What Meets the Eye

Gestalt Exercises #4 and the Color Walk

August 28, 2020

Differentiating and Unifying “Try this experiment with a painting you like. Notice the lines and the drawing apart from the objects painted and the colors; for example, trace the outlines of the main figures and observe the pattern they form. [...]

Seph Rodney’s Great Mistakes

July 30, 2020

It’s come to this—reviewing a reviewer’s review of their own reviews. Also Reflecting on the Mistakes I’ve Made as an Art Critic is two months old—maybe more—where does the time go? What’s so good about this metacognitive essay [...]

Quarantine: Gestalt Exercises #3: Attending and Concentrating

May 19, 2020

“For a brief period pay attention to some visual object for example, a chair. As you look at it, notice how it clarifies itself by dimming out the space and objects around it.” * (If you have not read the first two installments and practiced [...]

Quarantine Gestalt Exercises #2: Opposing Forces

April 15, 2020

“Think of some pairs of opposites in which neither member could exist if it were not for the real or implied existence of its opposite.”*. (If you have not read the first installment and practiced Gestalt Exercise #1: Feeling the Actual, read it [...]

Quarantine Gestalt Exercise #1: Feeling the Actual

March 31, 2020

Jasper Johns, “Cicada” (1979) Oil on canvas, 48” × 36”

Gestalt exercise #1: Try for a few minutes to make up sentences stating what you are at this moment aware of. Begin each sentence with the words “now” or “at this moment” or “here and now.”* On February 23, Adam [...]

Jack Whitten in the Woodshed

March 3, 2020

Do you know what woodshedding is? Practicing alone where no one can hear. And not only that— according to Paul Klemperer* “woodshedding is more than just practicing— it is the place where you work out the techniques that form the foundation of [...]

Bob Seng Was in the Navy

February 15, 2020

I was quite unexpectedly moved by Nexit 9. I had anticipated enjoying Seng’s game of re-ordered exit signs, but not that I would be idly staring at Nexit 9 when it became a barge and slowly and quietly slid into the sea, unnoticed by the busy [...]

Susan Rothenberg: The Search for a Subject

February 4, 2020

I was into women and horses, horses, horses in the 70s: Susan Rothenberg, Patti Smith* and to a lesser extent, Deborah Butterfield. I have to go into the time machine to analyze why Rothenberg’s paintings were so exciting to me at that moment. [...]

Is it Fair (to Valloton) to Hang Picasso’s Gertrude Stein Right Next to Valloton’s Gertrude Stein at Valloton’s show at The Met?

January 2, 2020

It really isn’t. Not at all. Picasso’s Stein is a masterpiece and just so much better than Valloton’s Stein or anything else in the show. Still, it is very interesting to [...]

Renee Cox: The Holy Family

November 30, 2019

I want to talk about Origins in the context of visual invention and the evolution of Christian iconography. To find out more of the backstory (for example, why the left-hand panel, christened Yo Mama, has shown alone until now) I refer [...]