The following is the first installment of a two-part series. There it is. Here you are. The encounter with art. Before, during, and after the recognition of the art object. Before, during, and after the art has been broken down into its essential formal elements. Before, during, and after having…
Years ago I pursued a doctorate in the interdisciplinary fields of art, psychology, and theology. At the time, I served as poetry editor for a flailing literary journal with the same three-part focus, an enterprise that eventually folded, as did many publications of that era. I felt intuitively that our…
The current vogue for so-called “tiny houses”, where people live in as little as 100 to 400 square feet, derives in many respects from the earlier artistic movement known as minimalism. Following the reductive trajectory of modernism, and reacting against the emotionalism and politicalization of abstract expressionism, minimalism – a style of abstract art…
The following is the second installment of a two-part series. The first installment can be found here. Less than a year prior to the publication of Prinzhorn’s book, another major publication came out titled Madness and Art. The Life and Works of Adolf Wölfli (Ein Geisteskranker als Künstler), where the…
In 2011, artist Tenzing Rigdol surreptitiously moved over 20,000 kilograms of dirt from Tibet into the exile community of Dharamsala, India for an installation titled Our Land, Our People. Thousands of Tibetans in the area came to view and touch the land, some with memories of a Tibetan landscape…
The following is the first of a two-part series. How can we enter someone else’s head? How can we get inside? How can we break through our own, invariably too constricting horizon to reach out to another human being? How can we look at reality from the perspective of…
A contemporary icon of those on the periphery and for those who are dispossessed, Frida Kahlo’s paintings draw on her mestizaje inheritance and personal experience of marginality ― political, cultural, sexual, gendered ― to produce an iconoclastic iconography that contests the supposedly centred subject of modernity. As with many female…
The following is a second installment of a two-part series. The first part can be found here. The question then arises, how does the “theatrical pretense” – and its invitation to a theatrical narrative – relate to inanimate crafted objects such as paintings, or sculptures? The answer is that, in the…
The following is the first installment of a two-part series. “Art” desperately needs a handy, practical definition, not of the scholarly conceptual variety, but rather of the plain and simple sort that you can usefully take with you into a gallery, and apply directly to what you see. You want…
For Christmas, my parents gave us an Amazon Echo. If you’ve seen the commercials (or have one in your home), you know this is the Amazon in-home concierge with “Alexa” who responds directly to your commands. “Alexa, add yogurt to my grocery list.” “Alexa, play Piano Guys Christmas music.” “Alexa,…