Category Archives: Commentary

Opinion or analysis concerning whatever’s on my mind.

Kafka’s Drawing Isn’t Kafkaesque!

Posted on December 19, 2021 by JMN

A trove of drawings by Franz Kafka was brought to light in 2019. They share, says Philip Oltermann, features with paintings Kafka describes in his fiction: “… men riding flying buckets, singing mice and creatures made of household detritus… dream-like … Continue reading →

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Mean or Not, It’s a Feat

Posted on December 12, 2021 by JMN

Can a poem hurt the reader into glimpsing its cargo? The poem discussed is ‘From “Banana [ ],”’ Poetry, December 2021, by Paul Hlava Ceballos. I encounter poetry I perceive to be all kinds of icky: cryptic, elliptic, hierophantic, delphic, … Continue reading →

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‘Except for Perhaps Poetry…’

Posted on December 5, 2021 by JMN

In 1970, David Godine started a small publishing company in an abandoned cow barn in Brookline, Massachusetts. After a distinguished history of publishing select titles in well crafted editions, he has sold the company. I enjoyed reading what he did … Continue reading →

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‘Carmen Mola’ Is Three Men

Posted on November 21, 2021 by JMN

¡Me cachis en diez! Nadie está en su sitio. “Hell and damn! No one is in his place”; that was my father-in-law’s take on the hanky panky of a popular soap opera in late-Franco Spain. In post-Franco Spain what’s to … Continue reading →

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Poetic Researches

Posted on November 14, 2021 by JMN

Is the soul our dark matter — pervasive but undetectable by any instrument we possess? If there’s a part of me that isn’t glia, neurons, and enzymes, it has found a modicum of rest in the revelation that John Ashbery’s … Continue reading →

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Marlene Dumas: ‘Art Is Not a Mirror’

Posted on November 7, 2021 by JMN

This article gives a stimulating sample of Marlene Dumas’ painting. Here’s a whiff of its curatorial patter: “She is a master, in the classical sense: she makes masterpieces”… Dumas [takes] us somewhere beyond prosaic materiality… “[Faces and portraits by Dumas … Continue reading →

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‘mee-HIGH CHEEK-sent-me-HIGH-ee

Posted on November 4, 2021 by JMN

My title is how the NYTimes represents the pronunciation of the name of Hungarian-born psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, who died recently in Claremont, California. He coined and popularized the term “flow” to describe a state of focused contentment in which time … Continue reading →

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Fabulousness and Traps

Posted on October 21, 2021 by JMN

Here’s a vibrant pulverization of Smith-song around the paintings of Beauford Delaney (1901-1979): Robust impasto surfaces… startling colors… visionary buzz… new kind of painterly fabulousness… sturdy realism overloaded with color… something of an Egyptian immobility… crisis-crossing strokes [sic: Is “criss-crossing” … Continue reading →

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‘A Gloriously Unsatisfied Painter’

Posted on October 7, 2021 by JMN

Brobdingnagian ocular hubbub. Colossus of hue and scream. Tympanic boom. These phrases leapt to mind — of course they did! — as I eyed Sarah Cain’s work. Confession though: Cain owns me for rejecting the term “murals” in favor of … Continue reading →

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‘Marquetry Remains Her Focus’

Posted on September 18, 2021 by JMN

In the past, Alison Elizabeth Taylor’s extraordinary wood-marquetry paintings have seemed interesting primarily for their bravura craft. Working from photographs, mostly her own, and using laser cutting (mainly), Taylor fashioned small pieces of various wood veneers into puzzle-like pieces fit … Continue reading →

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