EthicalDative

Training Color to Speak for Itself

Posted on April 27, 2024 by JMN

Sonia Delaunay’s “Robe Simultanée” (1913), a grand patchwork dress evokes the movements of her lively paintings and is a highlight of the Bard Graduate Center’s show “Sonia Delaunay: Living Art.” Credit… Bruce White, via Pracusa. [New York Times caption and illustration]

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 and inversion and value, to speak for themselves as never before.

I’m familiar with the phrase “color scheme,” but I’ve got this far without having encountered its synonym “colorway”:

Floated in glass dividers between the swatches are Sonia’s instructional “color cards” to the fabric manufacturer. Exacting and propulsive, these colorways show that she understood the kinships and rivalries of hue with a shrewdly marketable instinct.

The color cards Sonia Delaunay dispatched in the 1920s to her Dutch manufacturer, explaining which patterns and colorways she wanted printed on crepe silk. Credit… Bruce White, via Bard Graduate Center. [New York Times caption and illustration]

… Only in Bard’s dense wardrobe of a show do the sources of Sonia’s painterly voice become obvious: the bunchable, joinable, repeatable textures of cloth.

In her late painting “Rhythm-Color” (1970), Sonia Delaunay returned to the same contrasts of texture and color she had used in her early patchwork dresses and vests of the 1910s, breakout garments that put her on the map of early abstraction. Credit… Richard Nixon Presidential Library and Museum. [New York Times caption and illustration]

It’s fun to see a handsome black-and-white illustration in an article celebrating color (as well as geometry):

While sheltering in Portugal during World War I, Delaunay painted vases, jugs, books and tablecloths with vibrant zig-zags, pie pieces and bull’s-eyes. “I have lived my art,” she once said. Credit… Bibliothèque nationale de France. [New York Times caption and illustration]

Also stimulating to note the connection between Sonia’s handiwork and her husband’s still life:

Robert Delaunay’s “Portuguese Still Life” (1916) expands upon the abstract geometries his wife, Sonia, had emblazoned on their housewares. The husband’s inclusion in the show, while designed to illuminate his wife’s work, “affirms the old ‘power couple’ reputation of these two artists,” our critic says. Credit… Norton Museum of Art, West Palm Beach, Fla. [New York Times caption and illustration]

(Walker Mimms, “One for the Ages: Sonia Delaunay’s Wearable Abstractions,” New York Times, 4-27-24)

Posted in Commentary, Quotations | Tagged art, language | 2 Comments

‘There’s Nothing There Except the Pictures’

Posted on April 25, 2024 by JMN

An untitled work from Nutt’s new show of graphite drawings at David Nolan gallery… Credit… via Jim Nutt and David Nolan Gallery. [New York Times caption and illustration]

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 smart up-dos, all clad in demure clothing.

If I’m honest, I savored this article about Jim Nutt in late 2023 as much for what he says, and what’s said about him, as for what he does. There are assertions in this appraisal by Max Lakin that threaten to outrun the interestingness of the art they describe.

Nutt, 84, can be both elliptical and impenetrable. He is happy to talk at length about the chemical bonding qualities of acrylic paint and the glassiness of hot-pressed paper, but shies away from things like his own thinking…

… Untitled work from 2022… Credit… via Jim Nutt and David Nolan Gallery. [New York Times caption and illustration]

His forms have focused, from deliberately messy to phlegmatically planar figures, and his economy now is so precise that many figures materialize in as few as three or four marks…“They’re rather spare,” Nutt said,… “I work ‘em to death…”

The painter Carroll Dunham… told me, “I don’t think he’s hiding anything… It’s refreshing not to have to listen to a speech about somebody’s intentions. There’s nothing there except the pictures.”

“Untitled,” 2023… Credit… via Jim Nutt and David Nolan Gallery. [New York Times caption and illustration]

“Quite often I really want to paint in a different world than the previous painting, even though it slowly morphs back into the same world… It’s like, I’m not going to eat any more tomatoes, I’m going to have a tangerine. Both are round.”

… Credit… via Jim Nutt and David Nolan Gallery. [New York Times caption and illustration]

In 2003 Nutt said, “I rather liked the idea of being contemporary and modern. But, when I tried to do something modern, I just had no idea, no justification. Not only could I not rationalize it, it just felt terrible.”

(Max Lakin, “Jim Nutt’s Art Remains a Mystery. Even to Him,” New York Times, 9-14-23)

Posted in Commentary, Quotations | Tagged art, drawing, language, painting | 1 Comment

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 nude genre, including paintings, sculptures and drawings created after the fall of the Ottoman Empire in 1922, as Arabs transitioned from living under British and French rule to independence. The exhibition raises several questions: What is considered nude art? Who gets to create it? And what does it mean to be Arab?
(Sara Aridi, “Spotlighting the Body in a Nascent Arab Art World,” New York Times, 12-14-23)

I was especially taken by the following painting:

Hamed Abdalla, “Al-Haml (Pregnancy),” 1959,… At the Wallach Art Gallery. Credit… via Dar Abdalla. [New York Times caption and illustration]

Posted in Quotations | Tagged painting | 6 Comments

Ixnay on the Ocracy, Theo! LOL

Posted on April 19, 2024 by JMN

This gallery contains 1 photo.

Things need to work themselves out.A round of unkinking is due.Mistakes were made. Put a few fires out. Make nice again.Fast backward to the good times.Park the ordnance. Cool your jets. The killing, the killing, give it a rest! LOLBled … Continue reading →

More Galleries | Tagged doggerel, painting | 5 Comments

Art Critic Roberta Smith Retires. Damn!

Posted on April 17, 2024 by JMN

Claire Merchlinsky [New York Times caption and illustration]

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 having enough confidence to listen to their opinions. Criticism isn’t really an academic subject. I don’t think it can be taught at school; it’s much more visceral. It happens when you’re in front of art, examining it, articulating opinions and trying to convert those opinions into clear prose.

I had never taken a journalism course. Editors and copy editors — especially at The Times — were my real teachers.

Critics need to be more flexible than artists. You have to be open to being changed and pushed into new directions by art. I don’t feel an obligation to take a strong stand on things.

(Sarah Bahr, “Roberta Smith Looks Back on Three Decades of Art Criticism,” New York Times, 4-11-24)

Posted in Quotations | Tagged art | Leave a comment

The Sound of Inference

Posted on April 13, 2024 by JMN

It’s possible to attribute eccentric form to lineated discourse that’s unscannable. Discard capitalization, italics and punctuation. What’s left is line. Lines have their element, like a fish its water, in white space aka page space. The writer commandeers spacing as a tool with which to impinge upon the reader’s faculty for apprehending utterance.

Danielle Vogel, “Drifts,” *Poetry*, March 2024.

The manner in which words occupy their space is a force multiplier. Features such as indentation, word and letter hyper-gapping, and geminative CRLFs arguably boost signal.

Danielle Vogel, “Drifts,” *Poetry*, March 2024 (continued).

One infers a dynamic of phrasing, a chafing of lexicon, a flexing of syntax conjured in the writer’s mind, to which conformation the writer constrains the spill of printed text over, across, down and around the page. All aspects of two dimensions figure, including the upside down.

Danielle Vogel, “Drifts,” *Poetry*, March 2024 (end).

Bespoke word placement on the typeset plane groups, isolates, steers, focuses, creates cleavage, clash, attraction of reference and connotation. The text is more than the sum of its particles and lexemes; read but also viewed. To cite such text one best photographs it, or else sketches it cursively. It’s an uttered image, a laidout revelation, a verbal spectacle.

Jason Adam Sheets, “A True Dimension of Nothingness,” *Poetry*, March 2024.

Aggressive space allocation confers an authorial bossiness on the text. One infers that the writer is at special pains to manage the flow of thought and emotion sought to be conveyed.

Samiya Bashir, “nail hard,” Poetry, April 2024.

One infers that the writer has plumbed private intuition in order to instantiate a one-off, typographical form factor suited for optimal expression of a distinctly personal, or universally resonant, noteworthy, communicable psychic event.

Posted in Anthology | Tagged language, poetry, reading | Leave a comment

The Zen of Falling Short

Posted on April 9, 2024 by JMN

Hakuin Ekaku’s masterpiece, “Giant Daruma,” 18th century, which depicts the glowering visage of the Indian monk remembered in Japan as the founding patriarch of what became Zen, wears its Zen ideas lightly. Credit… The Gitter-Yelen Collection. [New York Times caption and illustration]

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 together at the bottom to form a beard, making the off-white paper look whiter where it flashes between them. Daruma just appears out of nowhere, as if he were always there.
(Will Heinrich, “In Zen Painting, It Takes Years of Practice to Do Almost Nothing,” New York Times, 4-6-24)

Think what you will about copyedit lapses, the article is interesting in what it says about Zen painting. It points out how “letting go of the impulse to fill in interesting details” contributes to making pictures that aren’t fussy and overwrought. Be still, my bumbling brush.

Posted in Quotations | Tagged painting | 8 Comments

However You Chi-Ching

Posted on April 5, 2024 by JMN

Shopify helps you do your thing
however you chi-ching.

Mollify. Fortify. Qualify. Beautify. Ossify. The ‘-fy’ pattern is a fertile template for neologisms associated with chi-chinging. “Shopify” is a platform, an ambience, a tool suite, a code base, a launchpad, whatever; what matters is it aids thing-doing in the service of chi-chinging. That much the slogan delivers.

However…

You should know the Caped Grammarian’s side hack is commercial prosody. When a jingle or slogan is prey to an impending ictus tragedy, the CG heeds the call and rides.

The second line of “Shopify helps you do your thing” flashes a gape where an iamb should be. Imagine Kim Kardashian evincing her signature smile only to broadcast a missing incisor. Painful.

Here’s one way to cure the defect:

Shopify helps you do your thing
however you chance to chi-ching.

“Chance” is stretchy. It has floutiness on its side — when in doubt, flout — yet gives pause. Rule of thumb for inventing sticky drivel: If something gives pause, fix it. You won’t get less bothered by telling yourself the discord’s a feature, not a bug. Don’t lipstick the pig; stab it in the neck.

Here’s a second option:

Shopify helps you do your thing
however you choose to chi-ching.

Nailed it. “Choose” is tame but right. The art of the jingle is knowing when the predictable’s clash with the inevitable yields the serviceable.

You’re welcome, Shopify. May the profit be with you.

Posted in Anthology | Tagged language, miscellaneous | 2 Comments

How Translating Helps Me Learn: Ibn al-Rūmī, Verse 1

Posted on April 3, 2024 by JMN

1 ḏāda ^an muqlaẗ(ī) laḏīḏ(a)-l-manām(i) šuḡl(u)-ha ^an-hu bi-d-dumū^(i)-s-sijām(i)

For me, a learning translation (which may lead later to an “artistic” one) starts with inserting English phraseology that tracks the Arabic as closely as possible. This creates a “trot” that mirrors the source’s structures. The goal is to understand how the Arabic text is functioning and to retain vocabulary. Repetitive chanting of the verse and its component phrases affords practice making the Arabic sounds and hearing the verse. (Where oh where are the modern rhapsodes — the Gérard Philipes — of Arabic poetry who can provide studied recitations of the classical works, actualizing their vaunted aural dimension for the student’s thirsting ear? I’ve searched for and have yet to find useful recordings.)

Here’s my transliteration:

1 ḏāda ^an muqlaẗ(ī) laḏīḏ(a)-l-manām(i) šuḡl(u)-ha ^an-hu bi-d-dumū^(i)-s-sijām(i)

Here’s the trot:

1 ḏāda [drove away] ^an muqlaẗ(ī) [from my eye] laḏīḏ(a)-l-manām(i) [the sweet of the sleep] šuḡl(u)-ha ^an-hu [its distraction from it] bi-d-dumū^(i)-s-sijām(i) [with the tears the pouring forth]

In the phrase šuḡl(u)-ha ^an-hu “its distraction from it,” gendered pronouns show that “its” refers to feminine “eye,” and “it” to masculine “sleep”: “its (my eye’s) distraction from it (sleep).”

The subject of the verb “drove away” is the noun šuḡl(u), “distraction.”

The prepositional phrase bi-d-dumū^(i)-s-sijām(i) “with the tears pouring forth” qualifies the distraction as to its motivation.

Two nouns are defined by the article: l-manām(i) “the sleep” and d-dumū^(i) “the tears.” In the phrase laḏīḏ(a)-l-manām(i) “the sweet of the sleep,” the adjective behaves as a noun, including accusative inflection as comports with its status as direct object of “drove away.”

Here’s my translation:

There drove away from my eye the sweetness of sleep its distraction from it, what with tears pouring forth.

Using the dummy subject “There” to accommodate delayed occurrence of the true subject “distraction” lets me maintain the Arabic word order. I insert a comma pause to help the reader absorb the shock of violent but licit English word order. As a translation it’s compromised and dissonant, especially when read without benefit of analysis. I’ll leave it in this state, however, since it accomplishes what I want: understanding and retention.

Here, for comparison, is Arberry’s paraphrase built on passive voice and unspooling the Arabic word order in the service of prettier English:

Sweet sleep has been barred from my eyes by their preoccupation with copious tears. (p. 62)

Source
A.J. Arberry, Arabic Poetry: A Primer for Students, Cambridge University Press, 1965. The poem is selection 10 by ^Alī ibn al-^Abbās ibn ar-Rūmī (836-896 AD)… Apparently of Byzantine descent (on which account some modern Arab critics have found Greek elements in his style), was born in Baghdad where he passed most of his life as panegyrist and lampoonist. His descriptive verse is highly appreciated. (From Arberry’s Biographical Notes)

Posted in Anthology | Tagged Arabic-English, language, translation | Leave a comment

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

Posted on March 31, 2024 by JMN

Ms. Kenneally’s photographs straddled the line between glamour and destruction but also showcased a community’s pride in survival. [New York Times caption and illustration]

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 handful of Tater Tots to Czar and me in a gesture that felt emblematic: Of course a complete stranger on an electric unicycle would cruise by and share nourishment. I was given a butterfly on a stick, which I carried around like a magic wand because that seemed appropriate and necessary. I was told that if I saw a screaming woman walking down the street with a shiv in her hand, not to worry and not to make eye contact and she’d leave me alone; it was just Stabby. There was talk of the Alcoholics Anonymous meeting on the beach, the weekly church sermon led by Jack the preacher (who is also a plumber), a potluck lasagna gathering.

(Jaime Lowe, “The Secret to Surviving Climate Apocalypse,” New York Times, 3-29-24)

Sometimes a stand and a stance visually rhyme. Brenda Ann Kenneally’s radiates brawny pluck in the shit’s maw.

Posted in Quotations | Tagged miscellaneous | Leave a comment