Author Archives: JMN

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About JMN

I live in Texas and devote much of my time to easel painting on an amateur basis. I stream a lot of music, mostly jazz, throughout the day. I like to read and memorize poetry.

Amy Sillman: The ‘Facticity’ of Paint

… [Amy Sillman] has helped lead the charge over the last decade for a reinvigorated mode of abstraction, alongside colleagues like Laura Owens, Julie Mehretu, Joanne Greenbaum or Jacqueline Humphries. These painters, mostly women, have reclaimed the potency of active … Continue reading →

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‘A Fond Infected Look’

A novelist’s prose can crowd poetry turf with an ineffability that thwarts paraphrase. Of his mother a protagonist says: “Ten minutes she will spend in the kitchen working with her swift cat-efficiency, then out and away with the children, surging … Continue reading →

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‘Whenever I Feel Bad…’

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Whenever I feel bad, I go to the library and read controversial periodicals. Though I do not know whether I am a liberal or a conservative, I am nevertheless enlivened by the hatred that one bears for the other. In … Continue reading →

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Shoes, Cans, Clocks, Bricks… and Hoods

This article describes Philip Guston (1913-1980) as an “artist’s artist” whose “deceptively simple subjects and emphatic brush strokes” influenced many painters of our era. … Part of the reason he is embraced by artists in the current moment is that … Continue reading →

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Fiendish Moderator (!)

“Everyone agrees Tuesday’s debate was a train wreck. A major contributing factor was the moderator Chris Wallace repeatedly interrupting to try to help Joe Biden.” Texas U.S. Senator Ted Cruz (R) (c) 2020 JMN

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Joy Sails

Painting is a way of providing a balm, to artist and viewer alike, in a calamitous era. “We live in almost Old Testament times, with plagues and insane kings,” says [André] Gregory. “It’s crucial that we look at those things … Continue reading →

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A Hopper Reveal

It’s interesting to see instances of a teenage Edward Hopper’s copying of other artists, the more so as it touches on the reputation he cultivated “as an artist whose innate genius allowed him to emerge on the scene without a … Continue reading →

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The Forest and the Trees

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I had a photograph of a forest. A Sherwood of a forest — florescent, bosky, a thing you can’t make up. And I made up a Mickey fantasia of a forest — florid, tumescent, burnt down with color and intricate … Continue reading →

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Rimbaud and Verlaine

The seventy-five persons interred in the French Pantheon include Voltaire, Rousseau, Dumas, Hugo and Malraux. None is there for poetry. (Victor Hugo was honored for his political attainments.) There is now a movement afoot to transfer the remains of Arthur … Continue reading →

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Reframing Philip Guston

This week, the directors of [the National Gallery of Art in Washington, Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, Tate Modern in London, and Museum of Fine Arts, Boston] released a joint statement saying that they were “postponing the exhibition until a … Continue reading →

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