Tag Archives: art
I Know it When I See It
“But to live outside the law, you must be honest.” Bob Dylan United States Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart struggled in 1964 to define pornography in the landmark case of Jacobellis v. Ohio. In his concurring opinion, Stewart wrote, essentially, … Continue reading
Drywall and Botticelli’s The Birth of Venus
We’ve all seen photos of Botticelli’s The Birth of Venus. Sandro Botticelli, circa mid -480s. What we don’t see is scale. I was remarking to a former art instructor how very different Van Gogh’s paintings look like in person compared … Continue reading
Painting With Sand After Bob Ross
Fascinating. This artist on Twitch is watching an old Bob Ross painting video and then attempting to recreate his image with colored sand. And she is wearing bunny ears. And she has a nice Russian accent. Twitch always puts on … Continue reading
What Even Sotheby’s Doesn’t Tell You About Van Gogh
What Even Sotheby’s Doesn’t Tell You About Van Gogh His paintings are three dimensional! Vividly so. His latter works especially reach out to you as he literally caked on paint onto the canvas. The flat looking photographs you’ve seen your … Continue reading
Spenser’s Ireland by Marianne Moore
Fantastic wordplay inspired in part by a National Geographic article? “[L]ike enchanted Earl Gerald who changed himself into a stag, to a great green-eyed cat of the mountain.” Much controversy and discussion surrounds this poem, as with much of modern poetry. Here’s one … Continue reading
Tyger Tyger, Burning Bright!
Tyger Tyger, Burning Bright! William Blake was a poet and an artist. He was one of the first in Britain (or anywhere else in Europe) to see a tiger in person when he saw one in London. As an artist … Continue reading
Three Good Paragraphs
I’m happy if I can write three good paragraphs in a row. In my now dead book project of 60,000 words, I probably had 11 or 12 instances in which I produced a set of three good paragraphs. I still … Continue reading
Conceptual Art is Still With Us!
You didn’t miss it! That Thing From The Nineties is still here, still throwing out nonsense to justify something easy to make. In the Belgian city of Ghent this month, conceptual artist Kris Martin is having a retrospective entitled Exit. … Continue reading
Kitsch-man as Tourist by Ludwig Giesz. And the Rise of the Selfie.
What is kitsch? Everything in the last town I lived in which was Las Vegas. I know it when I see it. I’ll leave a better definition to dictionaries and the great book KITSCH: The World of Bad Taste by … Continue reading →