Art
Required Reading
This week, it's mostly photos and visual reactions to the Trump presidency because sometimes words just don't work.
Weekend
Art
Weekend Words: Forward
"Let us not look back in anger or forward in fear, but around in awareness."
Books
Reader’s Diary: Walter Benjamin's ‘Sonnets’
In 1913, the young Walter Benjamin struck up an intense friendship with the poet Christoph Friedrich Heinle — one of the most enigmatic episodes in Benjamin’s enigmatic life.
Art
Seeking Community: Memories of 'The Poetry Project'
I think a conversation about community is important for many reasons, not the least being the rather utopian idea that there is someplace you can go where you feel safe.
Art
An Artist Who Is Not a Capitalist Minimalist
Nahum Tevet's premise is straightforward: What do you need to temporarily preserve and mount a drawing on the wall?
Art
Scar Tissue
One of the things that I admire about Brenda Goodman is her willingness to push a painting into a territory all its own. She isn’t interested in stylistic consistency or any of the other common denominators that can be used to brand one’s work.
Art
Nazis, New York, and Max Beckmann
What New York gave Beckmann was not superficial subject matter, but inspiration in the form of energy.
Books
Sound of Silence: Michael Palmer’s 'The Laughter of the Sphinx'
Michael Palmer’s trust in the generative power that emerges out of silence for poetry runs counter to a deep strain of pessimism throughout The Laughter of the Sphinx.
Art
Beyond Gorgeous: Illuminated Manuscripts from Boston Collections
For viewers accustomed to looking at paintings on canvas and panel, manuscripts are a different beast.
Art
The Fateful Attraction of Jasper Johns and Edvard Munch
Sometimes an exhibition, propelled by its clarity of purpose and emotional force, will lead you to a point that feels genuinely cathartic. And sometimes an exhibition will hit that mark and then shift into overdrive.
Art
Required Reading
This week, a new (and more accurate) world map, the death of iconic images, meme warfare, the impact of Brexit on art, and more.
Art
Weekend Words: Vote
"The ignorance of one voter in a democracy impairs the security of all."