Visual Arts

“The Bad Backwards Walking” — A Dispatch from William Kentridge’s Fourth Norton Lecture

April 12, 2012
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William Kentridge spoke of the value of using a mirror to re-learn what he already knew how to do; the clear implication was that we are daily surrounded by mirror-images that we do not see for themselves but that hold the potential to alter our relationships to our tools and to our visions.

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Visual Arts Essay: Gods in the Gallery — A Visit to the Museum of Russian Icons

April 10, 2012
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If the icon is both a window into the mystical experience of the painter and a door allowing the saint to come into the believer’s world, am I, unbeliever that I am, hoping to stand in the line of sight, to see what I can intercept of this uncanny conversation?

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Fuse Feature: Vertical and Contingent — A Dispatch from William Kentridge’s Norton Lectures

April 6, 2012
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The decisions William Kentridge makes in his minute to-ings and fro-ings are akin to the decisions a poet makes as she works her measure over and over again.

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Visual Arts: Chopped liver at Woburn Abbey

April 4, 2012
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The world press has announced that a painting of an old man in Woburn Abbey, England, has been newly discovered to be an authentic Rembrandt. Gary Schwartz is incensed that the abbey is practicing such flagrant spin, and that the press feeds it to us so uncritically.

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Fuse Dispatches: The Benefits of Doubt — A Dispatch from the Second of William Kentridge’s Norton Lectures

March 30, 2012
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For William Kentridge history accrues, falls dead, is born, washes up, piles up, and may be artfully arranged, but the most powerful place that this accretion might happen is in the artist’s studio, which is a metonym for the human mind.

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Book Review: “The Last Nude” — An Engaging Historical Fiction About Seductive Surfaces

March 30, 2012
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Even though she covers herself with demurely crossed arms, her gaze could burn holes through fabric. If it looks like the artist had a predilection for strong, bosomy girls, well, there’s a reason for that.

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Visual Arts Feature: Museum Hopping Through Europe

March 25, 2012
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The Fuse’s man in Europe is a museum junkie. During the second half of 2011, he got to lots of new destinations, and he found new museums almost everywhere he went. This installment is about Finland, Estonia, Latvia and Belgium.

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Fuse Dispatches: Lessons Drawn — William Kentridge’s “Six Drawing Lessons”

March 23, 2012
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After hearing just the first of William Kentridge’s six Norton Lectures, I have no doubt that this series of “Drawing Lessons” will be one of the most entertaining and enlightening artistic events of 2012.

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Film Review: The Ottawa Animation Shorts Festival

February 2, 2012
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I recommend keeping an eye out for this and other animation shows at local, independent theaters and museums. You will be dazzled and amazed.

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Visual Arts Feature: Me and Philip Guston

January 30, 2012
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Our discussions always took the same turn. Philip Guston attempted to convince me that artists like Piero della Francesca and the cave painters of Lascaux were in the first place abstractionists.

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