Everything is Connected
This short note is inspired by the fact that Sol LeWitt died in April 2007, and since then exhibits of work created after his death continue to occasionally pop-up. “The idea itself, even if not made visual, is as much a work of art as any finished product.” LeWitt wrote this in 1967 and it … Continue reading “Reconsidering Sol Lewitt: Spring 2018”
“I find it difficult to write a statement that will be a correct summation of my philosophy of art. The work itself seems to subvert such statement figurines the total of one’s work creates its own philosophy. This emerges from work to work, successful ones or failures, finding its own dimensions. The total of all … Continue reading “Sol LeWitt and Robert Smithson on … Sol LeWitt”
|There’s a little part of the art world not widely traveled offering a nuanced view of an artist’s oeuvre called Ephemera.| By definition, ephemera are “items designed to be useful or important for only a short time, especially pamphlets, notices, tickets, etc.” So, in the art market, this includes exhibition posters, announcements – usually postcards … Continue reading “Every Picture Tells A Story”
|Lary Bloom isn’t in the art business, he was a friend of LeWitt, and as such this biography is more about the man than his art.| There were several curious aspects to my purchase of an original pen and ink drawing by Sol LeWitt from his incomplete cube series. A work long coveted, when one … Continue reading “A Life of Ideas”
|“Those who understand art only by what it looks like often do not understand very much at all.” -Sol Lewitt| In 1965 Bridget Riley made a trip to New York City to participate in a show titled, “The Responsive Eye.” Her black and white works were already well known with one having been purchased by … Continue reading “Bridget Riley”
|“…it’s fascinating to see people converging at similar visual endpoints even when starting from different places, following divergent paths, and all the while thinking about different things.”| For no particular reason, I bought a handsome catalog of Paul Klee works printed in conjunction with an exhibit at the Guggenheim Museum (May 7 to September … Continue reading “When Similar Does Not Mean Same As”
|Eric Fischl does a fabulous job explaining not just how he goes about the creative process, but how his creative process came to be what it is.| Eric Fischl’s 2013 autobiography, Bad Boy, is quite the piece of work – literally. His name was familiar to me, though his paintings were not. One of the New … Continue reading “Random Thoughts on Art: Explaining Creativity”
|The late hard-edged paintings by both of these artists inform each other, but the calligraphic-like images show another alignment of thought leading to a similar solution.| While reviewing some black and white photos of painting exhibits from the late 1930’s that featured the work of Piet Mondrian, I was struck by the resemblance of … Continue reading “Random Thoughts on Art: The Calligraphic School of Painting?”
|As Einstein taught us during the formative years of these two important artists, nothing can be analyzed in and of itself, but only in comparison to other phenomena.| Jackson Pollock has always appealed to me more in theory than practice. The idea of an Action Painting is intellectually stimulating and supportive of the notion that … Continue reading “Abstract Expressionism”
|”Those looking at art purely as an investment might first consider looking elsewhere.” -Melanie Gerlis| The last line in a thoughtful book by Melanie Gerlis, Art as an Investment?, does not do her work justice, “Those looking at art purely as an investment might first consider looking elsewhere.” In fact, she makes a cautious case for … Continue reading “The Value in Art”
