Broomwork

Posted on October 20, 2019 by JMN
ed clark

‘Elevation,’ painted in acrylic on canvas, was also among the works in the 2018 exhibit at the Mnuchin Gallery. Credit Agaton Strom for The New York Times.

Ed Clark, dead at 93, included brooms among his brushes, and was among the first artists to use a shaped canvas.

Mr. Clark sometimes stains but mostly he wields wide brushes and even brooms, magnifying impasto and brushwork in piled-up strokes that seem to squirm on the surface,” the art critic Roberta Smith of The New York Times wrote in a 2018 review of a survey of his work. “More characteristic are broad bands and curves of color that zoom across or out of corners, achieving an almost sculptural force, as in the pale, propulsive streams of ‘Elevation’ (1992), a tumult of sound, water and paint all in one.”

(Neil Vigdor, “Ed Clark, Pioneering Abstract Expressionist Painter, Dies at 93,” NYTimes, 10-19-19)

(c) 2019 JMN

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The Poetry Mandate

Posted on October 20, 2019 by JMN
dannunzio

Gabriele d’Annunzio after the occupation of Fiume. Credit Luigi Betti/Alinari Archives, via Getty Images.

The Italian poet Gabriele d’Annunzio declared himself ruler of the city of the Hapsburg city of Fiume (now Rijeka in Croatia) on Sept. 12, 1919. His “rule” lasted 15 months. “He mandated daily poetry readings, regular concerts and constant fireworks.”

But it was d’Annunzio’s canny ability to transform politics into an aesthetic — even religious — experience that proved most prescient. His narratives of bygone eras of glory, of virility expressed through violence, whipped an alienated and fractious populace into frenzy. His blithe disregard for truth allowed him to create — unfettered — his own reality.

(Tara Isabella Burton, “The Sex-Crazed Poet Strongman Who (Briefly) Built an Empire,” 10-18-19)

(c) 2019 JMN

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Doubts Allowed

Posted on October 20, 2019 by JMN
egan pilgrimage

A church in San Gimignano along the Via Francigena in Italy. Credit DeAgostini/Getty Images.

As a bicycle enthusiast I relish Father John’s simile.

At Great St. Bernard Pass, the high point of the Via Francigena, at 8,114 feet, I was fascinated by a priest of 40 years who still struggled with his faith. “Doubts are allowed by God,” said this man who introduced himself as Father John of Flavigny, a onetime medical student. “It’s a bit like training for sports. If you only ride a bicycle with the wind at your back, that’s not going to help you. You need to ride your bike against the wind.”

(Timothy Egan, “One Cure for Malnutrition of the Soul,” NYTimes, 10-19-19)

(c) 2019 JMN

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Exactingly Delighted

Posted on October 16, 2019 by JMN
blooms library

Harold Bloom’s home library, photographed in June. Credit Tanya Marcuse.

Scholar and literary critic Harold Bloom has died at the age of 89. Dwight Garner hits memorable notes in his tribute to Bloom, who in one of over 40 books launched an attack “from a crenelated embankment” on critics and scholars whom Bloom termed “a rabblement of lemmings.”

It was impossible to read deeply in Bloom without him flooring you with feeling. “Walt Whitman,” he wrote, “overwhelms me, possesses me, as only a few others — Dante, Shakespeare, Milton — consistently flood my entire being.” In today’s world, there is competition to be more concerned than anyone else. In Bloom’s, there was competition to be the most exactingly delighted.

(Dwight Garner, “Harold Bloom, A Prolific Giant and Perhaps the Last of a Kind,” NYTimes, 10-15-19)

(c) 2019 JMN

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Long Live the Sword

Posted on October 13, 2019 by JMN

exclamation-mark

I have learned from a knighted man that the sword with which the Queen says “Arise, Sir Botolph” is the sword of Ethelred the Unready. The sword of Ethelred makes George Washington’s seem forged an hour ago. It takes a long ruler to measure the quaintness of monarchy.

(Source: Sir Paul McCartney on “The Tonight Show With Stephen Colbert”)

(c) 2019 JMN

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No Speculation, Please

Posted on October 11, 2019 by JMN
Adverbs Ahead

No Speculation

The mayor of Dallas has urged people to avoid speculation after a key witness in the murder trial of the police officer Amber Guyger was shot dead, days after the officer’s conviction and sentencing.

“Amber Guyger case: mayor says to avoid speculation over murder of key witness,” Associated Press, theguardian.com, 10-7-19)

That should work.

(c) 2019 JMN

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The Critic Almost Ran Out of Praise

Posted on October 11, 2019 by JMN
ghosteen

Artwork for Ghosteen by Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds. Photograph: Ghosteen Ltd.

Here’s a review of Nick Cave’s album “Ghosteen” that has a left-handed conclusion.

On one level, it shouldn’t be surprising that it’s as good as it is: Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds have been in a career-high purple patch since the last double album they released, 2004’s Abattoir Blues/The Lyre of Orpheus. Nevertheless, listening to Ghosteen, it’s very hard indeed not to be taken aback.

(Alexis Petridis, “Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds — the most beautiful songs he has ever recorded,” theguardian.com, 10-3-19)

After glowing, the prose skids for a moment before the verdict lands — ambiguously positive, oddly reticent, concessive more than celebratory: The reviewer is hard put not to be taken aback by, or at, his very surprise over the unsurprising goodness of a band that has been surprisingly good all along.

(c) 2019 JMN

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Words With Eyes

Posted on October 6, 2019 by JMN
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Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, “Berlin Street Scene,” 1913-14. Credit Neue Galerie Image.

Viewing a Kirchner painting always makes me want to say more than I know how. I’ve seen this painting several times. A picture best speaks for itself, but a good art critic’s words can add to its impact.

In “Berlin Street Scene” (1913-14) black-clad johns and colorful streetwalkers flicker like burning driftwood as they size up one another for tawdry encounters without ever meeting eyes. Excitement, danger, and braggadocio hang in the air, all distinctly disembodied. The etching “Cocottes at Night” captures this same social dance as a nightmare of movement and tension, a lightning storm of jagged lines.

(Will Heinrich, “The Unstable Artist Who Helped Invent Expressionism,” NYTimes, 10-2-19)

(c) 2019 JMN

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Shot Fox

Posted on October 6, 2019 by JMN
shot fox

Chancellor Sajid Javid speaking at the Conservative party conference in Manchester. Photograph: Frank Augstein/AP.

“He may think spaffing some last-minute cash has shot Labour’s fox.”

(Polly Toynbee, “The Tories have split the country. No spending splurge can repair it,” theguardian.com, 9-30-19)

I couldn’t say it better than that though I knew what it meant.

(c) 2019 JMN

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Smugglers With a Heart

Posted on October 6, 2019 by JMN
smugglers

This Spanish police picture shows a speedboat surrounded by bundles of drugs packages, after a police high-speed chase with smugglers off Malaga. Photograph: Spanish Guardia Civil/AFP via Getty Images.

A statement that the police boat “span out of control” is a perfect error modeled on the “begin-began-begun” pattern, eminently forgivable in an article sourced from a non-English news agency.

My real reason for blogging this article is admiration for the smugglers who rescued their pursuers. It didn’t save them from jail, but I hope the three officers they pulled from the drink made sure they had a good meal that evening.

(“Spanish police plucked from ocean by drugs smugglers they were chasing,” Agence-France Presse, theguardian.com, 10-4-19)

(c) 2019 JMN

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