I wrote about Lamia Joreige’s art work, Objects of War, over at Map Mint yesterday. Map Mint is artist Sage Dawson’s online blog, where you can find news about her work, exhibitions and inspirations. Read it here.
Posted in Uncategorized
Nothing If Not Critical
Robert Hughes remains my favorite authority on art.
“The nineteenth century went out in a blaze of glory … Europe then had, among others, Cezanne, Monet, Seurat, Degas, Matisse, van Gogh, Gauguin, Munch, Rodin; we, the pessimist might say, have network television and the pallid ghost of Andy Warhol…
…. Americans [were able] to ignore the inconvenient fact that virtually all artists who created and extended the modernist enterprise between 1890 and 1950, Beckmann no less than Picasso, Miro and de Kooning as well as Degas or Matisse, were formed by the atelier system and could no more have done without the particular skills it inculcated than an aircraft can fly without an airstrip. The philosophical beauty of Mondrian’s squares and grids begins with the empirical beauty of his apple trees. Whereas thanks to America’s tedious obsession with the therapeutic, its art schools in the 1960s and 1970s tended to become creches, whose aim was less to transmit the difficult skills of painting and sculpture than to produce “fulfilled” personalities. At this no one could fail. Besides, it was easier on the teachers if they left their students to do their own thing. It meant they could do their own thing, and not teach — especially since so many of them could not draw either.”
-Robert Hughes, Nothing if Not Critical
Amen?
Map Mint Guest Blog Post
Check out my guest blog post about Chinese artist Song Dong on Sage Dawson’s Map Mint. Sage is a wonderful artist and art professor who documents her inspirations and art-making on the blog.
Posted in Contemporary Art, Personal
Trip Abroad
One Saturday last summer I visited an estate sale in Kessler Park, a neighborhood in Dallas filled with beautiful 1960s homes that have been modernized by an influx of young couples. I stumbled on this journal. It was kept by a traveling housewife in 1961 who visited Europe, and she wrote about her experiences in depth. I was surprised and a little angered that something so personal and precious was for sale, and reading it made me feel a little voyeuristic. Still, I bought it ($1) … and can’t help loving it.
Posted in Bookworms, Gloworms, Things I Love
