A round-up of the NY autumn gallery scene soon. Resisting the link temptation to some tacky elevator waiting music here's a short interview with the drummer from Alice Cooper, Neal Smith.
The Uwe Blaschke Beatles Collection goes under the hammer Saturday at Heritage Auctions.
Cream - Disraeli Gears 3-D Lenticular Display
Richard Taittinger Gallery now represents the estate of Nassos Daphnis.
Here too I think of the march which Martin Luther King led from Selma to Montgomery fifty years ago as part of the campaign to fulfill his “dream” of full civil and political rights for African Americans. That dream continues to inspire us all. I am happy that America continues to be, for many, a land of “dreams”. Dreams which lead to action, to participation, to commitment. Dreams which awaken what is deepest and truest in the life of a people.
An extraordinary and moving address to Congress this morning by Pope Francis on his visit to Washington and New York.
Full speech
The Drawing 5 year-old Sofia Cruz gave to the Pope. Copyright 2015- Sofia Cruz
When all is said and done, many people on this planet just don’t have the time for much art and culture. There is podcast after podcast, gallery opening after gallery opening, concert after concert, movie upon movie, book upon book. And yet the power held in the drawing of a 5-year old is undeniable. Those of us blessed to have made a living out of the arts must always stand back and contemplate. What are we doing with our life? There is (hopefully) by no means a negative response to our thoughts. Yet particularly in big cities such as New York it is so so easy for us to swamp ourselves in artistic endevour to the detriment of a bigger picture.
Creating any art form by its very nature is tough, needing to be a rather singular, obsessive often lonely existence. Is there too much creativity in a world where so many have so little to even eat? Artistic endeavor itself can be utterly soul destroying (need it be, is that a given?) or totally enriching: for many others not just for the creator.
Artist Leo Rabkin died earlier this year. He collected all sorts of toys, ‘bibs and bobs’ and on view at Luise Ross Gallery are the little worlds he weaved, melded, stitched and set sail from the bigger ‘sea’ around us. There are echoes of Joseph Cornell’s boxes or the burlap of Alberto Burri but the echoes may well be in our heads not Rabkin’s. Each of his worlds is different to the next. Is this indulgence on his and our part or does it set our mind free from the structures we continually inherit in daily life allowing us to better explore our existence?
We look but so often do not see with our eyes. German artist Markus Brunetti in a sense seems ‘old fashioned’: more large format detailed exhibition photographs of churches and cathedrals. And yet it was hard to recall anyone who had taken such an exacting effort to display the glory of these buildings in such detail (often composed of many many photos not one). Of course, we need no towering edifices in which to worship. Just to see St. Patrick's cleaned and spruced up- jaw-dropping. All that artistry in stone by for the most part anonymous artisans.
ISIS beheads expert who refused to reveal location of valuable antiquities
IS destroys ancient Catholic monastery in Syria
[The following is a re-write of the Sept 27 1pm post addition that mysteriously was wiped. So were the hits to it from my own Google cache.]
Although the Koran speaks of destroying idols, such an action by ISIS is problematic considering a close reading of the scriptures. By destroying temples etc aren’t they imbuing them with a ‘knowledge’ that clearly they themselves deny of them? Equally problematic is making money out of looted artifacts. Are Oliver Cromwells’ destructive actions during the English Civil War a Western parallel to this?
Thomas Merton: Strong hate, the hate that takes joy in hating, is strong because it does not believe itself to be unworthy and alone. It feels the support of a justifying God, of an idol of war, an avenging and destroying spirit.
The Midrash offers an interesting perspective:
Terah was an idol manufacturer who once went away and left Abraham in charge of the store. A man walked in and wished to buy an idol. Abraham asked him how old he was and the man responded “fifty years old.” Abraham then said, “You are fifty years old and would worship a day old statue!” At this point the man left ashamed.
Later, a woman walked in to the store and wanted to make an offering to the idols. So Abraham took a stick, smashed the idols and placed the stick in the hand of the largest idol. When Terah returned he asked Abraham what happened to all the idols. Abraham told him that a woman came in to make an offering to the idols. Then the idols argued about which one should eat the offering first. Then the largest idol took the stick and smashed the other idols. Terah responded by saying that they are only statues and have no knowledge. Whereupon Abraham responded by saying that you deny their knowledge, yet you worship them! At which point Terah took Abraham to Nimrod.
Nimrod proclaims to Abraham that we should worship fire. Abraham responds that water puts out fire. So Nimrod declares they worship water. Abraham responds that clouds hold water. So Nimrod declares they worship clouds. Abraham responds that wind pushes clouds. So Nimrod declares they worship wind. Abraham responds that people withstand wind. Nimrod becomes angry with Abraham and declares that Abraham shall be cast into the fire, and if Abraham is correct that there is a real God, that God will save him. Then Abraham is cast into the fire and is saved by God. Abraham’s brother Haran sees what happened and says that he believes in the God of Abraham, is thrown into the fire, and is not saved by God.
Sculptor Will Ryman attempts something interesting out of the Bin Laden capture. Some critics weren’t quite as convinced:
ARTNEWS.COM- Almost as exciting as a season-opening triumph is a season-opening disaster, which has arrived in the form of Will Ryman’s latest show at Paul Kasmin. It is titled “Two Rooms,” and it is a ponderous affair. The first room features 12 unremarkable sculptures of stone–faced children sitting on stools, each cast from a different material (iron, titanium, salt, and so forth, some bearing a suspicious resemblance to Katharina Fritsch’s work, whom I hate to even mention here). At best, it is a rather production-heavy means of making a commonplace point about the assembly-line nature of so many educational systems today.
But then Ryman seems unable to restrain himself from going big with even the most painfully obvious ideas. The second room contains The Situation Room (2012–14), his meticulous sculptural re-creation of the notorious photo of President Obama and his national security team in the White House watching as soldiers took out Osama bin Laden. The figures are cast from resin and covered in—wait for it—black coal dust. “I knew I wanted to explore this because I was seeing propaganda right in front of me,” Ryman recently told the New York Times of that photograph. But we don’t gain any new understanding of that carefully orchestrated photograph by seeing it as a sculpture. After the initial shock—“wow, that’s Hillary Clinton covered in coal”—faded, I just felt embarrassed that Ryman reportedly spent three years on the thing. Thinking about it now, though, turning a complicated moment of national vengeance and political theater into pure kitsch is a kind of achievement, so there’s that.
Thomas Merton: All attempts to define God are NOT inadequate,” because the Bible’s definition of God is divinely inspired and infallible. If one’s pursuit of God is not confined by the revelation of Scripture, the seeker is left to his own imagination and is in danger of being deluded by doctrines of devils. The believer does not stumble after God in darkness but knows God through faith in the wonderful light of divine Revelation.
Merton visited the Buddhas of Polonnaruwa, Sri Lanka:
Thomas Merton: Then the silence of the extraordinary faces. The great smiles. Huge and yet subtle. Filled with every possibility, questioning nothing, knowing everything, rejecting nothing, the peace not of emotional resignation but of Madhyamika, of sunyata, that has seen through every question without trying to discredit anyone or anything… For the doctrinaire, the mind that needs well-established positions, such peace, such silence, can be frightening…
Looking at these figures I was suddenly, almost forcibly, jerked clean out of the habitual, half-tied vision of things, and an inner clearness, clarity, as if exploding from the rocks themselves, became evident and obvious…All problems are resolved and everything is clear. The rock, all matter, all life, is charged with dharmakaya… everything is emptiness and everything is compassion. I don’t know when in my life I have ever had such a sense of beauty and spiritual validity running together in one aesthetic illumination. Surely… my Asian pilgrimage has come clear and purified itself. I mean, I know and have seen what I was obscurely looking for. I don’t know what else remains but I have now seen and have pierced through the surface and have got beyond the shadow and the disguise. The whole thing is very much a Zen garden, a span of bareness and openness and evidence… a beautiful and holy vision.
Ken Wilber: Great art suspends the reverted eye, the lamented past, the anticipated future: we enter with it into the timeless present; we are with God today, perfect in our manner and mode, open to the riches and the glories of a realm that time forgot, but that great art reminds us of: not by its content, but by what it does in us: suspends the desire to be elsewhere. And thus it undoes the agitated grasping in the heart of the suffering self, and releases us - maybe for a second, maybe for a minute, maybe for all eternity - releases us from the coil of ourselves.
