Today I yield space to my friend, the artist Gary Lloyd. I have known Gary and followed his work for more than forty years. It was an exhibition of his work in the early 1970s that originated my migration from…
Art Writing
Just Do It
Okay, I know that’s a cliche. Worse, perhaps, it’s a cliche born of a sneaker commercial. But how often do you hear some other person–or yourself!–say something like this: “I’ll try to make it by eight o’clock,” or “I’m trying…
And While I’m Away…
… I’ll write home every day, and send all my loving to you. It’s the Beatles, of course. This was 1964. Writing home every day meant an actual piece of paper and an envelope, with address and stamp. A trip …
12 Years a Slave
Despite its unquestionable power, I left this movie troubled as much by what I felt to be a false note as by its indictment of the cruelties of slavery, whose dreadful heritage still haunts the American conscience and scars the American soul.
Searching, Searching…
The Richard Diebenkorn exhibition at the Palm Springs Art Museum is an inspiration and a revelation for anyone interested in watching the creative mind at work. It covers only a relatively brief period of the artist’s work, “The Berkeley Years, 1953-1966,” but they are…
It’s the Eye…
…No, it’s the mind. No, it’s the mind’s eye. The James Turrell exhibition at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art opens all three–eye, mind, mind’s eye, and leaves the visitor… well, ecstatic, if ecstasy is understood as ec-stasis, a knocking…
Richard Jackson at Orange County Museum of Art
If you’re in the area, don’t miss the rare opportunity for a Richard Jackson retrospective exhibition at the Orange County Museum of Art. In fact, it’s worth traveling a good long way to see: I’m surprised to be informed that it…
David Hockney (Modern Masters)
For a contemporary artist of serious aesthetic purpose, David Hockney enjoys immense, perhaps unequaled public visibility: the shock of dyed blond hair, the owlish glasses, and the shy, schoolboy grin are known as much through the popular press as through the journals of the art world. His engaging personality, his quirky but always enlightening ideas about art, and his inexhaustible inventiveness both of imagery and of techniques ranging from oil painting to photography to faxes are captured by Peter Clothier with clear-eyed intelligence and grace in this concise but comprehensive overview.