Everything Damien Hirst touches turns to hype. Would he be half as well liked or despised without his carnival of publicity? Much of what has been written about Hirst is unnecessary writing: Journalism and press agentry that will last like…
I spent the latter half of my childhood in a small town in eastern Connecticut. Once it had been strictly rural, but by the latter half of the twentieth-century was slowly succumbing to the inevitable creep of suburbia. For the…
Everyone wants to live somewhere else, and, much of the time, we do just that. We edit our perceptions, wreathing a place in nostalgic associations or turning a blind eye to present social injustice. To one extent or another, we…
My first question is: Why Botero? How did this mild, sometimes trivial artist become the chronicler of darkness? At age 73 Fernando Botero broke out of his benign reputation with a series of 100 works—50 paintings and as many works…
The Westerly Public Library, in Westerly RI, resonates with old money and civic virtue, both of which can seem as quaint and bygone as the dinosaurs. It’s a mansion-sized pile, faced in yellow brick, dating from the 1890s, and…
SOMEWHERE IN DREAMLAND Looking at Will Cotton’s paintings remind me of cartoons; or one cartoon in particular. The Fleischer Studios Color Classic cartoon Somewhere In Dreamland (1936) is the epitome of Depression-era wish fulfillment. Two innocent, almost overly cute children…
There can be no art revolution that is separate from a science revolution, a political revolution, an education revolution, a drug revolution, a sex revolution, or a personal revolution . . . —Lee Lozano, Statement for Art Worker’s Coalition, 1969.…