selling points

carrer ample, barcelona.

through the science and back into freedom

Although art in practice brings great difficulties for all those entering into it, this is so to the greatest possible degree in our own time. But for someone who has reached an age at which the intellect has already come to predominate to begin exercises in the initial stages, it must surely be impossible—without destroying himself—to pass forth from his own individuality toward more general endeavours ... He who loses himself in the boundless abundance of the life unfolding around him, and is thereby irresistibly prompted to copy it—and who thus feels so powerfully moved by the total impression—will surely seek to penetrate into the proportions, nature, and strengths of the great masses in precisely the same fashion in which he enters into the characteristic quality of the details ... He who considers the great masses—with a constant sense of the way in which all things are alive, down to the tiniest detail, affecting everything else—cannot conceive of them without a particular connection or affinity, far less depict them without being drawn to consider their fundamental causes. And when he does so, he cannot return once again to his initial freedom without working his way through to the pure ground, as it were ... To clarify what I mean: I believe that the old German artists, if they had known something of form, would have lost the immediacy and naturalness of expression in their figures, until they had reached a certain stage in this science ... There have been those who have built bridges and suspension work and other such technical things simply by eye. That is certainly possible for a time, but once a certain height has been reached and one naturally hits upon mathematical conclusions, his whole talent will be for nothing unless he works his way through the science and back into freedom.

runge to goethe, 7.05.1806

At ninety I shall penetrate the mystery of things; at a hundred I shall certainly have reached a marvellous stage; and when I am a hundred and ten, everything I do—be it but a line or dot—will be alive.

katsushika hokusai

sometimes fog and sometimes not

white cube

really is a white cube. heading home after an unexpectedly long lunch in bermondsey, the aggressive luminosity of the white cube's internal lighting caught my eye. it is a feat for the ambient interior lighting of a building to be visible from nearly 40 meters away in full sun.

inside is the usual junk and then a quite large show by larry bell which is very worthwhile. the "light knots" are the most elegant and economical of the works on display. like a fred sandback yarn sculpture, these make a big point with almost no material, achieving the effect of appearing simultaneously there and not with only hanging pieces of metallised mylar. in person, these objects have an apparent volume quite different (and not necessarily larger) than their actual volume.

they're an evolution from the glass pieces in working at the margins of understanding the affordances—opacity, reflectivity, chromatic purity, and now also topography—of various materials. clearly new, yet on a developmental trajectory from previous work and with an ever-increasing economy of means. an artist i have come to admire.

his website is also ... well, you can see for yourself.

in the bag

this is a completely disinterested public service announcement.



my black medium deluxe courierware bag is now 12 years old. i have used it literally nearly every single day for over a decade; of everything i own and have owned, i have used this the most.

just enough pockets, just waterproof enough, just big enough, with branding so reticent as to be nearly invisible. it will easily accommodate a laptop, charger pack, cellphone, book, emergency fruit supply, water, and a change of clothing, with room to spare. i can use it as my only bag on anything up to a four-day trip. it handles odd loads with grace: i have carried sharp-edged volcanic rocks in it, as well as rare books, chunks of glacial ice, a large watermelon, and an entire case of wine (not all at the same time). stuffed with a fleece, it is a serviceable pillow for those nights you spend sleeping in, for instance, a rental car parked in the empty lot next to a motel in el paso or the departure lounge of the bangkok international airport.

people treat their old courierware bags the way people treat their old patagonia clothing; fortunately—unlike new patagonia clothing—new courierware bags are not pieces of overdesigned crap.

once, long ago, courierware were in cambridge, ma between the dolphin seafood restaurant and café sushi on mass ave. these days they are in randolph,vt. i know from personal experience that they are serious about their lifetime warranty. do you value quality and restraint over fashion and flash? would you like a messenger bag you will never have to (or want to) replace and which grows better with age? there is no time like the present.

the structure of retail innovation

takes a different form in every city.

our little friend

an indicative visitor from chegworth valley.

hanson street, somerville, ma

back in the field

a basement in paris.

it had to be done

when just starting research on R&D networks in art, you cannot pass up the opportunity to see a large fraction of the major dealers when they come to a large park 5 minutes from where you live. so i went to frieze. every other stand had a bunch of stuff by gerhard richter on display. and there seems to be quite a lot of carl andré and donald judd inventory too. it is interesting to see which galleries are absent and which artists are in short supply—and speculate about why. blum & poe were undoubtedly the best stand. they dedicated their entire space to a salon-style showing of pieces by mono-ha school japanese artist kishio suga. other nice stuff:

martin boyce at the modern institute

edith dekyndt's yellow blanket covered in silver leaf (up top), and paintings by john mcallister at carl freedman

olafur eliasson's fading mirrors at tanya bonakdar

richard long's stones and clay-washed wall at lisson gallery

a lot of weird southern arabian and neolithic stuff at rupert wace gallery

a beautiful wall of not-books by irma blank (another case of nominative determinism?) at P420

"september 1955" by ben nicholson at richard green

the shadow series by philip hanson at corbett vs dempsey

nicolas de staël at malingue (why are his paintings not on show at more museums? this is also the clyfford still problem.)

anthony caro's flat, yet dimensional metal sculptures at mitchell-innes & nash

pierre huyghe's aquaria evoking the dystopian world of michel houllebecq (my interpretation) at esther schipper

zhu yu's proposals for the member states of the UN at the long march space

waqas khan at galerie krinzinger

massimo bartolini at frith street gallery

there was also a large florilegium by ottomar ellger, who had someone in his atelier paint the reflections of a window on every single glossy berry in a large bunch of white currants. close examination of this painting (see the rose petal above) demonstrates the transparency and luminousness of old oils, which more recent oil paintings nearly never achieve.

the day was not a total loss.

like everywhere else

after the initial burst of irritation, london turns out to be more or less like everywhere else, except better for cyclists, not so good for rain, amply provisioned with parks, and oddly undersupplied with legumes. however: fewer dogs and less tea-drinking than i'd expected and would like.

We saw stars
And waves; we saw sands, too;
And despite many crises and unforeseen disasters,
We were often bored, just as we are here.

baudelaire, "le voyage" IV

a comforting thought. and not bored yet. in fact, not often bored.

detail-oriented

it's worth visiting hauser & wirth's show of reinhard onnasch's collection at their savile row galleries. few of the pieces were actively boring, and there was a rare sighting of some beautiful clyfford still canvases. also, nothing is for sale so there is no pressure to buy. i know that this will set many minds at ease in these difficult economic times.

morris louis's paintings always capture my attention, more for their detail than their enormous size—the cloth of the canvas itself is a compositional element in these paintings (the same reason i like sigmar polke's three lies of painting), and the gentle bleed of the thinned acrylic is particularly appealing.



and john wesley, despite the simplicity of his figures, somehow manages something like anatomical accuracy in his very stylised figures. it is the type of accuracy that omits everything except what's needed to put across the point; a sort of distillation.



the nicest thing, however, was the quiet glass box by larry bell which was a bit overwhelmed by its placement in the back room, opposite a flavin fluorescent tube wall-installation. this image does not do justice to the encounter in person.

one box down

nineteen to go.

the palace

of fruit, 76 rue montorgueil in paris. it may be true that chasselas is better as a table grape than a wine grape.

self-referentiality

i call your attention, in this list of other punctuators now disused*, to le point d'acclamation: "bras levés, c'est le V de la victoire."

* from hervé bazin's plumons l'oiseau.

hail champagne

Hail, of course, is the great enemy of outdoor exposed neon tubing. Hailstorms often caused sign shops to break out champagne.

rudi stern, let there be neon

receptacles

dwelltime

here is a quite nice paper cup by greg, at dwelltime. is art on paper cups in the zeitgeist? i stopped by the saatchi gallery last week and saw a clump of used coffee cups by paul westcombe covered in ink and colour drawings.

hyde park

understanding not control

I believe that the best pots are made by potters who have learned to understand rather than to control their materials and techniques.

jack doherty [and also here]

much like going nowhere and seeking no victory.

it's nice to be back

economy of means*

for this landmark irwin piece, an enormous room with an odd window at the whitney is installed only with a sheet of sheer fabric scrim, a black painted line, and a black-anodized aluminum bar. as you will not fail to notice, the room and its parts—walls, floor, scrim, bar—look different and unexpected with each new angle and change of light. the scrim, in particular, hovers between complete solidity and bare presence and snaps from one state to another with disarming ease. this is especially noticeable on a partly overcast day, with rapidly fluctuating light coming in the window. this is a worthy way to spend a new york afternoon. do not overlook the hockney video painting tucked in a dark corner two floors down, which takes the question "how can time figure into representative art?" and gives an answer that is unusual not only because it involves jugglers.

at the whitney, at least for the next few weeks.

* also relevant: olafur eliasson in the divine comedy.

don't panic

the balloon saloon

a moment, please

new york city in august is filled with the scent of trash and there are always too many people underfoot. finding quiet, though difficult, is not impossible.

the mean streets of manhattan

19th st and 1st ave


22nd st and 2nd ave

general magic

ed brought a little piece of technology history to coffee this morning. they had better logos back then.

tableau vivant

the days are just packed*

ninth street espresso, hi-collar, fresco, japan premium beef, bohemian, the future perfect, mile end, matter, il laboratorio del gelato, the reed space, amor y amargo, umi no ie, and flatiron wines. it takes a great deal of effort to pack this much research on urbanism, design, and frozen confection innovation into just one day, but our commitment to scholarship is unwavering.

*

execution success

nice things.*

* ?: Le caroubier est un arbre dioïque de la famille des fabacées, originaire des régions méditerranéennes (îles Canaries, Afrique du Nord, Proche-Orient, Europe méridionale). [more]