Rae Armantrout

DARK MATTER

1

Who am I
to experience a burst
of star formation?

I know this—

after the first rush
of enthusiasm

any idea
recedes and dims.

2

Each one
is the inverse
shape of what’s
missing.

3

One might try
summing
the matter up

in a single
Judas kiss,

all bitter-sweet
complicity

and feigned ignorance

— Rae Armantrout

from thisrecording

I imagine long, drawn out breaths every time the writer hit “enter” on the computer keyboard.

Hanne Darboven, Today Crossed Out (1988)

Hanne Darboven, “Today Crossed Out, a Project by Hanne Darboven”, Artforum XXVI/5 (Jan. 1988): 72.

Hanne Darboven on Today Crossed Out

“I both write and draw…because ‘no more words’ is a writing process, it’s not a drawing process. The writing fills the space as drawing would.”

- Hanne Darboven as quoted in C. Van Bruggen, “Today Crossed Out,” Artforum XXVI/5 (Jan. 1988): 72.

Sol LeWitt

“If words are used, and they proceed from ideas about art, then they are art and not literature; numbers are not mathematics.”

- Sol Lewitt, possibly inspired by Hanne Darboven’s Konstruktion drawings

Pedagogical alternatives

Let’s hear it for pedagogical alternatives!

Piero Golia I see in your eyes the same fear that would take the heart of me (2009)

Piero Golia

I see in your eyes the same fear that would take the heart of me. A day may come when the courage of Men fails, when we foresake our friends and break all bonds of fellowship…
2009
12” Lacquer
12 x 12 in.

From Lord of the Rings, Aragorn’s Speech at Black Gate:

I see in your eyes the same fear that would take the heart of me. A day may come when the courage of men fails; when we forsake our friends and break all bonds of fellowship… but it is not this day! An hour of wolves and shattered shields, when the Age of Men comes crashing down! But it is not this day! This day we fight! By all that you hold dear on this good earth, I bid you stand! Men of the West!

Seems like a speech Barack Obama might be tempted to give. Los Angeles-based Italian artist Piero Golia’s work is concerned with heroism — and its obverse, failure — on a grand scale. In Tattoo, 2001 he convinces a stranger he met on the street to have his face tattooed on her back.) Golia co-founded The Mountain School with artist Eric Wesley, whose work also plays with notions of success and failure, especially in relation to the identity of the artist in society. (Neither of Golia nor Wesley completed graduate school but are working and thriving as artists in Los Angeles, a city rich with world-renowned art schools; in fact, Golia’s training is as a chemical engineer.)

Lara Schnitger, Untitled (2009)

Lara Schnitger
Untitled, 2009
Cotton and wood
110 x 68 x 42 inches
AK# 6945
Courtesy Anton Kern Gallery, New York

Fantastic sculpture from Schnitger’s current exhibition at Anton Kern Gallery. A delicate feat of tent-like engineering shrouded in drip-dyed, midnight blue silk, it goes beyond merely suggesting the figure to evoke a fully formed character, reflecting Schnitger’s interest in theater.

Lara Schnitger, Untitled (Cats), 2009

Lara Schnitger
Untitled (Cats), 2009
Mixed Media
75 x 92 Inches
AK# 6933
Courtesy Anton Kern Gallery, New York

The Feminine

What might “feminine” art-writing look like?

Paul Thek: Artist’s Artist My newest and long-awaited book purchase. 640 pages.

Paul Thek: Artist’s Artist

My newest and long-awaited book purchase. 640 pages.