Days by Billy Collins

Each one is a gift, no doubt,
mysteriously placed in your waking hand
or set upon your forehead
moments before you open your eyes.
Today begins cold and bright,
the ground heavy with snow
and the thick masonry of ice,
the sun glinting off the turrets of clouds.
Through the calm eye of the window
everything is in its place
but so precariously
this day might be resting somehow
on the one before it,
all the days of the past stacked high
like the impossible tower of dishes
entertainers used to build on stage.
No wonder you find yourself
perched on the top of a tall ladder
hoping to add one more.
Just another Wednesday
you whisper,
then holding your breath,
place this cup on yesterday’s saucer
without the slightest clink.
- Billy Collins

courtesy whiskey river

A Short Video on Odilon Redon I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the relationship between abstraction and representation and I’m very interested in work that seems to collapse the two. (Marlene Dumas and Willem de Kooning come to mind.) Redon’s work seems to anticipate this somehow. It’s so-called Symbolist content is of less interest to me than the atavistic, barnacle-like fields of color and the abject biomorphic forms but I was intrigued to find out that Joris-Karl Huysmans’ book À rebours (Against Nature) was largely responsible for bringing Redon widespread attention. Redon is, of course, not fashionable in the art world but I suppose that is part of the appeal for me — to look again at what I’m not “supposed” to look at, to see if there is anything of value there. I also find myself drawn to the unfashionable medium of pastel as well. Many of Redon’s works were done using pastel and I noticed that there is a session at CAA this year devoted to pastel. Something to think about anyway.

"Boredom," by Siegfried Kracauer

If…one has…the sort of patience specific to legitimate boredom, then one experiences a bliss that is almost unearthly. A landscape appears in which colorful peacocks strut about, and images of people suffused with soul come into view. And look—your own soul is likewise swelling, and in ecstasy you name what you have always lacked: the great passion. Were this passion—which shimmers like a comet—to descend, were it to envelope you, the others, and the world—oh, then boredom would come to an end and everything that exists would be…

Just a thought…

It has always felt to me that reserving the mental space to think about art is a political act, but at no time have I felt that more than right now. If it seems that this blog is somewhat disconnected from the vicissitudes of everyday life, including pop culture, that is intentional. However, it is not meant to “transcend” everyday life, as if everyday life were somehow less worthy of contemplation, only to run along it like a gentle caress, exciting the hand that touches it.

Dan Graham, Body Press

Marlene DumasMagnetic Fields (for Margaux Hemingway)2008Collection Thomas Koerfer, Zurich Of the new ones in the current MoMA show, this is my favorite. However, I’m beginning to think that revealing the photographic sources so readily is a distraction rather than an enhancement. While I think it’s an act of generosity on the artist’s part to divulge her sources, I prefer the mystery of not knowing (or at least not knowing right away)—especially with works like this, which hover between abstraction and representation. Let them linger there for as long as possible.

Marlene Dumas
Magnetic Fields (for Margaux Hemingway)
2008
Collection Thomas Koerfer, Zurich

Of the new ones in the current MoMA show, this is my favorite. However, I’m beginning to think that revealing the photographic sources so readily is a distraction rather than an enhancement. While I think it’s an act of generosity on the artist’s part to divulge her sources, I prefer the mystery of not knowing (or at least not knowing right away)—especially with works like this, which hover between abstraction and representation. Let them linger there for as long as possible.

Curator’s talk – To Illustrate and Multiply: An Open Book

Curator’s talk – To Illustrate and Multiply: An Open Book
A talk I gave on artists’ books for my show