Already some time ago I discovered the joy of observational freehand drawing. Aside from benefiting my mentality (I can count it as meditation) and its use as a learning tool as I observe the physical world, drawing opens channels to engage the people around me. The cold stoicism of modern strangers melts away when they […]
Category: Art
Art Must Never Develop
Bullet thoughts on a broad topic: X
The Leap
This article highlights a new and particularly exciting cinematic lineage, sprouting up in ever-increasing numbers, which some intrepid film student should definitely trace. It encompasses unique, violent, heavily documented acts that blur the line between art and reality. Let’s call this lineage The Leap. Requirements/parameters: This is a refreshing tonic to the locked up starving […]
Cartesian vs. Euclidian drawing
My post on Bernini made me recall a critique in advanced drawing seminar under Sue Gussow. That time she invited a guest professor who identified a simple dichotomy. Looking at my drawings– charcoal on bond on the left, ink wash on mylar on the right– he noted the contrast in technique represented a larger duality, one […]
The Private Lives of Ideas
Browsing Book Court’s New York Review Books shelf, one of my favorite publishers of late, I encountered its edition of The Unknown Masterpiece from Honoré de Balzac. Though he kept it short and sweet and I enjoyed it very much, none of the story has stayed with me closer than the epigraph (such is the curse of excellent […]
On Bernini
For me, there is no better remedy to an uninspiring day than an excursion to the Met. I have been there over fifty times and am still discovering things. I brought my sketchbook– there were architectural thoughts nervously brewing which needed a playful nudge. I lucked out, because the Bernini Sculpting in Clay exhibit was just up in […]
Eroticism
Though the details I design daily are not on par with those brought to my attention by Christian (with Peter Pennoyer; resplendent in all their curvature, skirting between the Euclidian and the organic, awash with white plaster…) eroticism figures in our discourse enough to warrant a more than cursory investigation of its stake in the […]
Much ado about Macbeth
The many Shakespeare-inspired performances about lately, plus one more, and my admiration of them all, provides the runway this time, public/private space as the control tower, skies are blue, and we are cleared for takeoff. Above, from top: Alan Cumming’s Macbeth; Sleep no More’s Macbeth; New York Classic Theatre’s Twelfth Night; Pina Bausch’s Orpheus & Eurydice Two […]
Decision 2012: The Original Hipster
DEAR HIPSTERS, I know you will shrug this off…. but you aren’t the first to (not) be doing what you are(n’t). Anti-trendsetting has been exuded by quite a few notable figures. And don’t lie, I know you listen to SOMETHING I know when you go home, or read SOMEONE I’ve read, or go to SOME […]