Category Archives: Quotations

Things people said.

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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‘Artistic Project Born from Disastrous War and Political Disenchantment’

Posted on March 5, 2024 by JMN

“I have been drawing,” Beckmann wrote to his wife one evening, after a day caring for men who’d survived the trenches. “That protects one from death and danger.” Though he never served at the front, Beckmann had a nervous breakdown … Continue reading →

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Invasion of the Disembodied Tongues

Posted on March 2, 2024 by JMN

“People who don’t speak languages. We have languages coming into our country, nobody that speaks those languages. They’re truly foreign languages. Nobody speaks them.” (Trump) https://www.washingtonpost.com/doonesbury/ Make America laisser les bons temps rouler again. ¡Ándale, buey! (c) 2024 JMN — … Continue reading →

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George Tscherny (1924-2023): Ad Artist

Posted on March 1, 2024 by JMN

He recognized from an early age the way that high art and commercial art overlapped, blended together and even nestled inside each other. I called myself a space salesman when I worked in newspaper advertising. When I was made ad … Continue reading →

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‘Poetry Doesn’t Need Music’

Posted on February 22, 2024 by JMN

Poetry doesn’t need music. All of its music is contained in print on the page.(PJ Harvey) People try to tell me I’m a poet and I say, No, I have music and rhythm to help me get my point across … Continue reading →

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‘Heartfelt, Slapdash, But Unredeemed by Art’

Posted on February 18, 2024 by JMN

Art is something scrappy and strange; it may hiss rather than purr. How it redeems, presumably, is at the heart of the critic’s project, but also the lay consumer’s. That’s me. In doodling my readings of <clears throat> lineated discourse, … Continue reading →

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His First Word Was ‘Pencil’

Posted on February 16, 2024 by JMN

“What I’ve come to realize after 30 years of research is that the pictorial output of Picasso basically consists of drawings rendered in paint. His entire oeuvre is conceived, anticipated and elaborated through drawing.” (Anne Baldassari) Give my my pencil, … Continue reading →

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Frans Hals ‘Bet Everything on Portraiture’

Posted on February 11, 2024 by JMN

Hals bet everything on portraiture… It was a profession, not a calling. His job was to disappear into the paint. (Zachary Fine) For me Vermeer is glassy and distant where Hals is rudely… reachable. The tossed-off affect of his paintings’ … Continue reading →

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‘Have a Nice Day’ in Plain Language

Posted on February 10, 2024 by JMN

Javier Sánchez knows how to open up a can of tough love and share it with his reader. What he wrote the other day in Las palabras de Javier follows, along with my English translation (kindly authorized by Javier). Can … Continue reading →

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‘A Spume of Green or a Blood-Red Fog’

Posted on February 6, 2024 by JMN

[Rothko] modeled a commitment to abstraction that charged at the hardest questions of life and art through refusal of the easy path… [He] never thought of [his paintings] as peaceable. “Behind the color lies the cataclysm,” he said in 1959 … Continue reading →

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