Collection of essays and criticisms of artwork, mainly from last half century
Artists’s Lives
Jean-Michel Basquiat → New York artist, started off in graffiti, collab with Warhol
Agnes Martin → first works = grids, then painted, carefully-planned stripes of pastels; almost all abstract except very last drawing of a plant
David Hockney → one of Britain’s most famous artists, reinvented and explored many media and themes (swimming pools, LA, etc.)
Always learning to look, remembering that looking brings joy
Joseph Cornell → boxes, collages (Surrealist?), movie-making
Collab with Yayoi Kusama
Robert Rauschenberg → “combines,” the film Rocky
Georgia O’Keefe → took one subject matter and painted it over and over to truly understand: flowers, wall with a door, cow skull
Derek Jarman → Modern Nature, on gardening
It’s how we all go, in and out of the dark— but what a thing it is to have given off such a blaze (something like that, from Song of Solomon)
Freeze Columns
Protest form of stitched-mouths: silence = death, in response to AIDS and refugee crisis
Art less about making objects than opening conversations
Ali Smith’s writing = epitome of “and, and, and”
Essays
On Maggie Nelson’s The Argonauts— like much of her work, defies classification by genre; uses personal experiences to analyze culture, how obsessed we are to binaries
What is the job or task of the artist? There is none: the duty of an artist is to be free.