Category Archives: Quotations

Things people said.

Remedios Varo (1908 – 1963)

Posted on September 27, 2021 by JMN

“Armonía (Autorretrato Sugerente)”/“Harmony (Suggestive Self-Portrait)” 1956. Credit… Remedios Varo, Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York/VEGAP, Madrid, New York; Sotheby’s, via Associated Press. Her father, Rodrigo Varo y Zejalvo, a hydraulic engineer, taught her mechanical drawing and encouraged her interest in … Continue reading →

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‘Jasper Johns: Divide and Conquer’ — Review by Holland Cotter

Posted on September 25, 2021 by JMN

Flags, maps and numbers were among the artist’s earliest repeating motifs. In “Map” (1961), the artist blurs the boundaries of states and strikes a line through the name South Carolina. Credit…Jasper Johns/VAGA at Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York; Charlie … 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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‘No path to heaven / except through this dirt’

Posted on September 16, 2021 by JMN

My title is from the poem by Philip Metres, “Never Describe the Sky as Azure,” in Poetry, September 2021. A Reservation Over the Fist Resisting the repressive Texas governocracy is of the essence. Are fisting poses ginned up for camera … Continue reading →

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“I’m Trying to Overwhelm the Museum,” He Said

Posted on September 12, 2021 by JMN

[Adam] Pendleton, 37, is best known as a painter of abstract canvases in a distinctive black-and-white style that challenge how we read language. Made using spray-paint, brush and silk-screen processes, they incorporate photocopied text, words unmoored from context, letters scrambled … Continue reading →

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‘A Way of Understanding Who You Are’

Posted on September 2, 2021 by JMN

“Human beings have always been storytellers and you use that as a way of understanding who you are, and who the people around you are, and what’s going on,” he says. “If I look back, which I don’t very often, … Continue reading →

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Peter Bradley: ‘What’s Important Is the Color’

Posted on September 1, 2021 by JMN

“In person, Bradley is warm, refreshingly irreverent, unapologetic, and potty mouthed.” Bradley was among a handful of Black artists, along with [Sam] Gilliam, [Ed] Clark and Williams, making abstract work in the late 1960s and 1970s. Now as then he … Continue reading →

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Sancho Panza Appreciates a Nip of Good Wine

Posted on July 30, 2021 by JMN

Sancho Panza takes a memorable pull from a companion’s proffered wineskin (“bota”) in this scene from part 2 of “Don Quijote.” Y diciendo esto, se la puso en las manos a Sancho, el cual, empinándola, puesta a la boca, estuvo … Continue reading →

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‘Hotch-Potch of the Pure and the Impure’

Posted on July 29, 2021 by JMN

Some of my most compelling reading is that which others do for me. Here is a quotation shared with me today by a blogger who consumes more good literature than I can shake a stick at. “…that there is no … Continue reading →

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Trees

Posted on July 20, 2021 by JMN

Below are excerpts from Françoise Mouly’s interview with artist Christoph Niemann. I became obsessed with drawing trees when I was a teen-ager. I took the same approach as I did when learning to draw the human body—trying to understand the … Continue reading →

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