addition, I send out a newsletter on art and inspiring miscellany quarterly. See past newsletters and sign up to receive the newsletter <a href="https://christopherquirk.net/writing/">here</a>.</p><p>To see my latest artwork, and for background information on me and my work, please visit my website, <a href="http://christopherquirk.net">christopherquirk.net</a>.</p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><span style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><a href="https://christopherquirk.net/artworks/categories/1-binary-series/"><img border="0" data-original-height="3200" data-original-width="2564" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjjJ596sgwgm1RTyIUEl8ZYYB2IoLMsvZHiMIxloYt7FO_-VWXZyiWXKkNTvx0er66bImGPncLBS6ytj0wHddgdpLD4X2s-KKUAkUvJWMsrDgtNRbmGSijvaJUeeK28jA2tjXeCJcNKW5qsymGJHfEu4-tTC--rDqJKtKcPKcralXJP7DNda66DCWk5Eg/w512-h640/3061.jpg" width="512" /></a></span></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://christopherquirk.net/artworks/categories/1-binary-series/">Binary (Katalogos 3061), oil on canvas, 30 in x 24 in</a></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><p><br /></p>Christopher Quirkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00322514362857272534noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7219352666042954064.post-14452653978145977452016-10-06T21:12:00.001-04:002016-10-06T21:13:13.129-04:00Quirkblog has movedIt is now consolidated with my website. Come join me <a href="http://www.christopherquirk.net/quirkblog/">here</a>.Christopher Quirkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00322514362857272534noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7219352666042954064.post-69216641150253208452014-08-17T11:09:00.000-04:002014-08-17T11:09:42.635-04:00A little parable<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg-qUIeL9v_Y_vYpfnUl6NVUlZoZsD2Iv9pQBytmgI7KbKx_E52iLjC_zwTkzznVuHZMIuPGIp5q__-Fq0rJvDgemevFGgqNAZJY8AsvsF721_w12GdyDPdx1nLykAcZ6uFiNXffi5h5cCx/s1600/zeno+apple.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg-qUIeL9v_Y_vYpfnUl6NVUlZoZsD2Iv9pQBytmgI7KbKx_E52iLjC_zwTkzznVuHZMIuPGIp5q__-Fq0rJvDgemevFGgqNAZJY8AsvsF721_w12GdyDPdx1nLykAcZ6uFiNXffi5h5cCx/s1600/zeno+apple.jpg" /></a></div>
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<a href="http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/zeno-elea/#Arr">Zeno of Elea</a> was a very smart man who confounded many, many smart philosophers and mathematicians. If you had listened to him, he almost certainly would have convinced you, if you’re one to value a theory over experience, that if you stand over there and he shoots an arrow at you, that the arrow, because it will always have to traverse half the distance between the bow and your head, and then half again, in an infinite regression, will never arrive. And had you submitted to a demonstration, you might have had a final instant of cognizance with which to reevaluate your priorities.<br />
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Christopher Quirkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00322514362857272534noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7219352666042954064.post-44303721708046651792014-04-18T14:39:00.001-04:002014-05-17T16:10:44.028-04:00Gratitude<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">Jean-François Lyotard </span><span style="font-size: x-small; text-align: center;">
</span><span style="font-size: x-small; text-align: center;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bracha_L._Ettinger" target="_blank">©Bracha Ettinger, 2005</a></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.05pt;">I never met Jean-François Lyotard,
though I would have loved to. A friend of mine studied with him at the graduate
program at UC Irvine and told me a few winning stories. </span><span style="letter-spacing: 0.05pt;">One
was from a party, where Lyotard arrived in splendid style, sporting a Colombo-worthy
trench coat, a surgically-attached Galois, and two bottles of bourbon—one for
the party and one for himself.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">Lyotard’s writing is remarkable to me in that despite its
pessimistic mien, a side effect of examining politics and the state of culture,
the backbone of his work is human compassion. You don’t get that impression
from very many other contemporary theorists, despite that being––by inference––the
purpose of the undertaking. Maybe the work is just too bleak. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.05pt;">Another person whose work has been </span></span>important to me, <span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.05pt;">Robert Irwin, I met very briefly
at an opening for one of his shows at the (woefully) now-defunct Dia Foundation
galleries in New York. I had glimpsed him in the galleries but departed, and
was already in the car to leave when I abruptly asked Amy to wait for a moment
and ran back in. He was chatting with a small group inside the installation and I
butted in, quickly thanked him for his work, and skittered out.</span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgcT3mbJhGp8l0kK6sebuoT4cGGP2E4ydMaDtCLpSNa1vAHXxKRcEaZnGGK3swJW5K0LJIZvUQoboFeSRfsuzDYlWHrQd-WGIQ-TR2wkrANx2gHDmK29waiT1h35J8scBEtC0KKAcD25fd-/s1600/excursus.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgcT3mbJhGp8l0kK6sebuoT4cGGP2E4ydMaDtCLpSNa1vAHXxKRcEaZnGGK3swJW5K0LJIZvUQoboFeSRfsuzDYlWHrQd-WGIQ-TR2wkrANx2gHDmK29waiT1h35J8scBEtC0KKAcD25fd-/s1600/excursus.jpg" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">Robert Irwin
, Excursus: Homage to the Square<sup>3</sup> 1998.
Installed at the Dia Center for the Arts
</span><span style="font-size: x-small;">©Robert Irwin/Artists Rights Society, New York</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.05pt;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">While in graduate school at
the Tyler School of Art, Raphael Rubinstein gave a talk on the paintings of
Norman Bluhm, whom I had never heard of. That was a good day. Not long
after that I went to Ace Gallery in Tribeca with a couple fellow grad students
and asked if they had any of Bluhm's paintings that
we could see. The dealer, perhaps bemused by my cheek, led us into a back
room and showed us some ecstatic, gargantuan pieces, just off the truck and leaning
against the walls. That was an even better day. A year or so later Stanley
Whitney was in my studio and noticed some reproductions of Bluhm’s work on the
wall and said I should go visit him up in Vermont. I replied that I thought
people moved to Vermont to get away from people like me. Bluhm died the next
year, and I regretted never at least sending him a letter. His wife invited Amy and I up to visit his studio a few years ago to see his paintings there. That was a
phenomenal day.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhjF_MiYZNk69Qof8aAHrUt4K1P-IRCDSd6KSXE6jLsDu0I7Rfotxjvcty6fjOTSMHsGOFmPfVw4dDU74OErEkNMLrQ7BwnUx076IvilGAseB2FxbDesPh9j0RXKTLLCN4M5RfbFWgxqzRV/s1600/bluhm+untitled.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhjF_MiYZNk69Qof8aAHrUt4K1P-IRCDSd6KSXE6jLsDu0I7Rfotxjvcty6fjOTSMHsGOFmPfVw4dDU74OErEkNMLrQ7BwnUx076IvilGAseB2FxbDesPh9j0RXKTLLCN4M5RfbFWgxqzRV/s1600/bluhm+untitled.jpg" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: x-small; letter-spacing: 0.05pt;">Untitled, 1978, acrylic and pastel
on paper mounted on canvas. Photo Jareld Melberg Gallery</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.05pt;">Because he was gone before I
knew who he was, </span>I couldn’t thank my all-time blues favorite, Hound
Dog Taylor, who played with irresistible energy. One summer I occasionally saw Brewer
Phillips––Hound Dog’s right hand man, who could tear off an incendiary lead
himself––high-kicking at Maxwell Street market in Chicago on Sunday mornings in
the 80s. His group played across the street from us (I was one of the
roving band of roustabouts who backed Little Pat Rushing there over the years),
and I should have gone over on a break and said hello at some point but didn’t.
Phillips died in 1999.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">Hound Dog Taylor and the Houserockers, Ann Arbor Blues Festival, 1974</span><br />
<span style="font-size: x-small;"><br /></span></div>
<span style="font-family: inherit; letter-spacing: 0.05pt; text-align: center;">It may seem trite, and
humility is too often viewed as a pitiful defect these days, but I feel an obligation
to thank people who have done great work that is important to me. They might
not know otherwise, and that’s a worse consequence than making an ass of myself. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.05pt;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">"The life of a writer is
a lonely one. You think you are alone, and as the years go by, if the stars are
on your side, you may discover that you are at the center of a vast circle of
invisible friends whom you will never get to know but who love you. And that is
an immense reward." --Jorge Luis Borges</span></span></blockquote>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.05pt;">Though nearby in </span></span>spirit<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.05pt;"> (and also geographically for some periods, in southern California), I don’t think Irwin and
Lyotard ever met, but they would have had a few things to talk about. Irwin’s
examinations of perception, and his analysis that between raw perception and
recognition (of a traffic sign, for instance) we lose both information and
engagement, led him to put experience at the center of his work, renounce
painting along with presumptions of content, and create art and spaces that are
perceptually both precise and ambiguous.</span></span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjLAd-cU7CU5hlIYWZKwVgnr4c904Bhb3FdnVvNXXR_Nj6pI988VwOVJq5Nw1K6Sj0rbm8KI_FmXMPc5Sfm_V8M50clTMVQMADWhypEd7UtW4B55XSpyErOy-HTg12FQO58yF1ZuNeN2VRs/s1600/whos-afraid-of-red-yellow-and-blue.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjLAd-cU7CU5hlIYWZKwVgnr4c904Bhb3FdnVvNXXR_Nj6pI988VwOVJq5Nw1K6Sj0rbm8KI_FmXMPc5Sfm_V8M50clTMVQMADWhypEd7UtW4B55XSpyErOy-HTg12FQO58yF1ZuNeN2VRs/s1600/whos-afraid-of-red-yellow-and-blue.jpg" height="358" width="640" /></a></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjP6qJjWpXMK3k5W2qPj1B394fV_C-de8PT7BwjklT2xwFkNWOCtoAmaAHwEPvZFVql7ULBC5rK-AGqwOhdnjniwwPz5Uf2c7xjKBVte0ICcVvgfk4Zaa5NOQTMg9E79aAZLX-s0Oozc5Qj/s1600/irwin_ryb3_detail.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjP6qJjWpXMK3k5W2qPj1B394fV_C-de8PT7BwjklT2xwFkNWOCtoAmaAHwEPvZFVql7ULBC5rK-AGqwOhdnjniwwPz5Uf2c7xjKBVte0ICcVvgfk4Zaa5NOQTMg9E79aAZLX-s0Oozc5Qj/s1600/irwin_ryb3_detail.jpg" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-small;"><i>Who’s Afraid of Red, Yellow & Blue</i> (installation view), 2006-07
polyurethane paint over lacquer on aircraft honeycomb aluminum
24 panels: 132 1/2 x 96 1/2 inches (3.4 x 2.4 m) each; 12 panels:
132 1/2 x 48 1/4 inches (3.4 x 1.2 m) each; overall installation dimensions variable
Photography by Philipp Scholz Rittermann
<span style="text-align: center;">©</span>Robert Irwin/Artists Rights Society, New York</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.05pt;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Irwin’s work keeps the viewer
in a kind of suspension; it’s often hard to resolve what you are seeing easily,
or there may be a <a href="http://quirkblog.blogspot.com/2008/12/some-thoughts-on-irwins-whose-afraid-of.html" target="_blank">jarringly dislocating visual experience </a>that sharpens your
awareness of the moment. I have always felt because of this that his work has
an essentially ethical foundation; I don’t think Irwin would agree but in any
case it’s a topic for another time. (I actually think all art has an ethical
foundation in terms of what is assumed when you decide to engage the creative process,
though I don’t mean that in the moralizing, prescriptive way that makes some people go
DEFCON 2, simply that ethics is a natural, intrinsic aspect of living and begins with your
relationship to yourself. But that's a topic for another day too.)<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.05pt;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">For Lyotard, in essays such as
“After the Sublime, the State of Aesthetics” and “Representation, Presentation,
Unpresentable,” in <i>The Inhuman</i>, the suspension of resolution is equally
important, though for somewhat different reasons. Reviewing Kant’s analysis of
the sublime, Lyotard focuses on a moment out of time that happens when we are
presented with a perception that does not correspond with the forms and
structures that fit our prior experience––like the timbre of a strange musical
instrument––or in the case of the sublime overwhelms them––like an immense and terrifying
storm. If you've ever seen the sky turn green, you'll know what I mean.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.05pt;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">More broadly the essays take on the
state of aesthetics and its place within the contemporary
political/technological milieu. In the book, he is despondent about art’s
chances in the face of these forces, but preserves hope for a practice of art
that persists by inhabiting the gaps of both society and perception, and
creating a different kind of avant-garde (maybe more of a
philosophical/artistic resistance) by working outside the cultural demands
placed on it by not just the capitalistic but also the academic establishment.
It’s an unusual position. And a very useful one.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit; letter-spacing: 0.05pt;">Thanks.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.05pt;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><i>Coda</i></span></span></div>
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This album cover is from Amy’s collection. She purchased it at a rummage sale years ago; it was released in 1953. We pulled it off the shelf awhile back and realized that the painting is by Robert Irwin. He is described on the back cover as a young up-and-comer. I guess so. There is also a quote from the artist: He likes Chet Baker because he always leaves something essential out. 1953. It’s a fine album, too.</div>
Christopher Quirkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00322514362857272534noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7219352666042954064.post-58283247533497651282014-03-14T18:31:00.000-04:002018-01-27T12:26:25.820-05:00Ed Clark, body and mind<div>
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; letter-spacing: 0.1px;">Ed Clark’s <a href="http://jacktiltongallery.com/exhibitions/past/clark/" target="_blank">recent show</a> at Tilton Gallery, entitled “Big Bang,” was full of resonant and rapturous paintings.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; letter-spacing: 0.1px;">Paris, 2009</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; letter-spacing: 0.1px;">Untitled, 2005</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; letter-spacing: 0.1px;">Acrylic on canvas</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; letter-spacing: 0.1px;">53 1/4 x 66 inches</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; letter-spacing: 0.1px;">Untitled, 2009</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; letter-spacing: 0.1px;">Acrylic on canvas</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; letter-spacing: 0.1px;">81 x 64 1/2 inches</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; letter-spacing: 0.1px;"> detail Untitled, 2009</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; letter-spacing: 0.1px;">Clark, now in his mid-80s, paints using brooms on raw canvas laid on the floor.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; letter-spacing: 0.1px;">(Part 2 of that documentary is <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t03dYeM6EaU" target="_blank">here</a>.)</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; letter-spacing: 0.1px;">Consideration of the role of the body in making and interpreting art is nothing new, but as discoveries in neuroscience deepen our understanding of how we perceive and think, they provide an opportunity to reconsider the relationships between art, body and mind. No one I’ve read describes them more succinctly than <a href="http://sirihustvedt.net/" target="_blank">Siri Hustvedt</a> in her appreciation of the work of choreographer Pina Bausch. Reviewing Wim Wender’s 3-D documentary of Bausch and her company, Hustvedt <a href="http://www.criterion.com/current/posts/2634-pina-dancing-for-dance" target="_blank">says</a>:</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; letter-spacing: 0.1px;">In their 2007 paper “Motion, Emotion, and Empathy in Aesthetic Experience,” David Freedberg and Vittorio Gallese discuss the neurobiology of looking at art as “embodied simulation.” Simply put, when we watch dancers or look at a painting or read a novel, we activate mirror systems in our brains. Although this activation remains below our awareness, it nevertheless allows us to participate in the aesthetic, emotive action of what we are looking at. As Freedberg and Gallese articulate it: “Spectators precognitively grasp emotions that are either explicitly shown or implicitly suggested by works of art.” In her acceptance speech when she won the Kyoto Prize in 2007, Bausch said, “For I always know exactly what I am looking for, but I know it with my intuition and not with my head.” Indeed, many artists work this way, even artists whose medium is words. There is always a preverbal, physiological, rhythmic, motoric ground that precedes language and informs it.</span></blockquote>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; letter-spacing: 0.1px;">Because of her interest in neuroscience, Hustvedt has <a href="http://bigthink.com/videos/a-conversation-with-antonio-damasio-and-siri-hustvedt" target="_blank">collaborated</a> with the neurobiologist <a href="https://www.usc.edu/programs/neuroscience/faculty/profile.php?fid=27" target="_blank">Antonio Damasio</a> (author of <i><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Descartes'_Error" target="_blank">Descartes' Error</a></i>), who has been doing groundbreaking work that is dramatically expanding our knowledge of the human brain, the most complex object we have so far encountered in the universe (think about that). Part of Damasio’s work demonstrates how the body participates in thought, via the constant and vital electrical and chemical feedback loops between nerves, organs, glands and the brain. The body doesn’t add an adjunct function; it is a component of mind.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; letter-spacing: 0.1px;">The volumes of information the body provides––how gravity impacts every movement, what it will feel like to lift that dictionary, likely sensations of an impending collision––are no less integrated into thought than brain-centric notions of philosophy or doctrine. The intellect is both visceral and cerebral. A painter or viewer can either recognize or ignore that.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; letter-spacing: 0.1px;">As our blood labours to beget</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; letter-spacing: 0.1px;"> Spirits, as like souls as it can; </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; letter-spacing: 0.1px;">Because such fingers need to knit</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; letter-spacing: 0.1px;"> That subtle knot, which makes us man;</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; letter-spacing: 0.1px;">So must pure lovers’ souls descend</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; letter-spacing: 0.1px;"> To affections and to faculties</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; letter-spacing: 0.1px;">Which sense may reach and apprehend,</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; letter-spacing: 0.1px;"> Else a great prince in prison lies.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; letter-spacing: 0.1px;">To our bodies turn we then, that so</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; letter-spacing: 0.1px;"> Weak men on love reveal’d may look; </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; letter-spacing: 0.1px;">Love’s mysteries in souls do grow,</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; letter-spacing: 0.1px;"> But yet the body is his book.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; letter-spacing: 0.1px;">from “The Extasie,” by John Donne</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; letter-spacing: 0.1px;">Clark’s paintings, sometimes sinuous, sometimes explosive, are rich with take-no-prisoners color and physical empathy. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; letter-spacing: 0.1px;">New Orleans Series #5, 2012</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; letter-spacing: 0.1px;">Acrylic on canvas</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; letter-spacing: 0.1px;">76 x 51 1/4 inches</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; letter-spacing: 0.1px;">detail New Orleans Series #5</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">They are generous; they are catalysts. Like the best abstract works, they put you in touch with something specific, non-didactic and unsayable by other means, and then empty you into a delta of thought and feeling. After that you’re on your own.</span></div>
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Christopher Quirkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00322514362857272534noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7219352666042954064.post-78420076540531539542013-07-30T15:47:00.000-04:002018-01-22T18:08:05.009-05:00El AnatsuiWe went to see the marvelous El Anatsui show at the <a href="http://www.brooklynmuseum.org/exhibitions/el_anatsui/" target="_blank">Brooklyn Museum </a>a couple months ago. The exhibition closes on 18 August so I thought it a good time to share some photos. I was also listening to a <a href="http://www.ted.com/talks/murray_gell_mann_on_beauty_and_truth_in_physics.html" target="_blank">TED talk</a> by Murray Gell-Mann this afternoon, as well as an <a href="http://www.santaferadiocafe.org/podcasts/?p=4638" target="_blank">interview</a> he did with my friend, the brilliant and charming Mary-Charlotte Domandi at KSFR in Santa Fe, which raised a connection with El Anatsui's work.<br />
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Gell-Mann is very interested in beauty in physics, and he talked about emergence––an instance where a quality is evident in something that is not contained in its constituent parts, like consciousness from brain chemistry and physiology, or wetness from the right combination of hydrogen and oxygen. It's kind of magical in that the emergent quality in most cases could in no way be inferred by looking at the ingredients it springs from.<br />
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Created from the most modest means––bottle caps, foil wrappers, and similar detritus––the first impression of emergence in El Anatsui's work could be the bald economic conversion of wringing beauty from bar waste. It continues as you confront the staggering scale of the work made with minute elements. Beyond that are multiple associative threads: atomic, natural phenomena, fabric and pattern, complexity through repetition of simple components, the ephemeral, transcendence.<br />
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If you can stop in your efforts will be rewarded.<br />
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<br />Christopher Quirkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00322514362857272534noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7219352666042954064.post-62725242726392069242013-03-31T10:36:00.000-04:002013-03-31T10:37:02.958-04:00Circle of FifthsThis is my most recent group of paintings. For the benefit of anyone not familiar with music theory, the circle of fifths refers to phenomenon in music where given a key, such as C, the next key in the circle, G, differs from C by only one note, and so on to D, A, E, etc., around the circle of all 12 keys until you return to C.<br />
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I decided to name the series so because I worked them largely simultaneously, moving from painting to painting in the same session, so there are corresponding similarities. The paintings are shown more or less in the order they were completed.<br />
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All the paintings are 24 in. x 24 in., oil, oil impasto and metallic paint on canvas.<br />
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<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjofr1D2OLPAQrdHbLKD0hoYfuwPw0uvdEKVG91mtlypLSRkvwNcSCdvKpFEcIwO8OjvxMMDUeCPyOkDmPDmUeQG89Z9ntGikoMAAljINnX-f9cZFqCaQVJ8b9_64_sZyMWO1sap6f_mkUk/s1600/Circle_of_Fifths_C.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjofr1D2OLPAQrdHbLKD0hoYfuwPw0uvdEKVG91mtlypLSRkvwNcSCdvKpFEcIwO8OjvxMMDUeCPyOkDmPDmUeQG89Z9ntGikoMAAljINnX-f9cZFqCaQVJ8b9_64_sZyMWO1sap6f_mkUk/s640/Circle_of_Fifths_C.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Circle of Fifths: C </td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiBNKaAtYyM-SDb7wuoX3ZyEXyZ-jKPqfR4BfKM2sX_5s4XITfXBQxbem9iKlpvm8BCapMwR_XIaXaRzYMqAynoVM5KXpUrA-Cby9EntrDIaX5AxWnPueEjtUr3EsmKLHG_V_1Emf2KEVb2/s1600/Circle_of_Fifths_G.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiBNKaAtYyM-SDb7wuoX3ZyEXyZ-jKPqfR4BfKM2sX_5s4XITfXBQxbem9iKlpvm8BCapMwR_XIaXaRzYMqAynoVM5KXpUrA-Cby9EntrDIaX5AxWnPueEjtUr3EsmKLHG_V_1Emf2KEVb2/s640/Circle_of_Fifths_G.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Circle of Fifths: G</td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgTqKiK5rg2sslXJFKoyYDoEnA-ZzLDEIb46laq5O5J7tGa0g2O6zWqCKK9GO6GLxRVHbHHmCyo88HV-KQa-RxDmjAh7tEzt4xhzgPoZkcx9X7zWy0YWnGtUkU54yt7mrq-2BiesQNGc-6B/s1600/Circle_of_Fifths_D.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgTqKiK5rg2sslXJFKoyYDoEnA-ZzLDEIb46laq5O5J7tGa0g2O6zWqCKK9GO6GLxRVHbHHmCyo88HV-KQa-RxDmjAh7tEzt4xhzgPoZkcx9X7zWy0YWnGtUkU54yt7mrq-2BiesQNGc-6B/s640/Circle_of_Fifths_D.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Circle of Fifths: D</td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgQdPlWYpYcp11tmbAM_rW2EUPFQ0P1vxW5g1LOttedFyvOQE6JdBMXj_kZaCZyJ02R4Yd5VanxNa9mq0Ui9HrycTey54jFp_81NY5y1N2AFNgCpOjd2zvt7FqeXe7VNWFhISal5Q8Odt3U/s1600/Circle_of_Fifths_A.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgQdPlWYpYcp11tmbAM_rW2EUPFQ0P1vxW5g1LOttedFyvOQE6JdBMXj_kZaCZyJ02R4Yd5VanxNa9mq0Ui9HrycTey54jFp_81NY5y1N2AFNgCpOjd2zvt7FqeXe7VNWFhISal5Q8Odt3U/s640/Circle_of_Fifths_A.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Circle of Fifths: A</td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg2zwFVcc-ZbYpOFkmzqnlbDycW3u10nH4LQLntU5hK4TIoOAB6bHAPZHbdWzHreA4ZTvcQ9-IUjuBMjV8aKt3GPUEge0_ZynFMe5ztTXKnngXWicolzYWOq9R6vgX4qXL_Fi1UfWS9OMTZ/s1600/Circle_of_Fifths_E.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg2zwFVcc-ZbYpOFkmzqnlbDycW3u10nH4LQLntU5hK4TIoOAB6bHAPZHbdWzHreA4ZTvcQ9-IUjuBMjV8aKt3GPUEge0_ZynFMe5ztTXKnngXWicolzYWOq9R6vgX4qXL_Fi1UfWS9OMTZ/s640/Circle_of_Fifths_E.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Circle of Fifths: E</td></tr>
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi-HevEzjwrzhpwi1fM1nLAqIIsHaQsuHUTEzwpKY8evq4FNlBRu1IJTwUk4fL3pUceL1bCvezsr_RUCEfUo2yxFNFkHI6V8B9WUTbCF6nXs_ThQ4ShGj6cV-nzhApqDk3xgakFVwu_4WRF/s1600/Circle_of_Fifths_B.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi-HevEzjwrzhpwi1fM1nLAqIIsHaQsuHUTEzwpKY8evq4FNlBRu1IJTwUk4fL3pUceL1bCvezsr_RUCEfUo2yxFNFkHI6V8B9WUTbCF6nXs_ThQ4ShGj6cV-nzhApqDk3xgakFVwu_4WRF/s640/Circle_of_Fifths_B.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Circle of Fifths: B</td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg5f0eWaCHApx0g80pVlOU0mXgPST3MsViyhz58MZ_0lI0gYFAvOupSt0gl75kVjuz0B3TOq208615O8VkGwNgeOuVl5yYbG6ZsBRjBg2JCI2BAq_zYxLrB-6ESM_2twLZNHDmOcydrhC4T/s1600/Circle_of_Fifths_F-sharp.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg5f0eWaCHApx0g80pVlOU0mXgPST3MsViyhz58MZ_0lI0gYFAvOupSt0gl75kVjuz0B3TOq208615O8VkGwNgeOuVl5yYbG6ZsBRjBg2JCI2BAq_zYxLrB-6ESM_2twLZNHDmOcydrhC4T/s640/Circle_of_Fifths_F-sharp.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Circle of Fifths: F-sharp</td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgOAk_pIR8IGez-CVAw_9nkcL-XdOzyegRGQSvQ9BwQ351QP3m3kwQNfTzLLSr9LDSqxEN1-g7ONycYvh89XPEjs8Rzp1yhU1ryncapaW6IzKBb_E8n1asXNyJUDvM0kQnV-OBIqx5uNu_9/s1600/Circle_of_Fifths_C-sharp.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgOAk_pIR8IGez-CVAw_9nkcL-XdOzyegRGQSvQ9BwQ351QP3m3kwQNfTzLLSr9LDSqxEN1-g7ONycYvh89XPEjs8Rzp1yhU1ryncapaW6IzKBb_E8n1asXNyJUDvM0kQnV-OBIqx5uNu_9/s640/Circle_of_Fifths_C-sharp.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Circle of Fifths: C-sharp</td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj4NlK00aD9ndmf6P7TuhKaBAhg61-pPK-zFc3nRwE1exJsLjTPSC5iy6aN0hmTezJZhOHjx9szowRyTLIpNbiOj5NYhHHV2j6fG0tXcmzS82ui8LBSGLMKEhDv9gebiVtDjKJlsVtea3Oj/s1600/Circle_of_Fifths_A-flat.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj4NlK00aD9ndmf6P7TuhKaBAhg61-pPK-zFc3nRwE1exJsLjTPSC5iy6aN0hmTezJZhOHjx9szowRyTLIpNbiOj5NYhHHV2j6fG0tXcmzS82ui8LBSGLMKEhDv9gebiVtDjKJlsVtea3Oj/s640/Circle_of_Fifths_A-flat.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Circle of Fifths: A-flat</td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhKWpw_HsuhWnACKu3mbn1Z3Tkb4pE3RdbQtded6mCXq9zWdEFFgFRI8QN8o9IKLGPZPAmx0l1nkyltU06UhcATRFHMoPFMIzgEw9tAZl7LnyxPnNSuPlUro4MrSzOcpNjJ-r9QtH0P7XGC/s1600/Circle_of_Fifths_E-flat.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhKWpw_HsuhWnACKu3mbn1Z3Tkb4pE3RdbQtded6mCXq9zWdEFFgFRI8QN8o9IKLGPZPAmx0l1nkyltU06UhcATRFHMoPFMIzgEw9tAZl7LnyxPnNSuPlUro4MrSzOcpNjJ-r9QtH0P7XGC/s640/Circle_of_Fifths_E-flat.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Circle of Fifths: E-flat</td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjzLwcFROF3FC691qx37Xk1n2f_E4AEUcHUG-P7zknl3oIjMo1U2owDL5RqeC1n0e0bW4NgeyvSQAfReQJL-AQ_ct6OkbanPzzZ0mGBwo9v6PehsfwcbHPBX9Xhk3UoSWFp-MNUKfeG4hkw/s1600/Circle_of_Fifths_B-flat.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjzLwcFROF3FC691qx37Xk1n2f_E4AEUcHUG-P7zknl3oIjMo1U2owDL5RqeC1n0e0bW4NgeyvSQAfReQJL-AQ_ct6OkbanPzzZ0mGBwo9v6PehsfwcbHPBX9Xhk3UoSWFp-MNUKfeG4hkw/s640/Circle_of_Fifths_B-flat.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Circle of Fifths: B-flat</td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhAhHo8sTbvMN7LktCS22LYjM_2MB7v2KmKIhTlnj6huzCwn4qiRy-2HBBh_43mTlj01IOY9QErFdIKOoviaq-j0lWiq3HyzIE-dksoaMMJoV5V7EnyFg3bDhSGUbEV25FdNClbGxJaXoNv/s1600/Circle_of_Fifths_F.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhAhHo8sTbvMN7LktCS22LYjM_2MB7v2KmKIhTlnj6huzCwn4qiRy-2HBBh_43mTlj01IOY9QErFdIKOoviaq-j0lWiq3HyzIE-dksoaMMJoV5V7EnyFg3bDhSGUbEV25FdNClbGxJaXoNv/s640/Circle_of_Fifths_F.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Circle of Fifths: F</td></tr>
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<br />Christopher Quirkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00322514362857272534noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7219352666042954064.post-26117117670925510922012-04-07T11:56:00.000-04:002012-04-07T11:56:24.279-04:00New stuff<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiVIv-CFs-z9UTnu9GyI47suX75Ptz1V6_7Ugpr1IfSR5jXi9Yss4xsRbaG-dbdNmguH-NDY_NQRfLC8tWZS2fy6h8R-HxHBn0mKGeebV-mEtTRS5buGowy1fDKhlVV3lMQZqphhGMBub5c/s1600/20June.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="231" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiVIv-CFs-z9UTnu9GyI47suX75Ptz1V6_7Ugpr1IfSR5jXi9Yss4xsRbaG-dbdNmguH-NDY_NQRfLC8tWZS2fy6h8R-HxHBn0mKGeebV-mEtTRS5buGowy1fDKhlVV3lMQZqphhGMBub5c/s400/20June.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><br />
<div style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;"><i>20 June</i>, oil, acrylic, metallic paint on canvas over panel, 48 in. x 84 in. (122 cm x 203 cm)</span></div><br />
<div style="text-align: left;">Some images and details of new work on my <a href="http://christopherquirk.net/current">website</a>. </div>Christopher Quirkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00322514362857272534noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7219352666042954064.post-67659929206480561502012-01-25T16:17:00.000-05:002012-01-25T16:17:08.635-05:00My AxiomsAn abstract painting is not an idea, nor is it devoid of ideas.<br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjk8zZNzvF1z68gOqxxrNYZAcwyNQFm60-L2Y1j52UYSO4aMVYjM4HwM3qy-zDjxEE3SyAyWmcifCh98lDPfCBuxm0ZkQVIwJT-fjR-3kJt3sI1T7Jdpgrp9bafsj9H887mO-6V4AgBUKNe/s1600/KRUPT016_lo_res0.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjk8zZNzvF1z68gOqxxrNYZAcwyNQFm60-L2Y1j52UYSO4aMVYjM4HwM3qy-zDjxEE3SyAyWmcifCh98lDPfCBuxm0ZkQVIwJT-fjR-3kJt3sI1T7Jdpgrp9bafsj9H887mO-6V4AgBUKNe/s320/KRUPT016_lo_res0.jpg" width="274" /></a></div><div><div style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;">Nicholas Krushenick,<a href="http://garysnyderart.com/artists/nicholas-krushenick/"> “Outspan,”</a> 1968, Acrylic on canvas, 84 x 72 inches</span></div></div><div style="text-align: center;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: center;"><div style="text-align: center;">* * * * *</div></div><div><div>An abstract painting is not solely an object, nor can it be separated from its object-ness.</div></div><div><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiZQOD_X0CJxb3fhr-IgnkWZSFIw4d33xIcIGPmziPMQmyk7rm7xOiqHwR-c9GfmnfIRSwuvRn03tTMEitkMASOT0Nqig0oiqS8eNwVmCcaLrkd2c_wsO1X-ODVQhQStyyYT8e7Aresefvy/s1600/steir.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiZQOD_X0CJxb3fhr-IgnkWZSFIw4d33xIcIGPmziPMQmyk7rm7xOiqHwR-c9GfmnfIRSwuvRn03tTMEitkMASOT0Nqig0oiqS8eNwVmCcaLrkd2c_wsO1X-ODVQhQStyyYT8e7Aresefvy/s320/steir.jpg" width="278" /></a></div><div><div style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;">Pat Steir, <a href="http://www.cheimread.com/artists/pat-steir/#">“Green, Gold and Umber”</a> 2009-10, Oil on canvas, 60 1/2 x 51 in.</span></div></div><div style="text-align: center;"><div style="text-align: center;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: center;">* * * * *</div></div><div><div>An abstract painting does not depict, nor does it turn its back on the world.</div></div><div><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjO-4D4O_20_TqbpQJPf_QYSvGgVe3akzguvptMFUlChCE-AsOZ3TECdf9gAsJWCEB5BqUCvmp2O__jX2mcbcnQbXzwqJ_EXWLemHVvbfjCVwEoV6HPxfdxLsyfouGRNvRNLEnjMQHThcRv/s1600/norman_bluhm-aegean_angel.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjO-4D4O_20_TqbpQJPf_QYSvGgVe3akzguvptMFUlChCE-AsOZ3TECdf9gAsJWCEB5BqUCvmp2O__jX2mcbcnQbXzwqJ_EXWLemHVvbfjCVwEoV6HPxfdxLsyfouGRNvRNLEnjMQHThcRv/s320/norman_bluhm-aegean_angel.jpg" width="318" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;">Norman Bluhm, <a href="http://www.mannysilvermangallery.com/artists/norman_bluhm-home.html">“Aegean Angel,”</a> 1988, oil on canvas, 66 x 66 inches</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;"><br />
</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;">* * * * *</span></div><div><div>An abstract painting is a node among the threads of our bodily and interior experience.</div></div><br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgcsDY0V-nlcHZwwtd21ZqRUm8cVoBiV8hEX1YxRoVcagzDClIizhWBp927jYhFHeIuuSAZAV3jCYHXHkgqzUBHXfWNJm0N1brHhlOLvxKBxEh17P2dGzQCtN5qtiqLopQzNpsiU8Ev4sQN/s1600/snyder_are_mine.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgcsDY0V-nlcHZwwtd21ZqRUm8cVoBiV8hEX1YxRoVcagzDClIizhWBp927jYhFHeIuuSAZAV3jCYHXHkgqzUBHXfWNJm0N1brHhlOLvxKBxEh17P2dGzQCtN5qtiqLopQzNpsiU8Ev4sQN/s320/snyder_are_mine.jpg" width="313" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;">Joan Snyder, <a href="http://www.bettycuninghamgallery.com/return_exhibition.aspx?ID=54">“Are Mine,”</a> 2010, Oil acrylic, glitter, rosebuds and burlap on panel, 30 in. x 30 in.</span></div><div><br />
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</div>Christopher Quirkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00322514362857272534noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7219352666042954064.post-1881536754878573602012-01-03T16:15:00.000-05:002012-01-03T16:15:48.285-05:00Symbiosis<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-u2DaS9PzIzY/TwMCqYZDWvI/AAAAAAAAAKU/00WQItkCdko/s1600/cezanne_bend.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-u2DaS9PzIzY/TwMCqYZDWvI/AAAAAAAAAKU/00WQItkCdko/s320/cezanne_bend.jpg" width="248" /></a></div><div style="text-align: center;"></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;">Paul Cézanne, <i>Bend in a Road in Provence</i>, about 1866 or later, oil on canvas, 92.4 x 72.5 cm, <a href="http://www.mbam.qc.ca/en/oeuvres/oeuvre_346.html">Musée des beaux-arts de Montréal</a>, Adaline Van Horne Bequest</span></div><br />
“The painter can do no more than construct an image; he must wait for this image to come to life for other people. When it does, the work of art will have united these separate lives; it will no longer exist in only one of them like a stubborn dream or a persistent delirium, nor will it exist only in space as a colored piece of canvas. It will dwell undivided in several minds, with a claim on every possible mind like a perennial acquisition.”<br />
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From <a href="http://faculty.uml.edu/rinnis/cezannedoubt.pdf">“Cézanne’s Doubt”</a> (pdf) by Maurice Merleau-PontyChristopher Quirkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00322514362857272534noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7219352666042954064.post-1141180059664438142011-06-01T20:38:00.004-04:002011-06-02T09:17:43.621-04:00Newgrange<div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">A reader asked me last week why I have a photo of Newgrange in the header of the blog. <a href="http://www.newgrange.com/">Newgrange</a> is a group of Neolithic mounds and structures about 40 miles north of Dublin. The <a href="http://whc.unesco.org/en/list/659">World Heritage Site</a> is also called Brú na Bóinne, which translates from the Irish roughly as “Palace on the Boyne,” and the River Boyne <a href="http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&source=s_q&hl=en&geocode=&q=newgrange,+ireland&aq=&sll=37.926868,-95.712891&sspn=35.310956,68.642578&ie=UTF8&hq=&hnear=Newgrange,+County+Meath,+Ireland&ll=53.69381,-6.469574&spn=0.027341,0.067034&t=h&z=14">circumambulates three sides</a> of the grounds. The main mound is the one pictured in the header. It’s over 5,000 years old, and pre-dates the Great Pyramids of Egypt and Stonehenge by 500 and 1,000 years respectively.</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgmnmYEdBIb4G6aaB08Aho2U5BYsa4yGWMC1Js54_PxUFG-dDW4yhLFm0L668Pcs9TRiRvyiMeXGFKhvtWRhQu9EwzW_ML-F8eJ5H9zJ5KK8WXfgPTAOVmwa4DlkHxJFW-KF68JMSXw8qno/s1600/800px-Newgrange%252C_Ireland.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="426" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgmnmYEdBIb4G6aaB08Aho2U5BYsa4yGWMC1Js54_PxUFG-dDW4yhLFm0L668Pcs9TRiRvyiMeXGFKhvtWRhQu9EwzW_ML-F8eJ5H9zJ5KK8WXfgPTAOVmwa4DlkHxJFW-KF68JMSXw8qno/s640/800px-Newgrange%252C_Ireland.jpg" style="cursor: move;" width="640" /></a></div><div style="text-align: center;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"> <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;">Entrance to Newgrange mound. Photo courtesy <a href="http://nrm.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Newgrange,_Ireland.jpg">Locutus Borg, via Wikipedia</a>.</span></div></div><div style="text-align: center;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;"><br />
</span></div></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">The site is awesome. The mound, now extensively restored, is around 250 feet across and faced with cubes of brilliant white quartz. Massive slabs inscribed with whorls and spirals encircle the base of the mound. It sits at the crest of a gently rising greensward, and grass carpets the top of the mound as well. To enter you duck under a stone lintel and walk or sidestep down a claustrophobic passage to the tiny chamber in the center, which has small transepts on three sides, if I remember right. The mound is remarkable for its size and persistence, for the aura and magnitude of its symbolic significance, and for the mindboggling meditation it provokes on the amount of industry it must have taken to construct it with the technology available. It also has a special light show every winter solstice, as rays from the sun streak through the precisely situated entrance and illuminate the chamber at the center of the interior. A small group of interested members of the public are chosen by lot each year to witness this moment.</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhgImMK9DhyPpPpGpdpNFYYT9xxc47vO4zaM4_DYqx3kQf5wuwbaSXQVqI1zFe3mdr4rHao7SGVQ0B5zsP6HSGBoKAhhJyPNRYmLf_LvHOip6u89dZG7Ugt1h2Pgydv4Y69WQy9I2y7ArR8/s1600/newgrange-light-2-1.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhgImMK9DhyPpPpGpdpNFYYT9xxc47vO4zaM4_DYqx3kQf5wuwbaSXQVqI1zFe3mdr4rHao7SGVQ0B5zsP6HSGBoKAhhJyPNRYmLf_LvHOip6u89dZG7Ugt1h2Pgydv4Y69WQy9I2y7ArR8/s320/newgrange-light-2-1.jpeg" style="cursor: move;" width="287" /></a></div><div style="text-align: center;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;">Inside the Newgrange passageway during the solstice. Photo by </span><a href="http://astronomy2009.ie/news/live_webcast_of_the_winter_.html"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;">Cyril Byrne, Courtesy of the Irish Times</span></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;">.</span></div></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: center;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: center;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">* * * * *</div></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: left;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">My familial connection to Ireland is strong (despite little direct contact with the place), as my background is wholly Irish. I also have a thriving “green gene,” as my brother calls it, which helps me anticipate the worst possible outcome of any situation, prepares me for failure in the unlikely event success is imminent, and initiates damage control after a favorable occurrence, in advance of the demise that will follow as surely as earthworms emerge after a spring rain.</div></div><div style="text-align: left;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">In 2006, I went there for the first time, with Amy and her family. Our outing on the day of arrival, a groggy, post-transatlantic afternoon, was to Newgrange. After the tour we headed back to the hotel, stopping at an arts and crafts store we’d spotted on the drive to the site. It was run by a genial couple, with the assistance of their energetic and charming children, who had a practical competence beyond their years.</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEij72FnyHRpL3Vuqlnlm8X7asU4wQZbvmQ_OBtL0n1jcJc0JBzJgK_UiAhWNmP_ShNY55DJaT0VhNYq7letjxYHZ2VRbSKhmDqlS5xtt9ZVtN4kunJ9_urDTSn5HymiAGo8sSDMzea5hBw9/s1600/stone+house+.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="179" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEij72FnyHRpL3Vuqlnlm8X7asU4wQZbvmQ_OBtL0n1jcJc0JBzJgK_UiAhWNmP_ShNY55DJaT0VhNYq7letjxYHZ2VRbSKhmDqlS5xtt9ZVtN4kunJ9_urDTSn5HymiAGo8sSDMzea5hBw9/s640/stone+house+.jpg" style="cursor: move;" width="640" /></a></div><div style="text-align: center;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;">Craft store and workshop near Newgrange. Photo courtesy of Kathleen Madden.</span></div></div><div style="text-align: center;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;"><br />
</span></div></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">From this lovely outpost, you can see Newgrange on the hill. I was standing in the parking lot, staring in what must have been too-obvious reverie at the looming ancient structure, when the husband came out of his workshop and quipped, “Not bad, eh?”</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhDvNhCozm9VdXXlrhtqSFg1rSoMHn9ranZJ-UPMBOLCYQ5rk1FnXNV6EtXFC_V86FdP9GPkREGI6NVK3_ACo281hfIK8rWht8Pvjtu3DJhXhzNIX8NFERlEWKAKN_vto6ve7kOpIMT9TkK/s1600/skin+boats+.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="342" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhDvNhCozm9VdXXlrhtqSFg1rSoMHn9ranZJ-UPMBOLCYQ5rk1FnXNV6EtXFC_V86FdP9GPkREGI6NVK3_ACo281hfIK8rWht8Pvjtu3DJhXhzNIX8NFERlEWKAKN_vto6ve7kOpIMT9TkK/s400/skin+boats+.jpg" style="cursor: move;" width="400" /></a></div><div style="text-align: center;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;">Visiting the workshop with currach under construction. </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;">Photo courtesy of Kathleen Madden.</span></div></div><div style="text-align: left;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div></div><div style="text-align: left;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">He took a break from his work and graciously showed us around. Inside the workshop, he was building a currach (pronounced KUR-ak). The traditional currach is a dinghy-like craft made of bowed spars. Animal hides, usually cow, stitched together and stretched over the spars, form shell of the boat. He told us that currachs were used during the mound’s construction to transport massive quantities of stone for the foundation from quarries upriver. Some estimates hold that there are around 200,000 tons of stone (or 400 million pounds, to render the figure in human terms, if not scale) that undergird the mound. This gentleman was building currachs in the ancient manner, creating boats identical to what one might have seen hauling rock down the River Boyne thousands of years ago. It’s a laborious method of boat construction. He joked that some of his friends had given up ever seeing him again, and few stopped in to visit for fear of being put to work.</div></div><div style="text-align: left;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj3Y7dcOd4dpEmWgmkEynIbCGF6r81W4sH2wBqbbYm5gWL-NFfF_fufDZ0ChDGuT9-6L1YnTe6BtDDrZ5q71Wad1v1ifpwNSQNGqxTikbhka6co3r9NYJUhy1zE1eLtzkawuYIfPe0_-BT0/s1600/newgrange_45-1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj3Y7dcOd4dpEmWgmkEynIbCGF6r81W4sH2wBqbbYm5gWL-NFfF_fufDZ0ChDGuT9-6L1YnTe6BtDDrZ5q71Wad1v1ifpwNSQNGqxTikbhka6co3r9NYJUhy1zE1eLtzkawuYIfPe0_-BT0/s640/newgrange_45-1.jpg" style="cursor: move;" width="480" /></a></div><div style="text-align: center;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;">Currach at the Visitor Center, Newgrange. </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;">Photo courtesy of Kathleen Madden.</span></div></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: center;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: center;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">* * * * *</div></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: left;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">At present, for better or worse, and unlike most other historical periods I am familiar with, there are few clear cultural demands from society on what is expected of artists. If there were a strong connection to an enduring artistic and cultural heredity, it could simplify matters by giving artists a framework for their production—the what, why and for whom.</div></div><div style="text-align: left;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div></div><div style="text-align: left;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">Present conditions largely mandate that artists generate their own aesthetic and philosophical ground rules. The result is that the impact of a contemporary work is likely to be more diluted or insular than work created within a cultural system where there is wider consensus on art’s purpose and meaning. The upside is that the potential range of subject matter now available is infinitely broader and multi-faceted. It’s a trade-off. One remedy is to explicitly address current events or issues. This provides a readymade connection to viewers familiar with the topic. Still, it’s hard to tether contemporary work to larger life narratives found in religious works like icons or epics of past periods, for example, as there is little present agreement on what such themes might be and how they should be treated.</div></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">For an analogy, look at ceremonies. In a Catholic mass, everyone knows what will happen; they know what to do and when. Whatever your thoughts on liturgies or the Church, the ceremony, developed over centuries and learned by parishioners from childhood, gives structure to worship and has the authority of something that has endured and been repeated by millions before you. Compare that to any ceremony you’ve developed on your own for a special event. If your results were as unconvincing as mine, you’ll see right away the profound difference between the two. It’s not easy to cook up out of air something that will have gravity and meaning, something that connects organically and convincingly to vital aspects of life in the way a ceremony is expected to, though the wedding of two friends some years ago, which was personalized in moving ways, was a memorable exception that proves the rule.</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">I attend Zen services periodically. They are almost exactly like the Zen services performed in Japan for hundreds of years, and in superficial terms the liturgy has the heft and presence of something that’s been around for a long time and polished by many hands. It’s not my ceremony though, at least not yet, and no matter how genuine my intent, I sometimes feel artificial.</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">In art, conservative critics rail that the current challenges here described are actually evidence of the artistic bankruptcy—or even turpitude—of the moment. They cite as further evidence a decline in craft, a conclusion based on selective sampling, and the trivial nature of some responses to the challenges, as if trivialities have not abounded in every era. In fact, these conditions are just symptoms of the natural consequences of history and demographics. They’re aspects of being an artist now that have to be dealt with, the same way artists had to successfully work with all kinds of patrons in times past to succeed. Atavism won’t help. (Though I know artists who sometimes look longingly at the patronage system given the current condition of the art market.) Addressing broad themes in compelling and universal terms is not feasible in the way it’s been in other historical moments given the numerical realities and lack of consensus. Meaning rides the local.</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: center;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">* * * * *</div></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">When I stood in that parking lot gazing up at the mound, I was overwhelmed by the presence and physicality of the thing, by a sense of connection to the past, to a cultural foundation I was distantly related to, and to the lives of ancient others, lives spent laboring to create this gargantuan relic in response to what must have been powerful needs, needs that we can only speculate about, needs so intense that they demanded the stupefying expenditure of time, energy and resources it took to build the site, needs that place contemporary debates in their proper proportion, needs that give a legacy a living pulse. At that moment, I felt that I was standing on a platform built 5,000 years ago, and that somehow the support it provided would help me move forward and work with greater clarity, directness and purpose. In an oblique way, it has, and I still think of it in moments of creative despondency. Not bad.</div>Christopher Quirkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00322514362857272534noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7219352666042954064.post-60283556295877754202011-04-17T11:54:00.000-04:002011-04-17T11:54:38.423-04:00"...perfection is less interesting"<div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhS3bx52eZXMV3uSrdVe-QcWInJHApFpBc-0jPmKD-9_lx2OkchjpgQVK4SNHxZSrAFDjZCbZgWhBPdus3KNPjOJvzU_KHBto5Sj2psIfW0iploLlSvLaY1AuvZ3Bq2zUiy09ak8dJ8gDSh/s1600/derveni.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhS3bx52eZXMV3uSrdVe-QcWInJHApFpBc-0jPmKD-9_lx2OkchjpgQVK4SNHxZSrAFDjZCbZgWhBPdus3KNPjOJvzU_KHBto5Sj2psIfW0iploLlSvLaY1AuvZ3Bq2zUiy09ak8dJ8gDSh/s320/derveni.jpg" width="219" /></a></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;">Derveni Papyrus</span></div><div><br />
</div><div>"In surfaces, perfection is less interesting. For instance, a page with a poem on it is less attractive than a page with a poem on it and some tea stains. Because the tea stains add a bit of history. It’s a historical attitude. After all, texts of ancient Greeks come to us in wreckage and I admire that, the combination of layers of time that you have when looking at a papyrus that was produced in the third century BC and then copied and then wrapped around a mummy for a couple hundred years and then discovered and put in a museum and pieced together by nine different gentlemen and put back in the museum and brought out again and photographed and put in a book. All those layers add up to more and more life. You can approximate that in your own life. Stains on clothing."</div></div><div><br />
</div><div>Anne Carson, <a href="http://www.theparisreview.org/interviews/5420/the-art-of-poetry-no-88-anne-carson">The Paris Review, The Art of Poetry No. 88, Fall 2004</a>.</div><div><br />
</div>Christopher Quirkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00322514362857272534noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7219352666042954064.post-52375678181422585842011-01-23T17:01:00.003-05:002011-01-23T17:45:47.550-05:00Radical Invention<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgZtpzFg5kugf76sz9Hb2H8LSVBteKhAIivgqurvs7yp95pzZ0T2DYMiblWKhE4Fqp8Dmvi-AVYjrstoZ0vD7dmlYJZHGvZLnxeJfkc7TPo_N5f0xL4mJbN39nFjtpGMOSg01HGEtTQTTJC/s1600/44778.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgZtpzFg5kugf76sz9Hb2H8LSVBteKhAIivgqurvs7yp95pzZ0T2DYMiblWKhE4Fqp8Dmvi-AVYjrstoZ0vD7dmlYJZHGvZLnxeJfkc7TPo_N5f0xL4mJbN39nFjtpGMOSg01HGEtTQTTJC/s320/44778.jpg" width="249" /></a></div><br />
<div style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;">Henri Matisse painting <i>Bathers by a River</i>, May 13, 1913. Photograph by Alvin Langdon Coburn. Courtesy of George Eastman House, International Museum of Photography and Film, Rochester</span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
Well, I made it to <i>Matisse, Radical Invention, 1913-1917</i>. The <a href="http://quirkblog.blogspot.com/2010/08/museum-of-modern-art-artists-pass.html">artist’s pass</a> turned out to be useful as well as economical; it allowed me entry even though all the timed admissions for the day had been issued. Usually, I find the titles of big shows to be a little hyperbolic, but this one was apt. These paintings made me see Matisse in a way I had not seen him before, which is not a platitude or inert, as I had not only seen many of the paintings already, but I have been looking at Matisse pretty close up ever since I began looking at paintings, in college. At that time, I lived near the Baltimore Museum of Art, which was home to the <a href="http://www.artbma.org/collection/overview/cone.html">Cone Collection</a>, the amazing array of paintings amassed by the two sisters from Baltimore, who were patrons of Matisse and others artists in Paris. They almost gave the collection to another institution, thinking that "Hey hon’!" City didn’t deserve it. I’m glad as hell they didn’t as it was a major part of my visual education. </div></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">The work Matisse did in the time period covered by this exhibition was always puzzling to me. For some reason, I could never read the paintings well or understand their motivations and their excellence. Sometimes they looked like an obligatory foray into cubism, other times they just felt torpid. This has changed. The paintings combined gritty, intensely worked surfaces, willful unconcern for finish, and of course remarkable color. Maybe you just don't see things until you are ready, or maybe the collection of these pieces is a credit to the focus of the curators. Or both. The show just knocked me flat.</div><br />
The images below are taken from the catalogue (<i>Matisse, Radical Invention 1913-1917</i>, Yale University Press, 2010). The color reproduction is extremely accurate in the catalogue. That is somewhat unusual. I have come out of many big exhibitions at big museums, looked at the catalogue and been severely disappointed. It must be very difficult to do well. We recently picked up a good digital camera. Shots of recent paintings of mine are astoundingly accurate on the computer display. That's the easy part, apparently. The process of getting images from a computer onto a page is clearly an art in itself, so kudos to the brilliant folks who pulled it off here. And the price is extremely reasonable. You know you <a href="http://www.momastore.org/museum/moma/ProductDisplay_Matisse%20Radical%20Invention%201913-1917_10451_10001_67375_-1_11454_17153_null_shop_">want one</a>.<br />
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Click on the images for larger resolutions.<br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjkS4RBYaxBpz1BGEqpEKKXbAmf5lR1FpDg1m7k1kidoXDcJnTk7yLBkHyk0SM67MGM7p7Yg3oF_y8NKt0nhs_dUEYv6DfEOzb5Z_Bbh3k1j9oJcw_MhCbXb9gTJm_E9dxvP-22k4sS3yIK/s1600/blue_nude.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="205" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjkS4RBYaxBpz1BGEqpEKKXbAmf5lR1FpDg1m7k1kidoXDcJnTk7yLBkHyk0SM67MGM7p7Yg3oF_y8NKt0nhs_dUEYv6DfEOzb5Z_Bbh3k1j9oJcw_MhCbXb9gTJm_E9dxvP-22k4sS3yIK/s320/blue_nude.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;"><i>Blue Nude</i>, oil on canvas, 36 in. x 55 in., 1907, <a href="http://www.artbma.org/collection/overview/cone.html">Baltimore Museum of Art, Cone Collection</a>.</span><br />
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</span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><div style="text-align: left;">The Blue Nude always hung in a prominent place in the Cone Collection. I probably saw 30 times over the course of the years I was in Baltimore, maybe more. The painting is much rougher and powerfully unkempt than I recalled. There is a shadow of the right arm hardly bothered with. A yellow splotch on the shoulder, a blue-grey blob indicating the inside of the upper arm, and so on. The color has a kind of sick timbre, and the whole painting exudes a disjointedness and ardent, get-it-done vigor without the expressive self-consciousness sometimes associated with that mode of painting. Fantastic, fantastic painting. I think I spent half an hour in front of it in total.<br />
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</div></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjacTo0DkPmA3A9iC-JBdYYmxDmf5aC5WotM4zbfztiaxlL65O5W_vCzos81Soy3-nJSqrapgbeNdNjxgDY4SmytSu7zsbWf20E65KdwgLhHvW0t5ChI1TFYaCc3yhWTf6jp1JB_Z4lsR4G/s1600/blue_window.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjacTo0DkPmA3A9iC-JBdYYmxDmf5aC5WotM4zbfztiaxlL65O5W_vCzos81Soy3-nJSqrapgbeNdNjxgDY4SmytSu7zsbWf20E65KdwgLhHvW0t5ChI1TFYaCc3yhWTf6jp1JB_Z4lsR4G/s320/blue_window.jpg" width="219" /></a></div><div style="text-align: center;"><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;">The Blue Window</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;">, oil on canvas, 52 in. x 36 in., 1913, </span><a href="http://www.moma.org/"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;">Museum of Modern Art</span></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;">.</span><br />
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</span></div>There is no respect for the process of background first and foreground next in a lot of these paintings, he simply slops the background on, over and into the foreground objects. In <i>The Blue Window</i>, there is a weird, scraped out oval at the top. The scuffed paint resembles a scab. There are many areas in the paintings from the show that have similar abrasions or wear that belie the veneer of elegance often associated with Matisse’s work. The palimpsest of labor and impatience is evident especially in the <i>Portrait of Yvonne Landsberg</i>, with areas scraped raw of paint, as well as incised and hatched lines. It is as if a record of dissatisfaction had to be retained in the body of the painting.<br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgMwNY-aCuDd9ueKUMcGw5_JLW4A300Ei8sW0fyWwyMm0e9XRw_yo-aocxs4DyUtHdq12Gwyh2Z-a0A1i9RIoFpGlhVjYFmhJESpCRWHZgFZPs12c8ogBzI_tsliybedgkjUtcW3s3n9L_1/s1600/portrait_of_yl.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgMwNY-aCuDd9ueKUMcGw5_JLW4A300Ei8sW0fyWwyMm0e9XRw_yo-aocxs4DyUtHdq12Gwyh2Z-a0A1i9RIoFpGlhVjYFmhJESpCRWHZgFZPs12c8ogBzI_tsliybedgkjUtcW3s3n9L_1/s320/portrait_of_yl.jpg" width="228" /></a></div><div style="text-align: center;"><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;">Portrait of Yvonne Landsberg</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;">, oil on canvas, 58 in. x 38 in., 1914, </span><a href="http://www.philamuseum.org/"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;">Philadelphia Museum of Art</span></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;">.</span><br />
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</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgQOpo-fc8hOvL9pdS3l5uNyStrZptappIy9vDOo8g-ajUsqDizO0jsKuBQ-dW30n-dDnUbgyR9M__rt1pui0uaQa_hODhyphenhyphenL_iEiucc829ATufs_u0Grdf0DJdn-BDlqEULpMp4EtDkG7gm/s1600/goldfish_and_palette.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgQOpo-fc8hOvL9pdS3l5uNyStrZptappIy9vDOo8g-ajUsqDizO0jsKuBQ-dW30n-dDnUbgyR9M__rt1pui0uaQa_hODhyphenhyphenL_iEiucc829ATufs_u0Grdf0DJdn-BDlqEULpMp4EtDkG7gm/s320/goldfish_and_palette.jpg" width="244" /></a></div><div style="text-align: center;"><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;">Goldfish with Palette</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;">, oil on canvas, 58 in. x 44 in., 1915. </span><a href="http://www.moma.org/"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;">Museum of Modern Art, New York</span></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;">.</span><br />
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</span></div>The black center background in <i>Goldfish with Palette </i>is an immense vacuum. The black is painted right around the objects. It is spatially adventurous, in the manner of cubism, but is segmented on a larger scale. The painting is divided into blocks and angular chunks of space, not microfolds. The dry brushwork and striations from the palette knife become a structural component of the color, and create a sense of contingency.<br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgJFggCig9JGjUMv3NgSdnBxM7Cmg2XC1qejPTZL8bf91BEHWWNtjMAW8VwqtNaVHBJ1O44jFw0_RGq6_mJe211MALkQL_y7ablBxK6_dvBgz3-OZZFxOJ32uugY8rZOo6b6-cEq4mpTh2U/s1600/piano_lesson.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgJFggCig9JGjUMv3NgSdnBxM7Cmg2XC1qejPTZL8bf91BEHWWNtjMAW8VwqtNaVHBJ1O44jFw0_RGq6_mJe211MALkQL_y7ablBxK6_dvBgz3-OZZFxOJ32uugY8rZOo6b6-cEq4mpTh2U/s320/piano_lesson.jpg" width="269" /></a></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;">Piano Lesson, oil on canvas, 97 in. x 84 in., 1916. <a href="http://www.moma.org/">Museum of Modern Art</a>.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;"><br />
</span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><div style="text-align: left;"><i>Piano Lesson</i> is a big painting, hugely sophisticated. The green triangle is so bold, but also reads as light—late afternoon light to me—despite its seemingly impenetrable opacity.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgN_BJql221SF5JR6EjZG0XnDtgoV8BYxMBNWxw0xmzb32KQC09P18vAuhOirLjyAXZHf3kdTTYQV_PKj6L0v7fHNI8mh0-DiCO1RkSn6XbSAPb2JoX7A6xiF9g2y3gLXKa4pn-0ThVxxwK/s1600/bathers_by_a_river.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="214" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgN_BJql221SF5JR6EjZG0XnDtgoV8BYxMBNWxw0xmzb32KQC09P18vAuhOirLjyAXZHf3kdTTYQV_PKj6L0v7fHNI8mh0-DiCO1RkSn6XbSAPb2JoX7A6xiF9g2y3gLXKa4pn-0ThVxxwK/s320/bathers_by_a_river.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;"><i>Bathers by a River</i>, oil on canvas, 103 in. x 154 in., 1917. <a href="http://www.artic.edu/">Art Institute of Chicago</a>.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;"><br />
</span></div>Almost 9 x 13 feet. The larger-than-life figures in <i>Bathers</i> reveal themselves over time, shown in the process of coming into being, emerging from fractured voids. It doesn’t have the underpinning of geometric or analytical study, but still tears the subject apart. The painting is both violent and generous—Matisse slices the field to sashimi like a samurai in Kurosawa film—but at the same time it shows humane sensitivity to human perception and the way we perceive in time. The severity of the design and restricted palette is tempered by the grace of the fronds and curved elements. A kind of “subjective” alternative to cubism, it's a different way of approaching a spatial study, less angular and more in concord with our bodies and vision. <br />
<br />
<div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">As historical artifacts, I can’t remember seeing any paintings from this period or any period before this that were so raw and deliberately unpolished. They must have made a mark on his contemporaries. They certainly made an impression on me, almost 100 years later. And with work like this:<br />
<br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiC7KvCI_7sbLFL4tKMnZuAbfdVu38754vhrSotPlEFS3QaLLUruQcncyv_1QluOmQWJr9AxPyiKr_0p-vqoLXg005jCHXItD_xay2Fsf5ZBmmCcRseUJgfzgID8EOo9ry87b_Tx5AMtPg3/s1600/ian+Untitled+%252331.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiC7KvCI_7sbLFL4tKMnZuAbfdVu38754vhrSotPlEFS3QaLLUruQcncyv_1QluOmQWJr9AxPyiKr_0p-vqoLXg005jCHXItD_xay2Fsf5ZBmmCcRseUJgfzgID8EOo9ry87b_Tx5AMtPg3/s320/ian+Untitled+%252331.jpg" style="cursor: move;" width="265" /></a></div><br />
<div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;"><a href="http://ianmacleodpaintings.blogspot.com/">Ian McLeod</a>, Untitled #31, 19.5" x 16.75" (irregular), acrylic, latex, tape, sticker and varathane on cardboard (2010?). More <a href="http://www.facebook.com/pages/Ian-MacLeod-Paintings/331653625065">here</a>.</span><br />
<div style="text-align: left;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;"></span>...and this:<br />
<br />
</div></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgU9q8WgG8dJX7VDL0GrWwW1ZY11mheitbQ45fSODaKENapdUqLarS-Fzi_W4WlHuOsVAB9n55rB2JZh3SOhM1Ol2TDFoF_ecEKT0QZ6CHKi2PrrglCjpxWI3xCBvDvogX4jW-wsDelrR09/s1600/img-bradley2_122008100504.jpg_standalone.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="212" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgU9q8WgG8dJX7VDL0GrWwW1ZY11mheitbQ45fSODaKENapdUqLarS-Fzi_W4WlHuOsVAB9n55rB2JZh3SOhM1Ol2TDFoF_ecEKT0QZ6CHKi2PrrglCjpxWI3xCBvDvogX4jW-wsDelrR09/s320/img-bradley2_122008100504.jpg_standalone.jpg" style="cursor: move;" width="320" /></a></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.artinamericamagazine.com/news-opinion/conversations/2011-01-05/joe-bradley-canada-gavin-brown-studio-visit/"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;">View</span></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;"> of Joe Bradley's studio. Photo: </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;"><a href="http://www.jacksiegel.com/">Jack Siegel</a>. These paintings are on display at <a href="http://www.gavinbrown.biz/exhibitions/view/joe-bradley-mouth-and-foot-painting">Gavin Brown's Enterprise</a> in New York until 19 February 2011. See also <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ovUQnKQRwfk%20James%20Kalm">here</a> for James Kalm's video.</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: center;"></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
...and this: </div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhW32YsoimwJ_Lx9C6qJkF5kIAqVlKX1Od38ijktyjOvDRnBB_U3N8LrCrddlcE4L3NW_JD1VQP92oDwmPTvzUCXkBthANT4nfV50377ZtvtPWfu-G9fI4PEAlsiTCf5fboO_UWq-ymBXLG/s1600/donegan.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhW32YsoimwJ_Lx9C6qJkF5kIAqVlKX1Od38ijktyjOvDRnBB_U3N8LrCrddlcE4L3NW_JD1VQP92oDwmPTvzUCXkBthANT4nfV50377ZtvtPWfu-G9fI4PEAlsiTCf5fboO_UWq-ymBXLG/s320/donegan.jpeg" style="cursor: move;" width="238" /></a></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;">Cheryl Donegan, </span><a href="http://5begallery.com/exhibition/imageview/1036/6"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;"><i>Luxury Dust (Gold)</i></span></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;">, 2007, gold tape on cardboard, 24 × 18 inches. Donegan's work is also included in the </span><a href="http://tang.skidmore.edu/index.php/calendars/view/299/tag:1/current:1"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;"><i>Jewel Thief</i></span></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;"> exhibition, up through 27 February 2011 at the Tang Museum in Saratoga Springs. </span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;"><br />
</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">...being made these days, I find surprising affinities. </div><div><br />
</div><i>Coda</i><br />
<br />
“Sometimes I hear [the monks] say, ‘I didn’t become a monk to practice the Dharma! I ordained to study.’ These are the words of someone who has completely cut off the path of practice. It’s a dead end.”<br />
<br />
—Ajahn ChahChristopher Quirkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00322514362857272534noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7219352666042954064.post-41664608395748084592010-11-28T07:31:00.003-05:002010-11-28T11:01:23.497-05:00From the mailbag<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgYSFlbnUngkdS18OUdE_SR0R5rjsGAfZMo-RWK1M6vZuBactajjIePImMORClFdxc1klNi-CEwNX14NmRHz5LQbNqdKisDkLYkdS35Rd3be8OaW84a9p9oZKcoo8-7ctmkEmf7lb23jnjT/s1600/bend+in+road.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgYSFlbnUngkdS18OUdE_SR0R5rjsGAfZMo-RWK1M6vZuBactajjIePImMORClFdxc1klNi-CEwNX14NmRHz5LQbNqdKisDkLYkdS35Rd3be8OaW84a9p9oZKcoo8-7ctmkEmf7lb23jnjT/s320/bend+in+road.jpg" width="249" /></a></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;">Paul Cezanne, </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;">Bend in Forest Road, </span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;">1904-1906</span></div><br />
Letter to Clara Rilke-Westoff from R. M. Rilke<br />
21 October, 1907<br />
Paris<br />
<br />
"...There's something else I wanted to say about Cézanne: that no one before him ever demonstrated so clearly the extent to which painting is something that takes place among the colors, and how one has to leave them alone completely, so that they can settle the matter among themselves. Their intercourse: this is the whole of painting. Whoever meddles, arranges, injects his human deliberation his wit, his advocacy, his intellectual agility in any way, is already disturbing and clouding their activity. Ideally a painter (and, generally, an artist) should not become conscious of his insights: without taking the detour through his reflective processes, and incomprehensibly to himself, all his progress should enter so swiftly in the moment of transition. Alas, the artist who waits in ambush there, watching, detaining them, will find them transformed like the beautiful gold in the fairy tale which cannot remain gold because some small detail was not taken care of."<br />
<br />
From <i>Letters on Cézanne</i>, edited by Clara Rilke-Westhoff, translated by Joel Agee, 1985.Christopher Quirkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00322514362857272534noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7219352666042954064.post-5274759769214690372010-11-03T15:39:00.001-04:002010-11-28T07:37:09.016-05:00VocabularyIn the past couple of days, while putting together some information on my work, I had to look at paintings from some years back and articulate ideas about my painting vocabulary and the way it developed at that time. The motivations for the changes I made then were visceral skepticism of certain types of marks and gestures, and a desire to rethink my syntax. It was a complicated process. A few years ago, I was recounting it in some detail with my brother—who is very knowledgeable on contemporary thought—and he said, “You know all those weird French theories? Well, you got there by yourself.” <br />
<br />
Around that time, I was noticing more and more different types of marks around me: oil slicks on the street, paint spills on the floor, coffee stains on the table and other similar things. These were interesting in part because they were the remains of other actions. They had a kind of authority, that of an unselfconscious activity, that a gesture in a painting could not. For example, one day I had cut out a piece of card stock and walked away, then returned to see this framed bit of my work table:<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiJWY1TOYymjFOPxMAFUY3DQiIHNgBIiwgg_ZTTyAu6nVUdGgbfUpo_YOv3Aka6e-llvYPTlUkXSwvRRo947N5YPqVk4w_uDPfsRB3xV9XUtMuYjKZ3-4VQKZ3heEty6KGUdXACLJi37bH5/s1600/basis.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="198" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiJWY1TOYymjFOPxMAFUY3DQiIHNgBIiwgg_ZTTyAu6nVUdGgbfUpo_YOv3Aka6e-llvYPTlUkXSwvRRo947N5YPqVk4w_uDPfsRB3xV9XUtMuYjKZ3-4VQKZ3heEty6KGUdXACLJi37bH5/s320/basis.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">A few weeks later it had turned into this:</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"> <a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiRum-RFJQKtZIR9qJkPOf98DOQ_SFw_iyKMNEDdVDCJ17-FYPFf8_0dqTg_Kd5ZQ_SnVcfQwuZEcafgp90_ASSFyIRCb_JhGHNyFvRfgUmU-_HVNM8-KdJPCoZ2VNxZADZr3WhowBLkPFd/s1600/table.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiRum-RFJQKtZIR9qJkPOf98DOQ_SFw_iyKMNEDdVDCJ17-FYPFf8_0dqTg_Kd5ZQ_SnVcfQwuZEcafgp90_ASSFyIRCb_JhGHNyFvRfgUmU-_HVNM8-KdJPCoZ2VNxZADZr3WhowBLkPFd/s320/table.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><br />
These seemed to me completely satisfying as images. Paint can rings, gel spills, sand embedded into the table via unintended adhesive effect, the slices of a razor into the wood—all artifacts of prior tasks. It also got me started thinking about color in a different way, too. The colors artists use are gorgeous, unguent, saturated things. They are both immensely attractive and utterly unlike most of colors around us in our daily surroundings, which are more neutral, utilitarian and unspectacular.<br />
<br />
When we do see an astounding color, it is unforgettable, like the late spring day I saw one of these outside my window in Brooklyn:<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjW9QrB2sN1K8akdz31xq6vz_Bkf5lQXRTiDhaEEewScViZti3b9Xd3O2qGZJBiTNHu6ubOwyog56wCj2Tuea8uyQmbc4cxDvHNZxfysx5eutcEqeT6OYgca0jpMXSGgYXA79LacrziwMMX/s1600/scarlet+tanager.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjW9QrB2sN1K8akdz31xq6vz_Bkf5lQXRTiDhaEEewScViZti3b9Xd3O2qGZJBiTNHu6ubOwyog56wCj2Tuea8uyQmbc4cxDvHNZxfysx5eutcEqeT6OYgca0jpMXSGgYXA79LacrziwMMX/s320/scarlet+tanager.jpg" width="240" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;"><i><a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/trombamarina/179428016/">Scarlet Tanager</a></i>, photo by Glen K. Peterson</span></div><br />
<div style="text-align: left;">By contrast, I looked six floors straight down at the pavement one morning and caught this zany mess:</div><br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEijO-ESVIXCVmSoR_4SapMFNV7KJFmnfqdEvLJAuR1JYuwiO2LpZv-4IQq3CMXI9D1bFVVHiTgdGvYFOMYAP_mOS7Dj9Y88HIyRB8p436rH8KBgXOpncSvtH1q8prcOKsi-XuFsJfVnuryw/s1600/ice_cream.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEijO-ESVIXCVmSoR_4SapMFNV7KJFmnfqdEvLJAuR1JYuwiO2LpZv-4IQq3CMXI9D1bFVVHiTgdGvYFOMYAP_mOS7Dj9Y88HIyRB8p436rH8KBgXOpncSvtH1q8prcOKsi-XuFsJfVnuryw/s320/ice_cream.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><br />
Someone had dumped two five-gallon containers of ice cream on the sidewalk and left them to melt and decompose.<br />
<br />
I decided to start working with a vocabulary of residual marks, or marks that were ambiguous regarding their origin in some way. Doing a painting while obscuring traces of how the marks arrived presents some curious challenges, especially if one wants to retain dynamism in a painting while abjuring the more conspicuous fingerprints of the maker. Of course, it requires artifice to achieve the effect, but artists know better than anyone how much artifice it takes to make art seem artless, and once that is accepted it vaporizes some of the conundrums around ideas of authenticity and genuineness. Often there is a negative correlation between what something looks like and how it got there. Malcolm Morley told me that the red “X” he painted on “Race Track” that looks dashed off was painstakingly planned and applied. This is another example of how our conditioning to the syntax of painting after 50,000 years (at the minimum) is so complex, vexatious, unavoidable and rewarding.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiPHdjR4w06eYznhPqyoEJ-VbPmoYYycYMA3Db-SVdSYZyjC09xSibf7e5jRhoKt5V87jee_2xKPA2Ivu0AIEt2p6mjZjh6d6wboIusTiyrwQi5b2KsCsxeT_cTJIq-Bv7blrIThzDWjO7-/s1600/race+track.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="247" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiPHdjR4w06eYznhPqyoEJ-VbPmoYYycYMA3Db-SVdSYZyjC09xSibf7e5jRhoKt5V87jee_2xKPA2Ivu0AIEt2p6mjZjh6d6wboIusTiyrwQi5b2KsCsxeT_cTJIq-Bv7blrIThzDWjO7-/s320/race+track.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;">Malcolm Morley, </span><span style="font-size: x-small;"><i><span class="Apple-style-span">Race Track (South Africa),</span></i></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;"> 71.6 in. x 91.7 in. (182 cm x 233 cm), acrylic, wax and acrylic resin on canvas, 1970, Ludwig Museum, Budapest (</span><span style="font-size: x-small;"><a href="http://www.ludwigmuseum.hu/inc/kepgaleria.php?tipus=mutargy&id=649"><span class="Apple-style-span">photo: Ludwig Museum</span></a></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;">)</span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><br />
</div>In my studio, these meditations led to this right out of the gate:<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiNYwJLCGIQhUcLLvai7dwSXDA8VIguQxHAh50gW5bxejYCcJt2mfcGh_7i5WM77EFj1JdZ_l_BB0LVdOzoMssBfzl-q1rzAAx6x-UM000Bp9v8uQ4poGMnDKetZj5IiwgrLxxy5EC6Ohom/s1600/increase+blog.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="211" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiNYwJLCGIQhUcLLvai7dwSXDA8VIguQxHAh50gW5bxejYCcJt2mfcGh_7i5WM77EFj1JdZ_l_BB0LVdOzoMssBfzl-q1rzAAx6x-UM000Bp9v8uQ4poGMnDKetZj5IiwgrLxxy5EC6Ohom/s320/increase+blog.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><span style="font-size: x-small;"><i><span class="Apple-style-span">Increase</span></i></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;">, 28 in. x 42 in. (71 cm x 107 cm), oil, silicon, spray paint and pencil on paper mounted on linen over panel, 2005.</span><br />
<div style="text-align: center;"><br />
</div>And a bit later this: <br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgXPKjTtga3i9I0K6mjYq3ORuOlV2vxVqFv_Z_Cu6VDHQgf6Nq5A4zGXtECHRVxN4jTd2OSU9IoN-EnlovZdSJ7YYe_ondR_LxHsIUAqAEb6d1jidFgZl1rSTCrtuCZxxJ0zjJR-XLVrfOv/s1600/iaskyou_lg.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="217" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgXPKjTtga3i9I0K6mjYq3ORuOlV2vxVqFv_Z_Cu6VDHQgf6Nq5A4zGXtECHRVxN4jTd2OSU9IoN-EnlovZdSJ7YYe_ondR_LxHsIUAqAEb6d1jidFgZl1rSTCrtuCZxxJ0zjJR-XLVrfOv/s320/iaskyou_lg.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><i><span class="Apple-style-span">I Ask You</span></i></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;">, 30 in. x 44 in. (76 cm x 122 cm), oil, acrylic and spray paint on paper mounted on linen over panel, 2006.</span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><br />
</div>And developed into this after about a year:<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhuh6IYI08Sh4wSQEy_Xh5vw-UJ3_IhkCFIk_QeIybuR9qPRXNNSqsdHCl3TduKE4ZizSTrsc_oF0uprBSU2ANgE9qE2l-cTZIgx8C0WmTZB-q4Lkpua-QhYwJN8nCILsglJ0qN5JR1oCDM/s1600/brunaboinne.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhuh6IYI08Sh4wSQEy_Xh5vw-UJ3_IhkCFIk_QeIybuR9qPRXNNSqsdHCl3TduKE4ZizSTrsc_oF0uprBSU2ANgE9qE2l-cTZIgx8C0WmTZB-q4Lkpua-QhYwJN8nCILsglJ0qN5JR1oCDM/s320/brunaboinne.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><i><span class="Apple-style-span">Brú na Bóinne</span></i></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;">, 68 in. x 68 in. overall (173 cm x 173 cm), oil, alkyd, acrylic, metallic paint and sand on canvas over panel, 2006.</span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><br />
</div>I usually find particular things for a reason, and the reason is often that the groundwork or foundations that need the “discoveries” are already inside, waiting to be paired with an external catalyst. After a while, the tacit motivation for a particular result becomes less important, and things flow more organically while working. In general, doing things for a prescribed end in painting seems less and less a good idea to me. At best such a concern can be distracting; at worst it skirts dogma, which is toxic to art.<br />
<br />
Having an explicit teleological or “that for the sake of which” target for a work can obscure broader possibilities. I also think it’s intuitively obvious that one creates richer and deeper work when one yields to what one finds along the way, rather than working toward a predetermined conclusion, no matter how important the aspiration or noble the intent. Philip Guston once related a useful comment by John Cage that bears on this: “When you are working, everybody is in your studio—the past, your friends, the art world, and above all your own ideas…But as you continue painting, they start leaving one by one, and you are left completely alone. Then, if you’re lucky, even you leave.” (Michael Auping; “A Disturbance in the Field," in <i>Philip Guston</i>, Hatje Cantz Publishers, 2000.)Christopher Quirkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00322514362857272534noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7219352666042954064.post-42925000614726727552010-09-30T17:25:00.000-04:002010-09-30T17:25:31.062-04:00Nathaniel Dorsky films at Anthology Film Archives<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEggFLEpByraJsZnur7P8YF8AX-wNSLjs6s8uVvzPjIY-vsVWaJ8wJJC1J4CACgKdnqSVhaqMjXQOX58VuV2wfIGmOzVyX4GpDNIeoFlQzJJnAhT60Yl_5EHxtPV50l4qcKHkz7JbvionpfD/s1600/saraband.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="180" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEggFLEpByraJsZnur7P8YF8AX-wNSLjs6s8uVvzPjIY-vsVWaJ8wJJC1J4CACgKdnqSVhaqMjXQOX58VuV2wfIGmOzVyX4GpDNIeoFlQzJJnAhT60Yl_5EHxtPV50l4qcKHkz7JbvionpfD/s320/saraband.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;">Still from </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;">Sarabande</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;"> by Nathaniel Dorsky, 16mm, color, silent, 15 minutes.</span></div><br />
Anthology Film Archives will be showing many films by Nathaniel Dorsky next week. Films for the 4 October program are the most recent; I am not sure if some of them have been publicly screened yet in New York. More information <a href="http://anthologyfilmarchives.org/film_screenings/calendar?view=list&month=10&year=2010#showing-36296">here</a>. Interview with Dorsky by Darren Hughes <a href="http://mubi.com/notebook/posts/302">here</a>. A couple of my posts on Dorsky <a href="http://quirkblog.blogspot.com/2008/11/films-of-nathaniel-dorsky-1.html">here</a> and <a href="http://quirkblog.blogspot.com/2008/12/films-of-nathaniel-dorsky-2.html">here</a>. These films don't come around that often, although he seems to be becoming somewhat better known. They are gorgeous and challenging works. Not to miss.Christopher Quirkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00322514362857272534noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7219352666042954064.post-41104672891614224272010-08-02T17:46:00.002-04:002010-08-02T17:47:58.117-04:00Museum of Modern Art "Artist's Pass"<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEja2TVtErYxIwYTW8Jpx2PTHPB76d4PobUe3BzySSQrcXK3UUBzM9W-UJQAakPgn6QtatuqvHRJ-1wPQ1WjAu4vmYCqD0nJYaeBM_n_uL5qg6Co7mH-qLLDjN8i6K2nESXrnuIJML5iX4Ww/s1600/matissebathers.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEja2TVtErYxIwYTW8Jpx2PTHPB76d4PobUe3BzySSQrcXK3UUBzM9W-UJQAakPgn6QtatuqvHRJ-1wPQ1WjAu4vmYCqD0nJYaeBM_n_uL5qg6Co7mH-qLLDjN8i6K2nESXrnuIJML5iX4Ww/s320/matissebathers.jpg" /></a></div><span style="font-size: x-small;">Henri Matisse. Bathers by a River. 1909–10, 1913, 1916–17. Oil on canvas, 102 1/2 x 154 3/16" (260 x 392 cm). The Art Institute of Chicago, Charles H. and Mary F. S. Worcester Collection. © 2010 Succession H. Matisse/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York</span><br />
<br />
Good news for those artists (moi) who have been carping about MOMA's prices since they reopened. They offer an "Artist's Pass" which is significantly cheaper than an annual membership. For 25 clams you get admission to the museum for a year. All you need to do is bring to the museum a hard copy of an exhibition announcement, print out from a website announcement, or any document that shows you have been in an exhibition in the past two years. Take it to the information desk at the museum to get your annual pass. (They're not allowed to search the web for your show at the info desk; that's why they need the hard copy.) There are no member benefits (such as access to early viewing hours), but for shows like <a href="http://www.moma.org/visit/calendar/exhibitions/969">"Matisse: Radical Invention, 1913–1917,"</a> which has timed entrances, you can get in at any time. Where have I been?<br />
<br />
Speaking of Matisse, I am very interested in seeing this exhibition; it is one of his most perplexing and difficult periods for me. The show is up until 11 October. Also, the Art Institute of Chicago, where the show opened, has a <a href="http://www.artic.edu/aic/exhibitions/matisse/p0.html">fascinating online tool</a> that shows the above painting in its various states, with all kinds of gizmos to play with.<br />
<br />
And why yes, since you asked, I do plan on spending a bit more time here.<br />
<br />
<i>Coda</i><br />
<br />
“If, during an improvised solo, a sideman forgot whose music he was playing as he flew into the wild blue yonder, he might never be able to return. One night, at the Five Spot in New York, I watched John Coltrane get off the stand after a set with Monk. Coltrane looked dazed and dismayed. ‘I lost my place,’ he said, ‘and it was like falling down an open elevator shaft.’”<br />
<br />
Nat Hentoff on Thelonious Monk, from <a href="http://www.howardm.net/tsmonk/hentoff.php">“Listen to the Stories”</a>Christopher Quirkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00322514362857272534noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7219352666042954064.post-36439115019138325552010-01-17T20:18:00.005-05:002010-01-18T11:25:40.373-05:00Philip Guston<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhMtmlkB6D2rqQVf3d-_TPX15ShduPAFYJBJOKpjN3PPLDjQLlgflaW71lCdVZLrwhe4J6rIlXvKofuxJlYdKtiIIaQKCcqq4u5y_unVRDUiJsQwvT5oPi_Lef1bLpQ97hper-aXmbMYGH7/s1600-h/untitledcup.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhMtmlkB6D2rqQVf3d-_TPX15ShduPAFYJBJOKpjN3PPLDjQLlgflaW71lCdVZLrwhe4J6rIlXvKofuxJlYdKtiIIaQKCcqq4u5y_unVRDUiJsQwvT5oPi_Lef1bLpQ97hper-aXmbMYGH7/s320/untitledcup.jpg" /></a><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">Untitled (Cup), Philip Guston, oil on panel, 11 in. x 14 in. (btw. 1969 and 1973). Photo McKee Gallery, <a href="http://www.mckeegallery.com/">www.mckeegallery.com</a></span><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"> </span><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">A <a href="http://mckeegallery.com/exhibit/2009/philip-guston-small-oils-on-panel-1969-1973/">show</a> of terrific paintings by Philip Guston at McKee gallery in New York closed a week ago Saturday. They were small paintings on panel, around 12 in. x 16 in., all the same size or close to it. The paintings were mostly of household objects—cups, shoes, etc.—as well as some of his hooded figures and cityscapes, done between 1969 and 1973. The photographs do them scant justice (but click on them for a larger view anyway).<br />
<br />
These little paintings have immense vitality. The palette is restricted to red, white, black and occasional green. The objects or structures are simple and rudimentarily rendered. The elementary limitations give him a framework, and within it he lays claim to a kind of liberty in painting that is infrequently seen but always cherished by anyone who gives a damn about painting.<br />
<br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhrsH3PvUhXiznv4-1HZ-QUO1eNrgdPWaWKF-y5YvhIwP90QkyB4Fei-KGMb71NS0kZnSPzlyH5JP-T44JL_Yl6mf4uZ01rmioq-ByQN3GPegr4oogpOHxomeuub2_YtLtGrS37EtOL2Pr4/s1600-h/untitledsole.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhrsH3PvUhXiznv4-1HZ-QUO1eNrgdPWaWKF-y5YvhIwP90QkyB4Fei-KGMb71NS0kZnSPzlyH5JP-T44JL_Yl6mf4uZ01rmioq-ByQN3GPegr4oogpOHxomeuub2_YtLtGrS37EtOL2Pr4/s320/untitledsole.jpg" /></a><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;"></div><span style="font-size: x-small;">Untitled (Sole), Philip Guston, oil on panel, 12 in. x 16 in. (btw. 1969 and 1973). Photo McKee Gallery, <a href="http://www.mckeegallery.com/">www.mckeegallery.com</a></span><br />
<div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: small;">The marks are virtuoso: little hatches, wet into wet; swirls and smears; perfunctory dashes and blobs. Every stroke is direct, no-nonsense and unaffected; their aggregate conveys a feeling of honesty, authority and self-knowledge. The paintings, deceptively simple and generous despite exiguous means, radiate life. </span><br />
<br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: small;"><i>Coda</i><br />
<br />
“The degree of intellectual honesty that is obligatory for me, by reason of my particular vocation, demands that my thought should be indifferent to all ideas without exception, including for instance materialism and atheism; it must be equally welcoming and equally reserved with regard to every one of them. Water is indifferent in this way to the objects that fall into it. It does not weigh them; they weigh themselves, after a certain time of oscillation.” <br />
<br />
Simone Weil, Letter to S., <i>Waiting for God</i>, Perennial, 2001. Translated by Emma Craufurd.<br />
</span><br />
</div>Christopher Quirkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00322514362857272534noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7219352666042954064.post-35756415476288599172009-12-21T15:55:00.003-05:002009-12-21T15:57:54.340-05:00St. Lucy's Day<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj2BueczE_6pjfp_uQMGsjC2FVx5YohENYzYj2RU0wlk8gzkh-zOFgI_VItF_d1V-jbyL8DL057kM7PF1yLa-IQwEHqG9UGtvRI0XhN_Rn_Pslw2Jc7ID_ml51EIB4P_mdaoxSSflOHoaiW/s1600-h/JohnDonne.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj2BueczE_6pjfp_uQMGsjC2FVx5YohENYzYj2RU0wlk8gzkh-zOFgI_VItF_d1V-jbyL8DL057kM7PF1yLa-IQwEHqG9UGtvRI0XhN_Rn_Pslw2Jc7ID_ml51EIB4P_mdaoxSSflOHoaiW/s320/JohnDonne.jpg" /></a><br />
</div><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">Portrait of John Donne, artist unknown, 1595 </span><br />
</div><br />
<i>A nocturnall upon </i>St. Lucies <i>day, Being the shortest day <br />
</i><br />
Tis the yeares midnight, and it is the dayes,<br />
Lucies, who scarce seaven houres herself unmaskes ;<br />
The Sunne is spent, and now his flasks<br />
Send forth light squibs, no constant rayes ;<br />
The worlds whole sap is sunke:<br />
The generall balm th' hydroptic earth hath drunk,<br />
Whither, as to the bed's-feet, life is shrunke,<br />
Dead and interr'd ; yet all these seem to laugh,<br />
Compar'd with me, who am their Epitaph.<br />
<br />
Study me then, you who shall lovers bee<br />
At the next world, that is, at the next Spring:<br />
For I am every dead thing,<br />
In whom love wrought new Alchemie.<br />
For his art did expresse<br />
A quintessence even from nothingnesse,<br />
From dull privations, and leane emptiness:<br />
He ruin'd mee, and I am re-begot<br />
Of absence, darkness, death; things which are not.<br />
<br />
All others, from all things, draw all that's good,<br />
Life, soule, forme, spirit, whence they beeing have;<br />
I, by Love's limbecke, am the grave<br />
Of all, that's nothing. Oft a flood<br />
Have wee two wept, and so<br />
Drownd the whole world, us two; oft did we grow<br />
To be two Chaosses, when we did show<br />
Care to aught else; and often absences<br />
Withdrew our soules, and made us carcasses.<br />
<br />
But I am by her death (which word wrongs her)<br />
Of the first nothing, the Elixir grown;<br />
Were I a man, that I were one<br />
I needs must know; I should preferre,<br />
If I were any beast,<br />
Some ends, some means; yea plants, yea stones detest,<br />
And love; all, all some properties invest;<br />
If I an ordinary nothing were,<br />
As shadow, 'a light, and body must be here.<br />
<br />
But I am None; nor will my Sunne renew.<br />
You lovers, for whose sake the lesser Sunne<br />
At this time to the Goat is runne<br />
To fetch new lust, and give it you,<br />
Enjoy your summer all,<br />
Since shee enjoys her long night's festivall,<br />
Let mee prepare towards her, and let mee call<br />
This hour her vigil, and her eve, since this<br />
Both the yeares and the dayes deep midnight is.<br />
<br />
—John Donne<br />
From the <i>Complete Poetry of John Donne</i>, John T. Shawcross, editorChristopher Quirkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00322514362857272534noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7219352666042954064.post-27681159026391234342009-12-05T15:35:00.006-05:002010-02-28T10:36:49.910-05:00Varieties of Disturbance<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiHcCcfecQ0OApgt9gPak2_CsHIw_DY7lfDYa4vI5mcyGRBWzGD6ciYtvkx-GZbr6wp2nrULtyqQdK9CfDOapCB5vN2EvPcLJblgKyduG2x_BNe_S5KkgCZ0wEQUionf7hJynCFnL_yzwOv/s1600-h/harmfulirritant.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiHcCcfecQ0OApgt9gPak2_CsHIw_DY7lfDYa4vI5mcyGRBWzGD6ciYtvkx-GZbr6wp2nrULtyqQdK9CfDOapCB5vN2EvPcLJblgKyduG2x_BNe_S5KkgCZ0wEQUionf7hJynCFnL_yzwOv/s200/harmfulirritant.jpg" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">Reading Lydia Davis for the first time this morning, and drinking coffee on a grey Saturday as the first snow of the season falls. In this book, aptly titled <i>Varieties of Disturbance</i>, she displays a fine sensitivity for the aquifers of fleeting emotions, subtle evaluations and minute perceptions and sensations that constitute the unexamined dimensions of internal life. These streams can unconsciously determine moment-to-moment decisions, or influence larger ones as they rise, coalesce, and break into consciousness. In the stories I have read so far, the sensations, as advertised, are irritating. “The Caterpillar” relates finding a tiny caterpillar in the house, which the protagonist charitably decides to remove to the garden, but instead loses in transport on a dusty stairwell. Now more likely to step on it than save it, the nagging urge to find the caterpillar surfaces, hour after hour, spurred by incidental circumstances, and is followed by a faint ethical malaise that persists beyond any hope of rescue.</div><br />
“Southward Bound, Reads <i>Worstward Ho</i>,” goes even further by irritating the reader directly, rather than irritating a character with whom one may or may not empathize. The brief narrative describes reading the ineffable late Beckett work on a bus trip, and is rendered in clipped, willfully efficient prose that echoes without mimicking Beckett’s own challenging words, which are themselves embedded directly into the story as little enigmas. Appended to this is a series of footnotes at the bottom of each page, where the tale is told more fully and comfortably. The footnotes contain maybe three times as many words as the narrative they amplify. This exploits the subtle and meddlesome dynamic one experiences when reading a book with footnotes: when does one interrupt the flow of one’s apprehension to get perhaps vital (perhaps useless, it can’t be known yet) information about what one is reading? The tension is sharpened once one realizes that the footnotes have more flow, and provide fuller information with less labor. Which was the narrative and which was the gloss? As I read, there were pinpoint peaks of discomfort that accompanied my decisions (was I really deciding?), as I switched back and forth between the spartan narrative and flowing footnotes, at times seeking the path of least resistance below, and other times pursuing a more hard-won satisfaction above. This in turn caused me to ask what reading is. To what degree was I goal seeking, and to what degree does was I truly following the writing, letting it lead to new territory? How were these dynamics playing out within the time-based activity of reading, and, in this case, what was I to do with the subliminal fabric exposed?<br />
<br />
This is thoughtfully crafted, innovative and conceptually ambitious writing.Christopher Quirkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00322514362857272534noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7219352666042954064.post-68813689524316867672009-12-01T19:37:00.002-05:002009-12-01T19:39:07.641-05:00In Broken Images<span style="-webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 2px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 2px; border-collapse: collapse; font-family: Tahoma; font-size: 11px;"></span><br />
<div align="left" style="padding-left: 14px; padding-top: 13px; text-align: auto;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: 13px;">I can't think of anything better than this poem to share with you today. It has been on my mind a lot in recently. It was sent to me several years ago by my good friend Glen Davis. He thought it might resonate with my sense of what it meant to be an artist. My response was to memorize it immediately. Perhaps you will, too.</span></span><br />
</div><div align="left" style="padding-left: 14px; padding-top: 13px; text-align: auto;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13px;"><i>In</i></span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13px;"><i> Broken Images</i></span><br />
</div><div style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13px; padding-left: 14px; padding-top: 20px;">He is quick, thinking in clear images;<br />
I am slow, thinking in broken images.<br />
<br />
He becomes dull, trusting to his clear images;<br />
I become sharp, mistrusting my broken images.<br />
<br />
Trusting his images, he assumes their relevance;<br />
Mistrusting my images, I question their relevance.<br />
<br />
Assuming their relevance, he assumes the fact;<br />
Questioning their relevance, I question their fact.<br />
<br />
When the fact fails him, he questions his senses;<br />
when the fact fails me, I approve my senses.<br />
<br />
He continues quick and dull in his clear images;<br />
I continue slow and sharp in my broken images.<br />
<br />
He in a new confusion of his understanding;<br />
I in a new understanding of my confusion.<br />
</div><div style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13px; padding-left: 14px; padding-top: 20px;">— Robert Graves<br />
</div>Christopher Quirkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00322514362857272534noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7219352666042954064.post-27177682167103957352009-10-17T14:26:00.012-04:002011-11-10T16:57:48.764-05:00It never hurts to be good looking<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiRm43DtPrFXDQZFNKhs2FC2wpkCx3Gs4XfP5yJQEmfmBN-sCsrUL711L-ggWh2g541qfAfRYgQLiOe0Fbn_lwDC5AM3bDTLr-j7Rud4ehEnw0N3zt0i5_Si3CIaUo_ArdZtcehoryzuaJd/s1600-h/in+advance.jpg"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5393642436338810322" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiRm43DtPrFXDQZFNKhs2FC2wpkCx3Gs4XfP5yJQEmfmBN-sCsrUL711L-ggWh2g541qfAfRYgQLiOe0Fbn_lwDC5AM3bDTLr-j7Rud4ehEnw0N3zt0i5_Si3CIaUo_ArdZtcehoryzuaJd/s400/in+advance.jpg" style="cursor: pointer; display: block; height: 400px; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; width: 300px;" /></a><span style="font-size: 85%;"><span style="font-style: italic;">In Advance of the Broken Arm</span>, Marcel Duchamp, 1964 (1915 version lost). Courtesy MoMA, <a href="http://www.moma.org/">http://www.moma.org</a></span><br />
<br />
The op-ed in yesterday's New York Times, by Dennis Dutton, <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/16/opinion/16dutton.html?adxnnl=1&ref=opinion&adxnnlx=1255803083-E/WfPdDltcxXGmMT8S4TsQ&pagewanted=print">"Has Conceptual Art Jumped the Shark Tank?"</a> will doubtless provoke brouhaha from foreseeable quarters. It is not a bad article, however, despite the tiresome Morley Safer-if-you-can-believe-this-I-have-a-bridge-for-sale-it's-all-a-ponzi-scheme tone. It simply points out, in a long-winded way, that once contexts are stripped from an artwork, the artwork is on it's own, and depends on its appearance to stay out of the dumpster. Nothing we didn't know.<br />
<br />
The firstest-bestest example of this is Duchamp's <span style="font-style: italic;">In Advance of the Broken Arm</span>, the shovel pictured above. It was once used by a museum custodian to clear the walks after a snowstorm, which Duchamp thought was hilarious. To reinforce Dutton's point, the original shovel was lost.<br />
<br />
There are plenty of presumptions in the article to puncture, but this conclusion, regarding the beautiful artifact, was a bit bizarre:<br />
<blockquote>Hand axes mark an evolutionary advance in human prehistory, tools attractively fashioned to function as what Darwinians call “fitness signals” — displays like the glorious peacock’s tail, which functions to show peahens the strength and vitality of the males who display it.<br />
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Hand axes, however, were not grown, but consciously, cleverly made. They were therefore able to indicate desirable personal qualities: intelligence, fine motor control, planning ability and conscientiousness. Such skills gained for those who displayed them status and a reproductive advantage over the less capable. Across many thousands of generations this translated into both an increase in intelligence and an evolved sense that the symmetry and craftsmanship of hand axes is “beautiful.”</blockquote>I wasn't aware fine motor skills were so desirable to pre-Neanderthals.<br />
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One thing is for certain, and that is that all art has become much more self-consciously conceptual. In that sense conceptualism isn't going anywhere. Few artists make work without at least considering the intellectual precepts and ramifications of what they are creating. Whether that means that work solely dependent on a sophisticated web of reasoning and contextual bases to establish its relevance and meaning will remain compelling, we can't know. Maybe what we are now sorting out is what is vital and what is merely scholastic in the intellectual provinces of our artistic pursuits.Christopher Quirkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00322514362857272534noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7219352666042954064.post-5947079186935103762009-09-28T22:03:00.019-04:002009-09-29T07:03:56.042-04:00Paul Celan’s “Zurich, At The Stork”<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiUVe-Vq-Em2JC_anv1iqIfofVzcKyBB8wXJgcN0ftQwe5LHC5Uj0dR9EQCNHjnBIMjdV1nCCFnu_w-SM72WgwO8kuuPR5vT7E5Y0LsOKYmC4Tg4kPTOkk8K94zysmtyWo6tBF2BwiG6Rbi/s1600-h/celan_sachs_letters.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 400px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiUVe-Vq-Em2JC_anv1iqIfofVzcKyBB8wXJgcN0ftQwe5LHC5Uj0dR9EQCNHjnBIMjdV1nCCFnu_w-SM72WgwO8kuuPR5vT7E5Y0LsOKYmC4Tg4kPTOkk8K94zysmtyWo6tBF2BwiG6Rbi/s400/celan_sachs_letters.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5386705237139200754" border="0" /></a><span style="font-style: italic;">Zurich, At The Stork</span> (for Nelly Sachs)<br /><br />Our talk was of Too Much, of<br />Too Little. Of Thou<br />and Yet-Thou, of<br />clouding through brightness, of [“of how clarity troubles”]<br />Jewishness, of<br />your God.<br /><br />Of<br />that.<br />On the day of an ascension, the<br />Minster stood over there, it came<br />with some gold across the water.<br /><br />Our talk was of your God, I spoke<br />against him, I let the heart<br />I had<br />hope:<br />for<br />his highest, death-rattled, his<br />wrangling word—<br /><br />Your eye looked at me, looked away,<br />your mouth<br />spoke toward the eye, I heard:<br /><br />We<br />really don’t know, you know,<br />we<br />really don’t know<br />what<br />counts.<br /><br /><span style="font-size:85%;">(Paul Celan, <a href="http://www.powells.com/biblio/62-9780393049992-0?search_avail=1"><span style="font-style: italic;">Selected Poems and Prose of Paul Celan</span></a>, Translation by John Felstiner, W.W. Norton, 2001. The phrase in brackets is an alternate translation of that line by Michael Hamburger from <a href="http://www.powells.com/biblio/62-9780892552764-0"><span style="font-style: italic;">Poems of Paul Celan</span></a>, Persea Books, 1995, that I found helpful.)</span><br /><br />Some Celan (and Sachs) appropriately, on Yom Kippur. I have been reading this poem for a couple of years, and had not planned it like this, but who knows what agencies work beyond periphery of our awareness.<br /><br />This poem was written on 30 May 1960, and relates a conversation that Celan and Nelly Sachs had at her hotel, The Stork, four days prior. It was the first of few meetings they had. Sachs was there to receive a German literary prize in Meersburg, but the prospect of staying overnight in Germany caused her such anxiety that she lodged across the border instead. (Felstiner; <a style="font-style: italic;" href="http://yalepress.yale.edu/yupbooks/book.asp?isbn=9780300089226">Paul Celan: Poet, Survivor, Jew</a>; p. 156) To me it is one of Celan’s most important poems, dealing directly with the pain and aftermath of the Holocaust. It is a depiction of a kind of post-traumatic devastation—with the ferocious anger, pain and almost cosmic stoicism—of two persons who suffered such anguish, but it also has an ambiguity that both hides and reveals.<br /><br />The entire poem is unusual for Celan because of its strong, clear narrative line; we mostly understand readily the event of the dialogue. Its theme, the examination of one’s relationship to God after the horrendous events of “that,” gets more tangled the longer it is considered. Celan is full of fury, speaks of “your God,” speaks “against him,” and has a hope not for a reconciliation or explanation but a fight. He incites God to his “wrangling word,” maybe to have something as tangible as an argument to sustain his faith, in the absence of any possible acceptable account for what has happened. It is a righteous and utterly justified response.<br /><br />The final two stanzas are striking. In contrast to Celan's rage, Sachs demurs, and the poem intimates that she sees a broader picture. Sachs' reply to Celan, almost 30 years her junior, is described coolly. The pause that she takes (“Your eye looked at me, looked away”) has the quality of the pause one takes to decide how to express a difficult truth to a someone who is obstructed from seeing it, in this case by anger. There is a suggestion of self-deprecation in Celan’s portrayal.<br /><br />Prima-facie, Sachs’ response (“We/ really don’t know, you know/ we really don’t know/ what/ counts”) could be seen as the acceptance of our inability to comprehend the motives or will of God or God's actions, no matter what the magnitude of the occurrence. Though this is a prototype for human interactions with gods, here it manifests as a feat of faith and spiritual fortitude almost impossible to grasp given the currency, scale and barbarity of the circumstance, and implies a wisdom that is captured in the physical description of her response, one of remove and indirectness (“your mouth/ spoke toward the eye, I heard”).<br /><br />A second reading is that because of "that" Sachs, and not Sachs alone presumably, has had a kind of inner compass crushed to the point that she feels it is not longer possible to make a moral judgment of God (or at all, at the extreme) that Celan imputes. How can one view the psychosis of genocide within the realm of ethics? Is a capacity for judgment evaporated or made seemingly absurd by such wanton violence? If this could happen, what is the point of making sense of anything? “What counts” has a sound of resignation beyond incomprehension in it.<br /><br />A third possible reading, related to the first but more sweeping, is that Sachs is simply implying that one can't say anything at all about God, no matter what the subject or scale, full stop. The relationship to God is at the least indescribable and at the most opaque, yet meaningful. This approaches the domain of mystics; I have no idea how to talk about it, and don’t much trust those that claim to.<br /><br />These readings (among potential others) are parallel and distinct, and maybe their agglomeration is the point. Celan told Sachs that he “hoped to be able to blaspheme up till the end.” (Felstiner, p. 156) Did Sachs’ reply focus Celan back to the struggle taking place within himself, that his anger of that moment eclipsed? Perhaps the poem uses the conversation to present the arguments within the self that occur simultaneously, and that it is the entwinement of these separate, difficult strains of thought and feeling that tell the real story, to which any rendering less ambiguous would have been unfaithful.<br /><br />Of course one always wonders (or should), given distance and difference, of how the myopia of one’s ignorance muddles the picture. (I’m not Jewish, theist, deist, poet, literary scholar or persecuted, nor was I alive during the war.) And while it might be extravagant to request that Nelly (b. 1891) be here to enlighten us this evening, it wouldn’t be too much to ask that we could have Paul (b. 1920) to help. What we have is the living artifact of the poem.<br /><br />I’m going to have a scotch. L’Chiam.<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">Coda</span><br /><br />John Felstiner, who has been most gracious in our occasional correspondence over the years, has a new book out that deals with poetry and the environment, <a href="http://www.powells.com/biblio/2-9780300137507-0"><span style="font-style: italic;">Can Poetry Save the Earth?: A Field Guide to Nature Poems</span></a>. You can hear an interview with him <a href="http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=102795472">here</a>.Christopher Quirkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00322514362857272534noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7219352666042954064.post-42509041075925514742009-09-24T10:38:00.005-04:002009-09-24T10:45:26.473-04:00Exhibition at Thomas Erben Gallery<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjLIJgRkZ1NlVIXBCafNcVGPSECUrpg4SpaGQnTq1P99rWngXhYdRo9dhBLmPQsu3adAq2FjR-PLh1PXzIhByrIylH9jdeGu6cTVH1ZSOdhywW8xmlrqQ-juoNWTiMpAwzX7dCcrRck5Tx1/s1600-h/finneran_meksin_quirk.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 138px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjLIJgRkZ1NlVIXBCafNcVGPSECUrpg4SpaGQnTq1P99rWngXhYdRo9dhBLmPQsu3adAq2FjR-PLh1PXzIhByrIylH9jdeGu6cTVH1ZSOdhywW8xmlrqQ-juoNWTiMpAwzX7dCcrRck5Tx1/s400/finneran_meksin_quirk.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5385043949925269570" border="0" /></a><span style="font-size:85%;">Left to right: John Finneran, <span style="font-style: italic;">Untitled Night (with Three Eyes, One Mouth)</span>, 2009; Leeza Meksin, <span style="font-style: italic;">MKRS</span>, 2009; Christopher Quirk, <span style="font-style: italic;">The Age of Reason</span>, 2006</span><br /><br />There are three paintings of mine in an exhibition at <a href="http://www.thomaserben.com/index.php">Thomas Erben Gallery</a> in New York through 31 October. I am very pleased to be showing with <a href="http://www.meksin.com/">Leeza Meksin</a> and <a href="http://www.johnfinneran.info/">John Finneran</a>.Christopher Quirkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00322514362857272534noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7219352666042954064.post-33907669182360132022009-07-09T15:51:00.011-04:002011-01-23T23:08:21.868-05:00Provisional Painting<object height="365" width="400"><param name="movie" value="http://www.artinamericamagazine.com/swf/media_gallery.swf"><param name="quality" value="high"><param name="menu" value="false"><param name="wmode" value="transparent"><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"><param name="allowScriptAccess" value="always"><param name="flashvars" value="id=1662&type=10301"><embed type="application/x-shockwave-flash" src="http://www.artinamericamagazine.com/swf/media_gallery.swf" id="artinamericaslideshow" name="artinamericaslideshow" bgcolor="#ffffff" quality="high" menu="false" wmode="transparent" allowfullscreen="true" allowscriptaccess="always" flashvars="id=1662&type=10301" height="365" width="400"></embed></object><br />
Art in America online recently published an <a href="http://www.artinamericamagazine.com/features/provisional-painting-raphael-rubinstein/">article</a> by Raphael Rubinstein entitled “Provisional Painting.” (Accompanying slide show above; mouse over for artist/painting information.) It is well worth a read. The gist of the article is that some painters are deliberately adopting a desultory approach and slapdash methods as a way of avoiding the suffocating weight of the history and demands of Painting capital “P,” or as a way out of the theoretical cul-de-sac some see as painting’s current predicament. He brings about half a dozen painters of varying stripe under the rubric, surmises common causes for their modus operandi and provides historical examples of possible predecessors. He has this to say about the current condition:<br />
<blockquote>What makes painting “impossible”? What makes “great” painting impossible? Perhaps it is a sense of belatedness, a conviction that an earlier generation or artist has left only a few scraps to be cleaned up...Impossibility can also be the result of the artist making excessive demands on the work, demands to which current practice has no reply.</blockquote>Whether or not the artists Rubinstein examines would agree with his characterization of their motives or of the situation is an open question (though I think a good number of the artists he marshals do not support his thesis). However, it is noteworthy for Rubinstein, whose writing I always enjoy and who is a long-time champion of painters’ painters such as <a href="http://www.apexart.org/exhibitions/rubinstein.htm">Norman Bluhm, Shirley Jaffe and Stanley Whitney</a>, to thoroughly and sympathetically evaluate an approach to painting that in some instances seeks to make a virtue not just of dumpster-diving materials and techniques, which can be very useful, or of artistic restraint, but also of parsimony and at times contrived fecklessness. I won’t contest that this attitude exists, but it’s worth remembering that it’s not the only game in town.<br />
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Let’s look at two artists that lend support to Rubinstein’s thesis. Raoul De Keyser’s work, which I first saw at the Venice Biennale in 2007, is an instance of an argument being more persuasive than the artifact.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiUgpCqxkK_T_4FMS94pbdVDR8eOpR7cyiOz8f247TlwnA71Q847Nz_0CJza53MHQGRxebFI8dfNZltgnXIdsVaZXFFKFyATDGSCfBDmHS2LyNgTrTxuMyhwwrWcQ0greR_39GJ1mDxpR4P/s1600-h/bluecenter.jpeg" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5356554885288717778" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiUgpCqxkK_T_4FMS94pbdVDR8eOpR7cyiOz8f247TlwnA71Q847Nz_0CJza53MHQGRxebFI8dfNZltgnXIdsVaZXFFKFyATDGSCfBDmHS2LyNgTrTxuMyhwwrWcQ0greR_39GJ1mDxpR4P/s400/bluecenter.jpeg" style="cursor: pointer; display: block; height: 323px; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; width: 400px;" /></a><span style="font-size: 85%;">Raoul De Keyser, </span><span style="font-size: 85%; font-style: italic;">Blue Center</span><span style="font-size: 85%;">, oil on canvas, 14” x 17” (36 cm x 44 cm), 2000. (Photo: <a href="http://asac.labiennale.org/it/documenti/fototeca/ava-ricerca.php?cerca=1&nuova=1&Sidopera=46708&ret=%2Fit%2Fpasspres%2Fartivisive%2Fava-ricerca.php%3Fscheda%3D46708%26nuova%3D1%26Sidopus%3D46708%26ret%3D%252Fit%252Fricerca%252Fricerca-persona.php%253Fp%253D372575%2526c%253Df">Massimiliano Cadamuro, ASAC, La Biennale di Venezia</a>)</span><br />
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Rubinstein quotes curator Jean-Charles Vergne, who says De Keyser’s work “constantly asserts the impossibility of painting free of touch-ups, mistakes, accidents, set on laying bare the seams, the second tries and the failures. . . . [There is] a constant stuttering in the painting.” Given this, it should have a high probability of being interesting, <span style="font-style: italic;">à la</span> Beckett, but instead comes off as cloyingly fey. Transparent process alone won’t constitute a compelling painting.<br />
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Stefan Sandner’s work, I confess, I have only seen in reproduction, and while I make it a point not to write about artwork I have not seen in person, an exception here does no harm.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjW5kUWdmRZUWxY2Ycd0wmlfoknwbVtgeNrcBLjwloKLntbut0lc424KQQaRkfUAOG7SY60VniXRkJrgPSLh5r5UsLOmXR8JDQ1CNhiwyCYxKXhvVOkoOKDHQx-NKzY-Rt97xxiU6yuzumN/s1600-h/untitled_sandner.jpg" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5356555598844894258" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjW5kUWdmRZUWxY2Ycd0wmlfoknwbVtgeNrcBLjwloKLntbut0lc424KQQaRkfUAOG7SY60VniXRkJrgPSLh5r5UsLOmXR8JDQ1CNhiwyCYxKXhvVOkoOKDHQx-NKzY-Rt97xxiU6yuzumN/s400/untitled_sandner.jpg" style="cursor: pointer; display: block; height: 298px; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; width: 400px;" /></a><span style="font-size: 85%;">Stefan Sandner, Untitled, acrylic on canvas, 29 1/2 x 39 1/3 inches (75 cm x 100 cm), 2007. (Photo: <a href="http://www.cherryandmartin.com/artistDetail.php?id=16&page=4">Cherry and Martin</a>)</span><br />
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Its reason for being is in large part to call attention to its own triviality, which in turn calls into question its reason for being, a self-fulfilling, scholastic vortex for which the painting itself becomes inconsequential in direct proportion to the time one spends considering it. Though a nifty trick of abnegation, this kind of painting doesn’t really evade the quandaries that provoke it, and provides little to the viewer.<br />
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While Rubinstein may be correct about some painters feeling boxed in by historical antecedents and theoretical conundrums, and while he praises the “I can’t go on, I’ll go on” perseverance of artists who paint through these challenges, painting remains an empirical discipline, a discipline of objects, rooted in the experience of making and viewing. However daunting the obstacles, the painting itself counts. The degree to which rhetoric displaces experience is the degree to which painting becomes eviscerated.<br />
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Every artist works, consciously or unconsciously, under the impact of the moment, the exigencies of time and place—that is obvious enough—but every moment is multi-faceted and no response to it pre-ordained. Rubinstein may have very well characterized one course of action, but there are <a href="http://www.cheimread.com/exhibitions/2009-03-26_louise-fishman/?view=checklist">plenty</a> of <a href="http://angeladufresne.com/">other</a> <a href="http://www.jackshainman.com/dynamic/artist.asp?ArtistID=13">painters</a> working contemporaneously who have simply never accepted the premises or anxiety Rubinstein relates. They sow an adjacent row in the same field, yet do not recognize (or never noticed) the confines of what is “possible in painting,” as dictated by those outside of it, nor any doctrinal requirement of exiguity. Work such as this is incontestable proof that present-day theoretical or historical ensnarement is less than a necessity. Perhaps Madame de Sévigné had the answer: “<span style="font-style: italic;">Quand je n’écoute que moi, je fais de merveilles.</span>” [When I listen to myself only, I do wonders.]<br />
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<span style="font-style: italic;">Coda</span><br />
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I was in the studio recently and turned on Alfred Schnittke’s "Concerto Grosso No. 1," from the album “<a href="http://www.amazon.com/Kremer-Plays-Schnittke-Alfred/dp/B000001GNL/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=music&qid=1243433751&sr=1-1">Kremer Plays Schnittke</a>.” Froze me for twenty minutes. A-stound-ing. There’s even a tango in there (in the fifth movement). If anyone ever told him what wasn’t possible, he didn’t listen.Christopher Quirkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00322514362857272534noreply@blogger.com2