Art
Shadow
Sometimes I find comfort in a two-thousand-year-old myth about a Chinese emperor.
Ruins
Flipping through an old notebook last night, I came across a page dedicated to the first time I saw a painting by Hubert Robert.
Interference
I find myself frequently returning to a century-old line from The Surrealist Manifesto: “Let yourself be carried along. Events will not tolerate your interference.”
Denial
A note on Barnett Newman’s portrait of “the agony that is single, constant, unrelenting, willed—world without end.”
Country
Went to an exhibition about the countryside that felt like walking into a Wikipedia entry written under the influence of heavy-duty stimulants.
Armory
The brittle energy of coronavirus anxiety commingled with ritualized decadence. Face masks and champagne stations.
Future
A vaguely human-shaped slab of bronze staggers into a ferocious wind, its body on fire, determined to walk.
Future
People sweep through the galleries, looking at the paintings only through the screens of their phones. Taking pictures is how we see the present moment.
Self
I was shaken by Helene Schjerfbeck’s self-portraits at the Finnish National Gallery.
Decree #1 on the Democratization of Art
A manifesto written by Mayakovsky, Kamensky, and Burlluk on March 15, 1918.