Does Art Scatter exist? Not, I-post-therefore-I-am exist, exactly, but “exist” as in having an “integrated personality”? I didn’t think so. We don’t think so. Whatever. But if we did, you know, have an identity, a consciousness we could train at will on the world at large, like a great searchlight or the Eye [...]
Maybe a dozen years ago, when I was filling in for a few months for the art critic at the daily newspaper that was my bread and margarine, I decided it was a good idea to print the prices of the works of art being discussed in reviews of gallery shows. Seemed reasonable at [...]
The couch. Yes, the couch.
End of the work week, the daily trudge home, the brain dull and the eyes glazed. Time for some TV! And some of America’s finest television is available, just over the cable, no iTunes or websites or DVDs necessary. TV, the way Apollo intended it! Apollo, god of prophecy [...]
My first sense of the modern is in what Roger Shattuck said about Marcel Duchamp: “Can one produce works that are not works of art? He tried; we wouldn’t allow it.”
One might say of Robert Rauschenberg: “Can one throw out something that is pure junk? We tried; he wouldn’t allow it.”
My second sense of the [...]
The Robert Rauschenberg appreciations have begun to proliferate (Michael Kimmelman’s obit is excellent; D.K. Row’s account provides a Portland dimension), and it seems appropriate to write something about him and not because I knew him or have special insights into his work. I don’t. It’s just that it’s difficult to imagine the last part of [...]
So Monday night I was jammed against a wall at Jimmy Mak’s, scribbling down words of wisdom from Portland’s reigning creative economy king, architect Brad Cloepfil of Allied Works. I got there a little late: Cloepfil had already been introduced by Randy Gragg, editor of Portland Spaces magazine, the sponsoring organization, and had begun [...]
“He had merely waked up one morning again in the country of the blue and had stayed there with a good conscience and a great idea.”
–Henry James, “The Next Time”
American Earth: Environmental Writing Since Thoreau arrived on April 22, Earth Day. Edited by Bill McKibben, with a Foreword by Al Gore, and published by Library [...]
A Jeff Koons planted in the yard of the new American embassy in China. And not just a Koons “Tulips” sculpture, either. Work by Maya Lin and Louise Bourgeois will also be there. Robert Rauschenberg and Martin Puryear, too. According to the Art Newspaper, the U.S. government is spending $800,000 on (mostly) commissioned artworks [...]
Last night, watching the primary results roll in (and a strange Gregory Peck movie on Turner Movie Classics), I was struck yet again by the John Dewey in Barack Obama’s victory speech. I know, I know: I’ve managed to locate Dewey in just about everything. I didn’t post about it, but I even detected [...]
From time to time, events remind Art Scatter, even resolutely non-commercial as it, that in many precincts of the dominion money is commonly thought to make the world go ’round. It certainly sets the art world to spinning when some falls its way. Two recent examples:
Mystery buyer of record-setting Rothko revealed! Way back [...]