Dia:Beacon, in the fall. October 28, 2017. Train departs from the grand, Grand Central Station. Outside the window, a lone kayaker. The Hudson River is a deep gray blue. The trees dark orange and yellow; a yellow just this side of green. Greens are deep green; the sky is a clear strong, purple blue backdrop. … Continue reading
And then I start thinking about what I can buy people for Christmas that is not going to spy on them, because I would not want a gift to spy on me. This might seem like a weird thought, but Christmas really is the spying holiday. First, Santa is watching kids all the time. That’s surveillance. The Elf on the Shelf? A spy… Continue reading
Our Philadelphia winter was recently interrupted by unseasonably warm weather. Perfect timing to kick off my hunt for public installations associated with the Barnes Foundation’s Person of the Crowd: The Contemporary Art of Flânerie, which opened on February 25th. The “flâneur” references Charles Baudelaire’s 1863 essay “The Painter of Modern Life” in which he describes … Continue reading
“When there is no one else around to distract me I can see myself more clearly. It is just me, responding directly to the thing in front of me. It’s being able to explore the difference between thinking who I am and knowing who I am.” The simplest way for me to begin is to … Continue reading
Roots and branches are at the same level in the process of organizing ones thinking according to Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari. They propose this metaphor, originally taken from biology, as a rhizomatic way of thinking. The rhizome, like a root system, is so fertile that it may sprout in many different places at the … Continue reading
Philosophy has never been my strong suit. I struggle at synthesizing disparate ideas and apply them to everyday life. As the saying goes, “it is all Greek to me.” That is not to say that I don’t appreciate philosophy. In fact, I do, and as it happens, so does my son who is wading through … Continue reading
On November 26, 1965 Joseph Beuys performed How to Explain Pictures to a Dead Hare in Gallerie Schmela in Dusseldorf Germany. In honor of the 50th anniversary of the work we dedicate a moment to note the differences between rabbits and hares and the implications for Mr. Beuys. Both rabbit and hare are of the Leporidae family, … Continue reading
