n 1: On the Market

n 1: On the Market Love this. A moment of truth in the great hype that surrounds art and the darkly shadowed dealings of the delivery system. What this has to do with art? EVERYTHING! If you can't sell it, get it in a New York, Paris, Berlin etc. gallery you aren't an artist or so the corporate money machine wants you to believe. What would they have done with Rembrandt? Forget Nevelson and even Cindy Sherman who has made it knows how much the facade counts and how expensive the truly artificial is. Why do they do it--BECAUSE they can!

Cindy Sherman at the MOMA NYC

On my second go around of the show I overheard a young woman remark to her boy friend as she stood in front to one of Sherman's untitled pieces, Ugh! I don't like this--to which he replied --me neither and they both veered off toward less threatening pieces. What was this art that so repulsed these twenty somethings. A reprise of Courbet's Source which had been shoved off into a specially created closet for the Metropolitan Museum of Art's show a few years ago. Sherman's however, was a delightful riff on the whole idea of the gender/sex/identity theories floating around. It showed a dual torso with a pink ribbon bisecting it's middle. On one side a ruby red vagina directed your eye to the orchid like opening and on the other side of the divide a penis adorned with a cock ring and rising greeted your unbelieving eyes.
Why this was so off-putting to most of the audience in the MOMA the day we went is beyond me. Perhaps it is the on-going puritanicalism that has so frozen any possibility of comfort when it comes to discussing, indulging and experiencing the truly erotic in America? It's an area, as Sherman so rightly and pointedly suggests, we need to revisit again and again instead of shying away closing our eyes to what is in front of us.

Most viewers are drawn to images like these which are spectacular and rightly so. Only a really risk taking viewer would dare to linger in front of the Sherman I described. Go see the show and see for yourself. It is worth a first, second and third look because it is packed with provocative images by one of the best artists working today.

Tell the Park Service to phase out snowmobiles in Yellowstone Na: Thank You - Take Action!: NRDC's Save BioGems

Tell the Park Service to phase out snowmobiles in Yellowstone Na: Thank You - Take Action!: NRDC's Save BioGems Creeps on wheels indulging their infantile addictions at the expense of our environment, national treasures and the habitats that remain.

Save Idaho's Wolves From Aerial Gunning

Save Idaho's Wolves From Aerial Gunning Here we go again slaughter by cowards who don't even have the decency to hunt fair. Afraid of the wolves actually excaping or beating them in the wilderness! Not in my name. Not one more tax dollar for this cowardly murder project.

Florentine painting and more

Finally had a moment to catch the show at the Met. I was enchanted as always by the aesthetic considerations of these portraits but this time around more impressed by Ghirlandaio and Bellini. Why? Because of their ability to access the most moving of human emotions with such simplicity and insight. First the wonderful portrait of an old man and little boy thought to be a grandfather and his grandson. Despite the old man's ugly face due to a chronic condition that distorted hin nose the angelic child looks up at him with adoring eyes. The gaze between these two is so touching in conveying the intimate connection, heartfelt connection that it takes your breath away. This is especially true in times like our own where true emotional connection and intimacy seem to be so rarely, authentically available for a variety of reasons too complex to get into in a blog. The Bellini is entirely a different matter. I remembered it vividly because a very talented painter friend of mine had based a painting of his lover on the Bellini. The original was a perfect blend of decorative motifs of lillies and various other symbols surrounding an old priest. The contrast of the super sized flowers with their brunished bronzed leaves, white flowers and upright stalks made a perfect setting for the realistically rendered head of this old man. The beauty of the composition, understanding of scale and color balance is damn near perfect. I would be hard put to find a better portrait in the entire history of art. The ability of Bellini to render character too is telling. He shows us a character that is resolute, inwardly focused and other worldly. The face is a map of this man's life, ambiitons and adaptations. In these two portraits each artist has been able to reveal the deepest human emotions before our eyes. What we do with what they have presented is part of how great art lives and transcends its time.

De Kooning and spaces in the brain

Recently saw the de Kooning show at the Modern. It is a beautiful and sensitive installation. I was impressed with what a master he was and how tragic his increasing Alzheimers was. He seemed to have it all together until about the mid-1960s when he faltered. I do not know if this was due to the early on-set or what. The impressive thing about the work prior to that was just how integrated his art was in terms of structure, drawing, color, form and space. He inherited all the best of Dutch and European traditions and married them with his own brand of abstraction. His use of color was eccentric and all his own and the way his line cut into space suggested layered dimensionsa and parallel universes.
Much has been made of his Divas but those Goddesses were embodiments of his own emotions concerning women and they were complex. I never saw them as women hating perse but rather his complex feelings about the women in his life and women in general as powerful and unpredictable figures.
The shocking part of the exhibition is the visual representations of his increasing disability. He was at the end a painting machine that went on cranking out paintings that reflected the spaces in his brain as his brush tried to encompass what was no longer there; the focused energy and emotions of a master artist.

Check out our new site: How the GOP Stole Christmas

Check out our new site: How the GOP Stole Christmas: Check out our new site: How the GOP Stole Christmas: https://www.dccc.org/pages/gopstolechristmas Yep you can bet deep pocket Koch brother-type Santa's are making sure he has a merry xmas at your expense. Vote them all out next year.