Tag Archives: art

Muscle of the Cheek

Posted on February 14, 2024 by JMN

… The buccinator assists the muscles of mastication. It aids whistling and smiling, and in neonates it is used to suckle. (Wikipedia) It’s also useful for reciting poetry. I met buccinator (BUCKS-i-nater), an ancient horn tooter, in the poem “Sissy … Continue reading →

Posted in Anthology | Tagged , , | 2 Comments

‘A Spume of Green or a Blood-Red Fog’

Posted on February 6, 2024 by JMN

[Rothko] modeled a commitment to abstraction that charged at the hardest questions of life and art through refusal of the easy path… [He] never thought of [his paintings] as peaceable. “Behind the color lies the cataclysm,” he said in 1959 … Continue reading →

Posted in Commentary, Quotations | Tagged , , | 5 Comments

Brice Marden Believed Looking at Paintings Could Be Transporting

Posted on January 28, 2024 by JMN

Again and again, he showed that art from any time or culture was contemporary and alive, if it offered artists something they could use. (Roberta Smith) Brice Marden died in August 2023, aged 84. The illustration that concludes Roberta Smith’s … Continue reading →

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Old Plantocracy and Retrofuturism

Posted on January 23, 2024 by JMN

In this telling, art is a global and porous affair. And far-flung provinces serve as entrepôts to and from the vanguard — not just detours to be “represented” like Nashville hot chicken in the flavor portfolio of Pringles. (Walker Mimms) … Continue reading →

Posted in Quotations | Tagged , , | 4 Comments

Robert Andrew Parker (1927-2023): ‘Susceptibility to Happiness’

Posted on January 13, 2024 by JMN

What’s not to like about an artist-illustrator who partnered with poets and loved jazz? Parker played drums in a band called Jive by Five and is survived by five sons, all of whom play drums professionally. (One is an artist.) … Continue reading →

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The Saucy Song a Painter Sang

Posted on October 31, 2023 by JMN

I’ve pondered how much to grudgingly admire the towering raspberry Tadaaki Kuwayama gave rhetorically to the practice of art. His expressed approach oozes iconoclastic gore in the spirit of outré versecraft from the pages of Poetry. … He wanted to … Continue reading →

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‘I Worry That It Will Feel Pointless to Even Try to Create in Public’

Posted on September 24, 2023 by JMN

But even those of us who don’t have a job directly threatened by A.I. think of writing that novel or composing a song or recording a TikTok or making a joke on social media. If we don’t have any protections … Continue reading →

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‘Her Faithful Subject. Picasso. Her Student’

Posted on September 13, 2023 by JMN

On the back of a plate that he gave to his mentor in 1961, the artist engraved a dedication: “For Suzanne Ramié. Her faithful subject. Picasso. Her student.” Guided by a woman in the south of France, Picasso had made … Continue reading →

Posted in Quotations | Tagged | 1 Comment

Forecast: Brainstorms With a Chance of Conniptions

Posted on August 28, 2023 by JMN

“Cubism seeks to destroy by designed disorder… Dadaism aims to destroy by ridicule… Abstractionism aims to destroy by the creation of brainstorms.”(Republican Congressman George Dondero in speech to the House of Representatives, August 16, 1949) Three years later, Dondero told … Continue reading →

Posted in Quotations | Tagged | 3 Comments

Paint the Buttons!

Posted on August 26, 2023 by JMN

“How do you expect me to paint a portrait of Stalin?” he asked, irritated. “First of all, I’ve never seen him, and I don’t remember what he looks like, other than the fact that he wears a uniform with lots … Continue reading →

Posted in Quotations | Tagged , | 3 Comments