EthicalDative

Writing Not Sterling, But Some Nice Painting

Posted on December 22, 2025 by JMN

Aubrey Williams: Maya Series Chac Mool II. Photograph: Jonathan Greet/© Estate of Aubrey Williams/ Jonathan Greet. [Guardian caption and illustratiion]

When I saved this Guardian article about painter Aubrey Williams (new to me) back in May, the write-up about him must have irritated me, because I made this note:

The least interesting art journalism is that which marinates in detail about the artist. The painting should do the talking; technique and studio practice are relevant. The rest is art journalism — put it in a book or something.

Yes, I repeated “art journalism.” Clumsy and circular, but stet.

Aubrey Williams: Sun and Earth IV 1963. Photograph: © Estate of Aubrey Williams/ Jonathan Greet. [Guardian caption and illustration]

Re-reading the article now I find this part interesting:

He initially came to Britain to study agricultural engineering at Leicester University, and his interests in ecological matters and the ancient cultures of the Mayan, Aztec and Olmec cultures [sic] was [sic] a regular feature in his art.

Still, irritation persists. The journalist wrote “cultures… of the cultures” and “interests… was.”

Shostakovich Quartet No 5 Opus 92 – Aubrey Williams. Photograph: © Estate of Aubrey Williams/ Jonathan Greet. [Guardian caption and illustration]

(Lanre Bakare, “‘Ahead of his time’: Guyanese artist gets London show amid reappraisal,” The Guardian, 5-19-25)

Posted in Commentary, Quotations | Tagged journalism, language, painting | Leave a comment

‘Beginnings Are the Most Difficult’

Posted on December 20, 2025 by JMN

James Grashow’s “The Cathedral” is a five-foot-tall wood sculpture of Jesus Christ bearing a cathedral on his back while sinister creatures — many of them demons — flock around his feet. Credit… Bryan Haeffele. [New York Times caption and illustration]

James Grashow’s sculpture “The Cathedral” emblemizes poignantly for me how splendiferous churchiness weighs on the spirit of its namesake. But that’s an aside. What I like most is his enthusiasm for cardboard.

Grashow can wax poetic about the wonders of cardboard. “The great thing about cardboard is it’s mistake proof,” he said. Because “it knows it’s going to be trash,” it is “grateful to have the opportunity to become something more.”

A few of Grashow’s monkeys, which he sculpted from cardboard and then cast in bronze.l.. Credit… Bryan Haeffele. [New York Times caption and illustration]

“Beginnings are the most difficult,” he said. “Being in the process in the middle of the project is phenomenal.” He likened his creative experience to an enormous spiral. “The first steps are unbelievably sluggish, but as it quickens and the vortex keeps spinning around, you can’t wait to get up in the morning and approach the work.”

Grashow in his work space that is featured in the documentary “Jimmy & the Demons,” which follows his quest to complete “The Cathedral.” Credit…Jennifer Wastrom. [New York Times caption and illustration]

(George Gene Gustines, “James Grashow Documentary Focuses on Life, Death and ‘The Cathedral,’” New York Times, 6-1-2025)

Posted in Commentary, Quotations | Tagged art, language, sculpture | 3 Comments

Beauford Delaney: ‘A Yearning for Ornament’

Posted on December 18, 2025 by JMN

It leaves more room to follow what’s actually happening on the paper.

Installation view, “In the Medium of Life: The Drawings of Beauford Delaney.” Circa 1970 and 1965, these two self-portraits in ink demonstrate how powerful his line can be. Credit… via The Drawing Center, Estate of Beauford Delaney, and Derek L. Spratley; Photo by Daniel Terna. [New York Times caption and illustration]

… Though he drew them with confidence and care, you can see him yearning to ornament and exalt his subjects rather than just transcribe them.

“Self-Portrait” by Beauford Delaney [1964]… Watercolor, gouache. Credit…Estate of Beauford Delaney and Derek L. Spratley; Michael Rosenfeld Gallery LLC. [New York Times caption and illustration]

… The pulsing heart of Delaney’s work was the intimate, tantalizing, constantly deferred flirtation of color and line — something on clearest display in his drawings. There’s plenty of background information in the wall labels and catalog essays, but the emphasis here isn’t on biography or even on art historical argument, which is all to the good. It leaves more room to follow what’s actually happening on the paper.

… 1962 self-portrait,.. Credit… Estate of Beauford Delaney and Derek L. Spratley; Michael Rosenfeld Gallery LLC. [New York Times caption and illustration]

In other ink drawings Delaney’s lines curl and multiply without containing recognizable shapes at all. A group of five from the mid-1950s are abstract calligraphy, or a very conceptual rainstorm. [I wish the article had illustrated these ink drawings! — JMN]

Delaney’s “James Baldwin,” 1945 pastel, at the Drawing Center in SoHo… Credit… Estate of Beauford Delaney and Derek L. Spratley; Michael Rosenfeld Gallery LLC. [New York Times caption and illustration]

What interests me in the pastel of James Baldwin is Delaney’s iridescent rendering of skin tone.

“Untitled (Traffic Signals),” 1945, oil on canvas. You can already see Delaney’s vibrant colors straining to overflow their borders in this surreal New York streetscape. Credit… Estate of Beauford Delaney and Derek L. Spratley; Michael Rosenfeld Gallery LLC. [New York Times caption and illustration]

I’ve no doubt that excellent photographs involve more than just a camera click by their creators. But it’s easier to see how a painter can pack additive vavoom into a subject.

(Will Heinrich, “In Beauford Delaney’s Luminous Watercolors, Color Flirts With Line,” New York Times, 7-10-25)

Posted in Commentary, Quotations | Tagged art, drawing, painting | 4 Comments

Marlon Mullen Talks With Paint

Posted on December 17, 2025 by JMN

[Untitled painting from 2016]… Mullen’s work is on view at the Museum of Modern Art. Credit… Marlon Mullen; via Museum of Modern Art, New York. [New York Times caption and illustration]

“I think he feels understood through his painting, and that gives him a way to talk to the world.”
(The artist’s sister)

I feel an uncanny affinity with Marlon Mullen’s ceremony of preparation! A colleague and I have lately ruminated on how a style of painting which we admire can verge gloriously on the cartoonesque. Just as, I would add, cartooning is itself a glorious art form.

Before Marlon Mullen begins a painting, he likes to tidy his work space. He’ll pre-mix his paints — Golden acrylics in recycled pots — and lay out his brushes and canvas on his table. Often, he’ll empty the studio’s trash cans.

Mullen saw Van Gogh’s 1889 painting “The Starry Night” on a visit to MoMA early this year. When he reproduced the painting, he worked from the cover of a catalog curators had sent him, including the book’s spine information along the left-hand edge of his canvas. Credit… Marlon Mullen; NIAD Art Center and Adams and Ollman, via Museum of Modern Art, New York. [New York Times caption and illustration]

The pictures for which Mullen is best known are based on covers of art magazines like Art in America and Artforum, abstracting both image and text into mosaics of solid color… “Sometimes Marlon prioritizes something when making an image that I would consider a minor detail.” That could be a bar code — a bugbear to graphic designers that Mullen appears to celebrate — or an object’s shadow.

[Painting from 2024]… Credit… Marlon Mullen; NIAD Art Center and Adams and Ollman, via Museum of Modern Art, New York[New York Times caption and illustration]

Mullen has lately begun to attend to the sides of his canvases as well as their fronts, copying text from magazines’ spines and thus highlighting his pictures’ status as objects, rather than as flat canvases.

(Jonathan Griffin, “With This MoMA Artist, the Painting Does the Talking,” 12-16-24)

Posted in Commentary, Quotations | Tagged art, cartooning, painting | 4 Comments

Skindance

Posted on December 11, 2025 by JMN

More Galleries | Tagged painting | 4 Comments

Plenty of Ouch for the Wicked

Posted on December 8, 2025 by JMN

The fellowship is festive.
Rectified canticles boom from the sanctum,
Would you believe?

… Marching as to war,
All the pardoned felons
Going on before…

Rigor mortified, the righteous
Stiff-arm the anxious,
The walking doomed. Worm meat.
All told in the scriptures:
They will go poof. Straight to hell.
Burnt alive. No end to it. Amen.

To the heavenly fathered
Of the requisite persuasion
(Ideally Caucasian),
Perfumed satins, spangled britches,
Penthouse accommodation,
Aryan hosannas, aurean swag,
Fairway and beachfront nation.

Posted in Anthology | Tagged doggerel, language | 3 Comments

Mel Leipzig, the ‘Chekhov of Trenton’

Posted on December 5, 2025 by JMN

[Detail] Mr. Leipzig in 2010 in his home studio with his painting “Francesca at the Door,” depicting his younger self and his daughter. Credit… Susan Smith & Gallery Henoch. [New York Times caption and illustration]

The acrylic canvases of Mel Leipzig, a painter christened by Peter Schjeldahl as the “Chekhov of Trenton,” reach me as analogs to the loudest arena-rock virtuoso guitar hero solos you can think of. They are an ostentation of look-what-I-can-do. They blow your skirt up over your head if you’re wearing one. That’s a mixed bag and stirs up the cliché phrased as embarrassment of riches.

“Creativity is very life-giving. Van Gogh would have shot himself a lot earlier had he not been an artist.”
(Mel Leipzig)

Yes, and Van Gogh arrived at a luminously generalized mode of depiction, as well, which may have helped him cope for longer.

May Mr. Leipzig rest in peace. He was clearly a master of his métiér. These are general thoughts about his art not meant disrespectfully. Is it fair to think of the style of painting he consummately unleashed as more re-creation than creation? Is that a distinction without a difference? (I love that phrase.)

I’ve done something underhanded, and put here only detail from his paintings. See them in full in the article, it’s worth a visit. Leipzig had a long, productive life (dead at 90), and said some really interesting things.

[Detail] Mr. Leipzig was so devoted to verisimilitude that his favorite work was a 1991 acrylic on canvas view of his son, Joshua, sitting insouciantly in a bedroom festooned with graffiti and dirty laundry while three musician friends sprawl on the floor. Credit… via Gallery Henoch [New York Times caption and illustration]

[He said] his art had to feature a person, “no matter what the painting is about… The main thing that interests me is not just the figure… It’s the way the figure related to the background… It’s mainly the composition of the painting that really excites me, but I must have a person. It’s an essential part of my being.”

[Detail] Mr. Leipzig’s 1996 painting “Joshua’s Tattoos,” a portrait of his son. His work contained what an art critic called “an almost hallucinogenic intensity of detail.” Credit… via Leipzig Family. [New York Times caption and illustration]

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

Montserrat of the Heart

Posted on December 3, 2025 by JMN

When I thought I’d become a poet my head was as empty as a young male’s under-developed frontal lobe can be. In hindsight I can see it now. It was hiding in plain sight, the poetry, waiting for me to catch up decades later.

Three Catalan workmen, a slab of membrillo, a crusty loaf of bread, a jug of vino blanco del país. Me, my Spanish fiancée and her parents on excursion to the monastery of Montserrat. The workmen sat near our outdoor cafe table chowing down, savoring a simple merienda in each other’s company. I followed their motions, registered their patter, with no conscious interest. The tableau they embodied was etching itself unawares onto whatever surface I retrieve it from now.

I’m wary of appeals to encoded symbolism, gestures towards nebulous profundities, which stud a certain strain of discourse around poetry. Precise detail speaks louder. The cracked yellow handle of the little knife one man used to cut the guava paste he smeared on his hunk of bread. How he wiped its blade on his trouser leg before passing it to the next man. The ceremonious flourish with which they poured rounds into their drained glasses. Their laughter eliciting a prim cluck from my mother-in-law to be.

Wiry laborers at rest, scarfing their fare hungrily, with zest inhabiting their moment fully as I eyed them sidelong from mine. I was constructing the poetry from it subliminally; didn’t know it at the time, much less how to write it. Still don’t. It’s not that it’s too late now; it’s that it’s always too late. At that very dawning, and perhaps when you find someone to love, is when poetry starts to make sense, if ever.

Posted in Anthology | Tagged language, personal, poetry | 6 Comments

‘The Things That You’re Liable to Read in the Bible…’

Posted on December 2, 2025 by JMN

“… They ain’t necessarily so,” goes the song in Gershwin’s Porgy and Bess.

“If we could stop coming at the Bible postured as though we’re the ones that own it… to prop up, whether it’s theologies, whatever makes us comfortable, whatever makes us powerful, whatever gives us influence…”

(Marty Solomon)

These are excerpts from Marty Solomon’s remarks made on a podcast.

… It doesn’t matter if we’re a PhD theologian, if we’re a believer or not a believer, if we claim to speak for God or don’t know anything. Anybody that comes to the scripture… should come to it knowing this book is meaning to provoke us, transform us, confront us, teach us something new… If we would read the Bible that way, we would quit using it to justify nonsense… It should all be making me a more loving, more whole, more self-reflective person… If we were truly coming to the Bible with an authentic “I’m here to be changed,” I can’t imagine that the fruit would be what we’re seeing today.

Posted in Quotations | Tagged language, reading, spirituality | 5 Comments

‘Something Endlessly Inspiring and Strange’

Posted on November 29, 2025 by JMN

While Shakespeare’s plays must have stemmed from some personal experience, they take the “thousand natural shocks that flesh is heir to” and, through an act of artistic creation, fashion them into something endlessly inspiring and strange.

(Drew Lichtenberg)

Inspiring and strange. The “strange” part looms large in contemplation of poetry. Azurea20 brings the inspiring in her short poem “Déjalo” (“Leave It”). Here’s my reading:

First it says, “Throw away the poem (Tira el poema).” There follow three instances of the stressed (accented) qué used in Spanish for interrogatives and exclamations:

qué no arde
qué no camina
qué se ha perdido.

At first I wanted to read it as “Tira el poema que no arda, que no camine, que se haya perdido.” But there are those accents, plus the verbs are in indicative mood in the poem, subjunctive only in my head. Ay, there’s the rub. This is where it brings the strangeness. It’s not a screening statement, which the moody subjunctive would convey.

Three questions standardly posed with ¿por qué? are implied by the stressed qué: “Why, why, why?” I haven’t seen this strategem before, but all’s fair in war and poetry. The answering verbs in indicative mood state fact, not desideratum, doubt or conjecture: “It doesn’t burn, it doesn’t walk, it has gotten lost.”

— “¡Maté a un hostelero! — ¿Por qué? ¿Cuándo? ¿Dónde? ¿Cómo? — Porque cuando donde como sirven mal, ¡me desespero!”

(I forget which Spanish play this is from)

Then she says, “Leave the poem which…” followed by a descriptive, subordinate clause introduced with the unaccented conjunction que. The poem marked for leaving in the record, bequeathed to readers, allowed to persist, is the one “which roams full of horror through the abandoned factories and through the wounded suburbs.”

Here again, stuck in the wrong mood, I had longed for Deja al poema que vague…, posed as a standard to achieve, but Azurea20 is jolting me into a non-kneejerk mindset. The poet locates signification where difficulty and deprivation abide.

Here’s a telling detail: The second main verb, deja (“leave”) is linked to its direct object (poema) with the “personalizing” preposition a (combined with the definite article el it produces al). It’s a treatment reserved for objects which are human and, sometimes, for individualized animals such as pets. The enduring poem is granted the status of a living entity, in contrast to the one that should remain a dead letter in the poet’s notebook. The three-word conclusion, emphatically italicized and lineated, drives the distinction home:

Deja
al
poema.

Leave. The. Poem.

That’s how the signals reach me, and such is my intrepid hypothesis. If my receiver’s wonky, I own that, too. Dare large, fall hard, and leave a beautiful memory.

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