Category Archives: Quotations

Things people said.

‘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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Arab Figure Painting

Posted on April 22, 2024 by JMN

Last December The Times published an article about an exhibition at Columbia University’s Wallach Art Gallery, titled “Partisans of the Nude: An Arab Art Genre in an Era of Contest, 1920-1960.” The show spotlights 85 rarely seen works in the … Continue reading →

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Art Critic Roberta Smith Retires. Damn!

Posted on April 17, 2024 by JMN

Over her 38-year career at The Times, Ms. Smith cultivated a reputation for intimate observations conveyed in accessible prose. I became a critic in the same way a lot of people become critics: by immersing themselves in a subject and … Continue reading →

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The Zen of Falling Short

Posted on April 9, 2024 by JMN

The thin, gray quality of the old man’s face suggest [sic] that even a Zen master’s identity is evanescent, while the dark intensity of his eyes captures the timeless persistence of his understanding. A series of feathery, beautiful strokes come … Continue reading →

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Bombay Beach, On California’s Dead Sea (The Salton)

Posted on March 31, 2024 by JMN

When I was there, I walked the streets with Denia Nealy, an artist who goes by Czar, and my friend Brenda Ann Kenneally, a photographer and writer, who would shout names, and people would instantly emerge. A stranger offered a … Continue reading →

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‘Beauty Kicks In’

Posted on March 27, 2024 by JMN

I would dislike him if I could build a case from the visible evidence equal in strength to my itch to dislike him. But beauty kicks in. (Peter Schjeldahl on sculptor Richard Serra) (c) 2023 JMN — EthicalDative. All rights … 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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Who Would, You Know, Think It?

Posted on March 6, 2024 by JMN

“People who are coming from parts unknown, countries that you’ve never heard of. Languages that nobody in this country speaks. We don’t even have teachers of some of these languages. Who would think that we have languages that are like … Continue reading →

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