Posted in Art History, Artistic Identity, Artistic Pretension, Things to Read on Dec 19th, 2010
ShareWHEN WE TALK OF BOHEMIA, we are referring to a shifting cultural phenomenon that began among the Romantics, came to dissolute bloom in the prosperity of France’s Second Empire and continued, sporadically, through the Twenties and on into the Sixties. From Thomas De Quincey (17-85-1859) to the Beat Generation, thereabouts. But eccentricity has been with [...]
Posted in Art History, Artistic Identity, Artistic Pretension, Culture Cues, Things to Read on Dec 17th, 2010
ShareARTISTS DO LOVE TO THINK OF THEMSELVES as different from everyone else. They are first on line for the latest article, book, monograph or lecture on the problems of the artist’s personality and the mysterious springs of his creative power. They bathe in popular notions of their own otherness and cater to popular illusion like [...]
Posted in Art, Artistic Identity, Painting on Nov 29th, 2010
SharePHILEMONA WILLIAMSON PAINTS PRETEEN FEMALES who float in pairs across canvas with the lightness of schoolgirls at a moon-struck tea party. There is a charm, even a sweetness, to them that sets them far afield from the surrealist frisson to which the exhibition lays claim. Figures drift and turn in gravity-free [...]
Posted in Art, Art Education, Artistic Identity, Culture Cues, Painting on Nov 27th, 2010
ShareHEDDY ABRAMOWITZ REPORTED EARLIER on an exhibition in Jerusalem that centered on the work of Francis Cunningham and several students. Her conclusion—a regretful one—was that there is no telling what road a student might take. Some embrace their training, put it to work and build upon it. Others discard it to follow their bliss.
It is [...]
Posted in Art Education, Art and Politics, Artistic Identity, Artistic Pretension, Culture Cues, Environmental Piety, Fashion Arts on Nov 23rd, 2010
ShareTHERE WAS A TIME, NOT LONG AGO, when fashion began in the fingers of individuals gifted with a sense of style and the moxie to make something of it. Not any more. Now, aspiring fashionistas have to draw on their parents’ retirement income, take out loans and subject themselves to degree programs in fashion studies.
The [...]
Posted in Art, Art Education, Art and Politics, Artistic Identity, Artistic Pretension on Nov 20th, 2010
ShareAN ATTENTIVE READER SENT ALONG notice of a new grad course offering at Portland State University in Oregon. The PSU link came with a wry: “Figured you’d like this.”
Well, yes, I guess you could say I like it. But only because it confirms my contention that art is increasingly not about art at all. It [...]
Posted in Art, Art Education, Art and Politics, Artistic Identity, Artistic Pretension, Culture Cues on Nov 7th, 2010
ShareINFLATION IN THE ARTS IS OF A PIECE WITH INFLATION IN ACADEMIA. The upcoming College Art Association, in New York this year, has just mailed out its conference information.
Scheduled for the first day of the conference are workshops on the important things: finding a job, keeping it, and getting grants. One of them aims at [...]
Posted in Art Education, Artistic Identity, Culture Cues, Things to Read on Sep 10th, 2010
ShareA reader sent me this listing posted yesterday on Craigslist. It came with the simple word “Yikes!” That is about as eloquent as you can get over a post that is almost too forlorn for words. The listing appeared, appropriately enough, all in lower case. Diminished punctuation suits the pathos of the quest:
performance artist looking [...]
Posted in Art, Art Education, Artistic Identity, Culture Cues, Things to Read on Sep 6th, 2010
ShareTHIS IS A SOBERING LABOR DAY. We have seen the employment statistics. Somewhere under the rubble of numbers are artists—semi-employed, underemployed—supporting themselves with every imaginable odd job: a part-time adjunctcy here, another there; waiting tables; house painting; dog walking; carpentry—you name it. Yet institutions of so-called higher learning, keep turning out M.F.A. candidates on the [...]
Posted in Art, Artistic Identity, Drawing on Aug 27th, 2010
ShareIN HER 2010 MONOGRAPH ON HANNAH WILKE, Nancy Princenthal writes this:
. . . . throughout her graphic oeuvre, the issue of beauty is as central as it is in her photographic self-portraits.
She might really believe that. Nevertheless, Princenthal’s comment is indivisible from the abuse of language that constitutes so much contemporary art writing. It can [...]