Category Archives: Commentary

Opinion or analysis concerning whatever’s on my mind.

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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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‘Six Persimmons’: Asymmetry and Ambiguity

Posted on May 15, 2024 by JMN

In a show called The Heart of Zen, “Six Persimmons” was displayed for three short weeks in late 2023 at the Asian Art Museum in San Francisco. It was “painted with ink on paper in the 13th century, probably by … Continue reading →

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Training Color to Speak for Itself

Posted on April 27, 2024 by JMN

Inspired by the theorist Michel Eugène Chevreul — whose 1839 treatise on color harmony is on display in this show — Sonia [Delaunay] and her fellow pioneers in abstraction had to train the individual elements of color, such as contrast … Continue reading →

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‘There’s Nothing There Except the Pictures’

Posted on April 25, 2024 by JMN

The artist Jim Nutt has been making a version of this imagined portrait for the last 40 years, a mode that has dominated his practice… His women never age, never seem to dislodge from a midcentury stylistic amber: all wearing … Continue reading →

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The Caped Grammarian

Posted on March 19, 2024 by JMN

The linguist’s mind ripples with muscle beneath his unprepossessing skull. Most days, reclusive and modest, he contemplates exotic texts in his remote book-cave. Occasionally, however, an English specimen from Digital City issues a cry for help. The linguist springs into … Continue reading →

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What’s in a Name?

Posted on March 16, 2024 by JMN

Ask César Cuauhtémoc García Hernández, holder of the Gregory Williams Chair in Civil Rights and Civil Liberties at Ohio State University. Ask Atahualpa Yupanqui (1908-1992), born Héctor Roberto Chavero Aramburu, holder of a guitar in Argentina. Ask Helen-Marie Lyon-Dalberg-Acton, wife … Continue reading →

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Savage Women

Posted on March 10, 2024 by JMN

The plasticity of the modeled flesh; the acuity of the subject’s skeptical gaze distorted by skillfully hinted pince-nez spectacles; the wristwatch: the rich blacks of garb against a brushy olive background: these excite notice in the expressive portrait of Berthe … Continue reading →

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