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Wrong is right – the shock of the flaw
That old grade-school test question – Which of these does not belong? – offers a key to the aesthetics of the expressively hot, as opposed to the classically cool. The hint of crazy within the solid citizen, the blood in the water and the worm in the rose (mortal, guilty) move us in a way […]
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Recently in Seattle
If human history were underwater, Alwyn O’Brien‘s ceramic vessels could serve as the bleached bones of the Ancien Regime, the decorative drained and dead on a dark sea floor. 4 Descending Notes 2010 Manganese Clay and Glaze 9″ x 7″ x 5 1/2″ Hand-rolled coils make her lacy vessels. Born past their prime, they are […]
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Picasso’s flesh world
Collectors who hire experts to solve problems that don’t exist till help arrives are responsible for the equivalent of bad face lifts on old masters. What the artists intended too frequently recedes under an abrasive cleaning or a deadening layer of varnish. Current practices discourage irreversible interventions. That means John Currin’s work is a little […]
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Welcome back, David Wojnarowicz
Nice to see David Wojnarowicz (wana-row-vitch) back in the news, making the monkeys dance. It’s no surprise that the usual people want to use their deliberate misunderstanding of his work to rally their frightened base. It’s also no surprise that the Smithsonian once again proves to be cowardly. Remember its Enola Gay exhibit from 1995? […]
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Image Transfer – Remix Culture at the Henry
Humans see, humans do: After the first horse drawn on the first cave and the first pot incised with a decorative line, everything became imitation. You don’t need a weatherman to know which way that wind blows, or that in the contemporary period, it blows harder. In selecting the 12 artists featured in Image Transfer: […]
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Give me a head with hair
Mequitta Ahuja Wriggle, oil on canvas, 41″X26″ 2008. Could have been titled, Medusa takes a nap. Geoffrey Chadsey Welterweight, 2002 Watercolor pencil on rag vellum, tape 57″ x 24″ Another great Chadsey figure with flowing locks. (Not safe for work.) Lauren Grossman Behold 2003 Iron, wool, steel. 13″x21″x12″ Rolls on casters. Mequitta Ahuja, again. Flowback, […]
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Bill Cumming: 1917-2010
I think people will forget me when I’m dead. I’m going to add a codicil to my will, to forbid anybody from speaking my name. Bill Cumming, from profile in the PI, 2005 When died of heart failure at 93 Nov. 23, he was the last member of the original Northwest School, a group of […]
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Alden Mason – to live in a brighter world
From a 2008 profile I wrote in the PI, when there still was a real PI: Growing up as a shy kid with an overprotective mother in the Skagit Valley, Alden Mason studied bugs, watched birds become blurs in the sky and fish leap in the river. He was no good at sports because he […]
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Noah Davis – back to the future of painting
Born in Seattle in 1983 and now living in Los Angeles, Noah Davis paints in the eye of a temporal storm. The present is calm as past and future rage around it. Noah Davis Bust 2 2010 Oil on canvas 36″ x 36″ The past: Cranium to nose quote Picasso. To the extent that the […]
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Scan this: Fourth Amendment underwear
As the site says, when searches go too far, underwear can express your views. (via Dominic Holden.) There’s still the excessive radiation to consider. Comes in bras and panties too, of course.
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Roy McMakin – art assumes the position
If Joesph Beuys is right that anything can be art and John Cage is right that anything can music, then Roy McMakin‘s furniture makes perfect sense. His chairs, tables, chests and stools both deliver and undermine the idea of utilitarian subservience. Within the fine craftsmanship of their construction is a subversive insistence on a right […]
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William S. Burroughs says thanks
…for the memories, America. (Via Michelle Nicolosi)
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Happy Thanksgiving from Zoe Strauss
She’s serving roasted cauliflower: Looks like broccoli to me, which reminds me of E.B. White’s tagline for a 1928 New Yorker cartoon drawn by Carl Rose (Image via)On Thanksgiving in Seattle, a pipe froze at my house and burst, just in time for a house guest, who’s arriving from Portland in an hour or so. […]
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Chris Engman – working for a living
Chris Engman‘s photos are evidence of his interventions. Using the deserts of Eastern Washington as stage sets, he constructs material plays about his process. Six barrels become a triangle, the red always in the middle bottom and the other colors rotating. He shoots a photo, rearranges the barrels and shoots again. Time passes in the […]
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Rachel Maxi – paintings in your pocket
Rachel Maxi paints landscapes and still lifes you can carry in your pocket, your purse or briefcase. Larger ones are never bigger than two arms extended. She gives her portraits of ordinary places an extraordinary glow, as if a street sign, garbage bin, stretch of roadway or flower in a vase were a monk at […]