A few years ago, in an essay called “Why I am a Member of the Christopher Middleton Fan Club,” I stated the need for “a selected prose that brings together all the different kinds of writing he has done.” Loose Cannons: Selected Prose, which includes an insightful foreword by one of Middleton’s most vocal and articulate champions, August Kleinzahler, is pretty close to the book I had in mind.
John Yau
John Yau has published books of poetry, fiction, and criticism. His latest poetry publications include a book of poems, Further Adventures in Monochrome (Copper Canyon Press, 2012), and the chapbook, Egyptian Sonnets (Rain Taxi, 2012). His most recent monographs are Catherine Murphy (Rizzoli, 2016), the first book on the artist, and Richard Artschwager: Into the Desert (Black Dog Publishing, 2015). He has also written monographs on A. R. Penck, Jasper Johns, and Andy Warhol. In 1999, he started Black Square Editions, a small press devoted to poetry, fiction, translation, and criticism. He was the Arts Editor for the Brooklyn Rail (2007–2011) before he began writing regularly for Hyperallergic. He is a Professor of Critical Studies at Mason Gross School of the Arts (Rutgers University).
Posted inArt
Against Despotic Forms of Perfection: Jane Corrigan’s New Paintings
The focus of Jane Corrigan’s first solo show at Kerry Schuss is young female athletes who, by virtue of their age – they are adolescents – are likely to be undergoing biological changes as well.
Posted inArt
What the Heck Is Going On in Angela Dufresne’s New Paintings?
In the foreground of the painting, “Dwarf, Goat, Woman, Man and Head” (2014), a young woman in a striped red and blue bikini is standing in a forest, where it has recently snowed, multitasking. She cradles a decapitated head in the crook of her left arm, while, with her right hand, she is about to push down on the head of a naked dwarf with an erection standing beside her.
Posted inArt
Harriet Korman’s Chromatic and Linear Improvisations
The key to Harriet Korman’s work is drawing. However, until this exhibition, Harriet Korman: Line or Edge, Line or Color, New Paintings and Drawings, at Lennon, Weinberg she has tended to show only a few drawings at a time.
Posted inArt
James Bishop’s Incommodious Beauty
I have been waiting to see a large selection of James Bishop’s paintings since the mid-1970s, ever since reading John Ashbery’s appraisal in a secondhand copy of Art News Annual 1966.
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John Yau and Justine Kurland Discuss the Relationship of Photography, Poetry, and Narrative
The following email exchange with the photographer Justine Kurland focuses on her exhibition, Sincere Auto Care, at Mitchell-Innes & Nash, which is accompanied by a self-published book with the same title.
Posted inPoetry
An Occasion to Celebrate Occasional Press and the Artist Joe Wilson
I have been a fan of small and independent presses ever since I discovered the Grolier Poetry Book Shop (6 Plympton Street, Cambridge, Massachusetts) during my senior year of high school.
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Weekend Studio Visit: Denis Farrell in Oughterard, County Galway, Connemara, Ireland
The first work by the Irish artist, Denis Farrell, which I saw was a box titled Ukiyo (2011), containing seventy equally-sized, abstract watercolors. Ideally, the watercolors are supposed to be framed and mounted across all the walls of a gallery, becoming a sequence inviting the viewer to look at each work.
Posted inArt
Andy Warhol and Jeff Koons and the Culture of Hyperbole
Recently, I read a statement by Kenneth Turan, film critic for the LA Times, that struck a chord. As a poet and art critic, it is impossible to ignore the reams of exaggeration I am bombarded with on a daily basis, from blurbs attesting to the gorgeous mastery to be found in a young poet’s first book to the unrivaled brilliance to be encountered in an artist’s most recent exhibition.
Posted inArt
Weekend Studio Visit: Marilyn Lerner in Chelsea, New York
I first went to Marilyn Lerner’s studio shortly after I reviewed her show at John Good for Artforum (May, 1989), and have gone periodically ever since.
Posted inPoetry
What Happens After Eric Baus’s Pharmacy Fills with Sand?
The Tranquilized Tongue (City Lights Books, 2014), Eric Baus’s fourth book, is his best yet. It consists of more than sixty compact prose poems, some of which are only one sentence long, and with none as long as the first one, “The Illuminated Egg,” a single block of ten sentences.
Posted inPoetry
Marilyn Chin: Poet, Translator, Provocateur
A few weeks ago, on Centre Street–just north of Canal, the longtime boundary between Chinatown and the rest of Manhattan–I was on a panel, Re-imagining Asian American (and American) Poetry, at the Museum of Chinese in America (MoCA).
