There’s a chess opening called the Grob, fully as distasteful as the name might suggest. When white plays the Grob he’s showing disrespect, not only to his opponent but to the game. The Grob does nothing to advance white’s position on the board. That, in fact, is its strength, the one and only thing the […]
Visual Arts
Fuse Flash:The Warhol-Pollock Axis?
Is it a sign of the times? On October 5, the New York Sun updated yet another art authentication controversy that’s been simmering since earlier this year. Like the better known Pollock Matter Affair (see past posts in Fuse Flash and Anonymous Sources), this one involves a filmmaker, art work that may or may not […]
Fuse Flash: Harvard Crimson on Pollock Matters
The Harvard Crimson has waded into the treacherous controversies swirling around the “Pollock Matters” exhibition currently on view at Boston College’s McMullen Museum (see previous posts here in “Anonymous Sources.”)
Anonymous Sources: Pollock Matter a Use Too Fair?
Could a longstanding debate over copyright law add yet another dimension to the long-running Pollock Matter Affair? There are signs it might, though the media haven’t yet understood just how broad the implications might be.
Anonymous Sources: Just Call Us Old Fashioned
A hard-surfing reader called our attention recently to a piece in the on-line journal, The Hub Review. The piece, “Why all the love for the ‘Matter Pollocks’?” reports on the on-going controversy covered in some previous “Anonymous Sources” posts on The Arts Fuse.
Being Where?
Some of the best moments of my visit to documenta XII I spent in bed. Even though Loekie and I had decided this time not to try to see everything and to spend as much time on a display as we wanted, and even though we stuck to this strategy and enjoyed the exhibition all […]
Anonymous Sources: Pollock Mystery Takes a Few New Turns
One of the most controversial exhibitions in decades, Pollock Matters, curated by Case Western Reserve Professor Ellen Landau and others, opened quietly at Boston College’s McMullen Museum just this past Labor Day weekend. But it is already turning heads.
Visual Arts: Reading the Prayer Book in Isfahan
Three weeks ago I attended Friday evening services at the main synagogue of Isfahan. I cannot remember the last time that I went to a kabbalat Shabbat service, but I cannot have gone much more often than once a decade for the past 40 years. By Gary Schwartz Isfahan, gate of synagogue on Felestin Square […]
Anonymous Sources: Pollock Exhibition Will Make Global Splash
A front-page story in the Boston Globe arts section last Sunday reminds us that the Pollock-Matter Affair is alive and well and moving to Boston. One of the biggest art world controversies in decades, this perfect storm of paint, press hype, and cultivated invective swirls around a group of Jackson Pollock-like art works that filmmaker […]
The Four Sides of the Church Tower of Strängnäs
Cleaning up my desk, I came across the following mysterious note, written on a sheet torn out of a small spiral notebook: “Now I see what you mean with the question you had about the stones outside who is different on every sides. I have asked but no one could give some answer. Maybe they […]