Visual Arts
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
I recommend keeping an eye out for this and other animation shows at local, independent theaters and museums. You will be dazzled and amazed.
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.
“Red” is about creativity and destruction, Apollonian rigor and Dionysian instinct, fathers and sons, love and rejection, life and death.
Visual Art Commentary: Silence Is Complicity — Why Museums Must Use Their Voice to Defend Democracy