Grisaille

Posted on September 14, 2019 by JMN
amy sherald

Artwork by Amy Sherald in her solo exhibition at Hauser & Wirth, clockwise from top left: “A single man in possession of a good fortune,” 2019; “The girl next door,” 2019; “When I let go of what I am, I become what I might be (Self-imagined atlas),” 2018; and “There is no charm equal to tenderness of heart,” 2019. Credit Artwork via Amy Sherald and Hauser & Wirth.

Roberta Smith situates artist Amy Sherald within a group of youngish painters

… who have broken with, absorbed or simply ignored modernist abstraction. Instead, they work with the figure as a way of reaching broader audiences; dealing with issues of identity, gender and sexuality… The many African-American artists working in this vein are also dismantling Western painting’s racial homogeneity, populating it as never before with images of black people.
(Roberta Smith, “Amy Sherald’s Shining Second Act,” NYTimes, 9-12-19)

Smith describes Sherald’s paintings as

… startlingly spare… paintings of confident, black people whose stylish clothes and backdrops contrast with their faces, which are uniformly grisaille… She also uses grisaille, she has said, because she wants to take race out of her paintings.

And yet for all that they are grayed, Sherald’s subjects are unmistakably African-American. And that seems to be an essential aspect of her art, the part she professes to take out.

(c) 2019 JMN

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Don’t Worry: An Original Poem

Posted on September 13, 2019 by JMN
dream

“Wet Dream,” by D. English.

It’s said worrying about the future is paying interest on a debt not owed. Yet, who worries about the past? The essence of worry is that it targets the unhappened.

Do not worry about Bahamians in Dorian’s path. Their flesh is being scraped from the shambles of huts. Worry about the pain when Nature eats your gizzard.

Do not worry about the Amazon burning. The environment is over. Worry about how your grandkids will fare in the competition for water and oxygen.

Do not worry about the Confederate flag. It flew. Worry about how it may fly in the hearts of the unborn.

Do not worry about disgracing yourself last night. It’s done. Worry about where the commas should go in something you haven’t written yet:

Here, here, and sometimes, here,…

(c) 2019 JMN

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Sashaying Words

Posted on September 9, 2019 by JMN
Adverbs Ahead

Jargon Ahead

As a linguist I collect jargon from exotic domains such as counterpoint, quantum mechanics, cricket — and now, children’s drag. The topic has surfaced in a current article by Alice Hines: “Sashaying Their Way Through Youth,” NYTimes, 9-8-19.

I’m currently processing the following data points:

Queen Lactatia, Desmond Is Amazing, Ophelia Peaches, and E! The Dragnificent are drag kids with substantial Instagram followings. They are 10-, 12-, 14- and 14-years-old respectively. Desmond Is Amazing wants to be an ornithologist or roller-coaster engineer when he grows up.

Ophelia Peaches‘s mom founded Dragutante, an 18-and-under runway show, in Denver.

There are girls who also do drag, known as hyperqueens.

(c) 2019 JMN

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Nearly Inexplicable Love

Posted on September 9, 2019 by JMN
molly ivins

Molly Ivins in 2001. Credit Carolyn Mary Bauman/Fort Worth Star-Telegram, via AP.

I used to think that her Professional Texan act was just that, but I see now that it was also a way to show that we Texans were all in it together, and that the things that united us — our expressiveness and expansiveness, our culture and our nearly inexplicable love of a nearly uninhabitable place — were more important than our divisions.
(Mimi Swartz, “This Texan Showed That Liberals Can Fight and Have Fun, Too,” NYTimes, 9-8-19)

Molly Ivins was a Texas journalist and political commentator who died in 2007. She is the subject of a new documentary, “Raise Hell: The Life and Times of Molly Ivins.”

(c) 2019 JMN

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Arcadia for Straw

Posted on September 9, 2019 by JMN
orkney chairs

Iterations, from left, of the New Craftmen’s Brodgar chair (an unfinished lounge chair and a dining chair) next to traditional chairs on Mainland, Orkney. Credit Sophie Gerrard.

One can understand a place by what its people make… Locals [from Orkney] have a special relationship with straw, which they have long used for everything from roofing and bedding to shelving, rainwear and furniture. Perhaps the most famous local product is the original Orkney chair: a winglike seat with a tall curved back, sometimes with a hood, made from coiled and woven straw and a frame of reclaimed timber. The shape provided warmth in winter and served as a wind block inside drafty houses. “I love that the most humble of materials, like straw, can become immensely precious and useful in the hands of someone who knows what they’re doing,” says [Catherine Lock co-founder of New Craftsmen, a London gallery].
(Deborah Needleman, “The Windswept Scottish Islands Producing Beautiful Artisanal Goods,” 9-9-19)

And I love that persons from Orkney are called Orcadians.

(c) 2019 JMN

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Ambiguous Freedom

Posted on September 8, 2019 by JMN
gus painting

Mr. Van Sant’s “Untitled (Hollywood 4),” 2018-2019, watercolor on linen. Credit Gus Van Sant and Vito Schnabel Projects.

Film maker Gus Van Sant is known for “Drugstore Cowboy,” “My Own Private Idaho,” and “Good Will Hunting.” I didn’t know he also painted. Watercolor on linen is an unfamiliar combination for me. I’m not sure I would look too closely at these pallid paintings without knowing they were the work of a renowned film director. They remind of the background of a cartoon by Barry Blitt.

No one should confuse the soft-spoken painter with the wild characters in his films and paintings. “Artists are not necessarily the performers,” he says. “They’re industrious. They adhere to rules, and they actually work.” As an example, he points to Jack Kerouac’s relationship with his muse, Neal Cassady: “Kerouac is disciplined and Neal Cassady is the freak, driving him around and partying.” Artists, Mr. Van Sant says, are often “attracted to the characters that seem to be freer than they are.”
(Jonathan Griffin, “Gus Van Sant’s Next Picture Will Be a Watercolor,” NYTimes, 9-8-19)

“… Freer than they are.” I’m struck by the ambiguity of the pronoun “they.” Its antecedent could be either “artists” or “characters.” Each way, the statement makes an interesting, but different, point.

(c) 2019 JMN

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Young Bashi-Bazouk

Posted on September 8, 2019 by JMN
cummings

Mr. Cummings in 2001. The son of an oil rig project manager and a special-needs teacher, he attended Oxford, like so many protagonists of the Brexit saga. Credit David Levenson/Getty Images.

“Mr. Cummings is a bashi-bazouk,” said [Dominic] Grieve, citing the Ottoman Empire’s shock troops, who were renowned for their ferocity. “It is going to be a very difficult period because Cummings doesn’t respect any rule at all.”
(Benjamin Mueller and Stephen Castle, “Dominic Cummings, Boris Johnson’s Rasputin, Is Feeling the Heat of Brexit,” NYTimes, 9-8-19)

(c) 2019 JMN

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Francisco Toledo, Dead at 79

Posted on September 8, 2019 by JMN
francisco toledo

Mr. Toledo in 2015 at an exhibition at the Zapata subway station in Mexico City. His paintings, drawings, prints, collages, tapestries and ceramics were largely inspired by his indigenous Zapotec heritage. Credit Alfredo Estrella/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images.

“The man himself is elusive,” [Paul] Theroux noted. “He hides from journalists, he hates to be photographed, he seldom gives interviews, he no longer attends his own openings, but instead sends his wife and daughter to preside over them, while he stays in his studio, unwilling to speak — a great example of how writers and artists should respond — letting his work speak for him, with greater eloquence.”

(Jonathan Kandell, “Francisco Toledo, Celebrated Mexican Artist and Arts Philanthropist, Dies at 79,” NYTimes, 9-7-19)

The work should speak for the artist, yes. But there’s room also for the occasional artist who also talks.

francisco toledo2

“Pensando — Autorretrato” (“Thinking — Self Portrait”), 1985 (Watercolor with pen and black ink). Francisco Toledo, via Princeton University Art Museum.

(c) 2019 JMN

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Female Underwear for Men

Posted on September 8, 2019 by JMN
victorias secret

The prime-time Victoria’s Secret fashion show will no longer appear on network television after years of declining viewership. Credit Evan Agostini/Invision, via Associated Press.

[Victoria’s Secret’s] guiding light… was a fictional woman named Victoria who had been raised in England by a successful London businessman and a French mother. She was well educated and married to a barrister. Company decisions were often made by asking, “Would Victoria do this?”

Victoria’s Secret is actually based in Columbus, Ohio.

Leslee King, who was an executive with the company for more than a decade, says that for millennials “unattainable projections of beauty became not just dated and uncool but offensive… I see the consumer getting much more aware and loud… about the fact that this is a brand run by men.”

(Sapna Maheshwari, “Victoria’s Secret Had Troubles, Even Before Jeffrey Epstein,” NYTimes, 9-6-19)

(c) 2019 JMN

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If You Want a Picture, You Must Ask

Posted on September 8, 2019 by JMN
capitol2

Texas State Capitol, South Facade. Courtesy of the Texas State Preservation Board.

A female-focused dating app named Bumble, based in Austin, Texas, founded by Whitney Wolfe Herd, has lobbied Texas legislators successfully to pass the “cyber-flashing act.” The act

… bans the electronic transmission of unwanted visual material depicting any person’s “intimate parts” as well as the “covered genitals of a male person that are in a discernibly turgid state”.

(Arwa Mahdawi, “Put it away: Texas passes law banning dick pics,” The Guardian, 9-7-19)

Good job, Texas. Let’s work on mass shootings now.

(c) 2019 JMN

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