Savinio’s adulteration of old and new was highly influential in the postmodernist revolt against the strictures of formalism.
Lawrence Weschler
Posted inArt
Fred Tomaselli Talks Pot, Gardening, and the New York Times
“Wasn’t pot your gateway drug to gardening?” Lawrence Weschler asked Fred Tomaselli teasingly during their recent conversation for the New York Public Library’s Art and Literature Series.
Posted inBooks
Reading The Believer’s 2010 Art Issue
It’s easy enough to tell that The Believer is a publication from California from looking at the cover of their 2010 Art Issue, much less getting to the table of contents. A 70s psychedelic mashup of art icons, a John Baldessari suited figure, a dinosaur figurine, and a Picassoian acrobat by Clare Rojas march up a ray of red and yellow light into … the mouth of a skin-less human body? New York this is not.
Famously co-edited by Vendela Vida, writer spouse of writer wunderkind Dave Eggers, The Believer is well known for its cutesy tone and off-beat vibe, helped along by its graphic design and a coterie of Californian cultural denizens. None of these are bad qualities in themselves, but when editing an “art issue,” it might be best to start looking outside of the narrow perspective of your own aesthetic.
Posted inBooks
Reading Lawrence Weschler on David Hockney
OUR FIRST WEDNESDAY BOOK REVIEW!
Reading Lawrence Weschler’s nigh-legendary book on Robert Irwin, Seeing is Forgetting the Name of the Thing One Sees, inspired me to next grab the New Yorker writer’s other artist-focused book, True to Life: Twenty-Five Years of Conversations With David Hockney. As entertaining as they are challenging, the two books are hard to categorize as biographies, though they concern individuals and their oeuvres. Weschler’s works are more like conversations: anecdotal histories formed less by research than by hanging out with an artist, watching exhibitions open and major works develop, witnessing a lifelong artistic practice.
Posted inArt
Wonder Cabinet: The Artist in Academia
Sometimes I have strange feelings for my computer. In the 13 years since I set up an email account, I have had a wide ranging series of emotional experiences while facing a screen. In the early days of email, I wrote long letters to friends, like the ones I used to write by hand and send through the mail. I received long letters too: messages of friendship and love and the occasional breakup, though these missives have become increasingly more brief and less frequent since Facebook …
Posted inNews
Guitar Boy To Reunite in LA for Lawrence Weschler’s “Wonder Cabinet”
In the late 1990s, the folk punk duo Guitar Boy was playing small music venues in Los Angeles and building a fan base. Unfortunately, the group consisting of Nancy Agabian and Ann Perich slowly faded away. This Saturday, they will reunite to perform as part of the Wonder Cabinet showcase at Occidental College, a day-long event curated by Lawrence Weschler. Guitar Boy may be an unknown band nowadays but I couldn’t resist posting their still relevant song about Getty Center … ENJOY!
