Category Archives: Commentary

Opinion or analysis concerning whatever’s on my mind.

Raise Your Hand If You’re Up for a ‘Variety of Irreconcilable Points of View’

Posted on July 10, 2024 by JMN

Rooky move: I responded to the first page of Meghan O’Rourke’s essay “On Ambivalence: To Be, but to Be How?” (Poetry, June 2024) before I had finished reading it. I caught the wave generated for me by her allusions to … Continue reading →

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‘You Can Make Something and You See It. But Then You Have to Spend Your Life to Get the World to See It’ (June Leaf)

Posted on July 2, 2024 by JMN

Painter and sculptor June Leaf died on July 1, 2024, aged 94. “She is that rare thing in painting today: a poet with a taste and a talent for complex images.” (Hilton Kramer, 1968) In Paris, Ms. Leaf told Hyperallergic, … Continue reading →

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The ‘Jolly Bunch of Pen-Pushers’

Posted on June 29, 2024 by JMN

For me the skills of cartoon and caricature are from on high, which is why I relished this article about Philip Guston. It told me much I didn’t know. He was the son of Ukrainian Jewish immigrants in Montreal who … Continue reading →

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Un-Contained

Posted on June 25, 2024 by JMN

The text is Marvin K. White’s “From Containment to Expansion: A Tenderloin Meditation in Two Parts” (Poetry, July/August 2024). Part 1 contains 82 the’s, 41 does not contain’s and 41 pairings that span the elemental (sun-fire), the metaphysical (circle-infinity), the … Continue reading →

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Protect the Rim, Kill the Note

Posted on June 15, 2024 by JMN

I got a charge out of Ernie Barnes’s painting titled “Protect the Rim.” The surreally long figures, the lofty rustic hoop, and even the knocked-together frame all have a quirky charm. In a parallel world, my grandmother’s capacious lungs powered … Continue reading →

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Raise Your Hand If You Know What ‘Paratactic’ Means

Posted on June 12, 2024 by JMN

In an essay, Meghan O’Rourke writes the following: Ambivalence is, like so much poetry, paratactic. (Poetry, June 2024) Ambivalence is a state of mind characterized by mixed feelings. Parataxis is a rhetorical move. It daisy-chains independent clauses, leaving it to … Continue reading →

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Posted on June 5, 2024 by JMN

This blog nets it out. You rarely sacrifice more than three minutes to EthicalDative: Bish, bash, bosh. <Instant of Appreciative Reflection> Smash LIKE. You’re done. PS: A supportive comment can substitute for the canonical <Instant of AR>. Be so kind? … Continue reading →

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‘I Don’t Agree With What I Said’

Posted on June 2, 2024 by JMN

In a delicious Onion skit a befuddled member of a clueless television news panel ends up saying, “Yeah, I don’t agree with what I said!” It’s a wicked sendup of vacuous cable news, but also sparks a thought: What if … Continue reading →

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‘The Brushstrokes Don’t Make Shapes’

Posted on May 25, 2024 by JMN

Chuck Close’s approach to painting is intriguing. It’s as if he invented pixellation avant la lettre. “This new body of work is more abstract, and quieter than any previous ones,” Close told the artist Cindy Sherman in a 2018 interview. … Continue reading →

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Red Alert: Portrait Riot!

Posted on May 16, 2024 by JMN

I warm to Jonathan Yeo’s smoldering rendition of Charles the Third for the fastuous havoc it wreaks on canvas, not to mention expenditure of fiery pigment. It will inflame disdain in all the right quarters, though reportedly not in his … Continue reading →

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