Tag Archives: painting

‘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 →

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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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Notes on Process

Posted on January 25, 2024 by JMN

When I indite a scrap of doggerelI launch five iambs on a fancy verb. So. Post launch, it’s a fight to go all pinche. Listen to the warm; daub raunch on the prissy; cut the crap into the shape of … Continue reading →

Posted in Anthology | Tagged , , | 2 Comments

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 →

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‘Blaise Cendrars (1887-1961): Poetry Is Everything’

Posted on January 21, 2024 by JMN

This piece clipped back in August 2023 reminded me of my youthful infatuation with the School of Paris, which included the Delaunays, Sonia and Robert, as well as Fernand Léger. The article’s appeal lies as well in the matchup of … Continue reading →

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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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Love the Beasts

Posted on November 17, 2023 by JMN

“Fauve painting is not everything,… but it is the foundation of everything.” (Matisse) I have an affinity for the stripe of painting perpetrated by the Fauves. Their manic attack with brush and pigment gestures offhandedly toward trees, water and sky. … Continue reading →

Posted in Commentary | Tagged | 6 Comments

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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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 →

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Etel Adnan: ‘Words Are Social’

Posted on July 26, 2023 by JMN

Lebanese-American painter-poet-novelist Etel Adnan (1925-2021) was interviewed by Gabriel Coxhead for the June 2018 issue of Apollo. In the 1970s, having returned to Beirut to work as a journalist, she was forced to flee to Paris when the civil war … Continue reading →

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