2011

Comment Protocols

I CLOSED THE COMMENT SECTION on the previous post [on David Lynch] because it was turning into a pissing contest. In all candor, it is good for people to speak their minds and to be passionate about the subject at hand. Problem is, vehemence has a tendency to obliterate the subject.buy ivermectin online https://www.parkviewortho.com/wp-content/languages/new/ivermectin.html no prescription Please do argue when you are up for it.buy prelone UK https://www.calmandgentledentalcare.co.uk/wp-content/languages/new/prelone.html no prescription I have no stock in kumbaya and am not particularly interested in sweet harmony. Continue Reading
David Lynch: Artist as Entrepreneur

THERE IS MORE THAN ONE CONTENDER for the title “Full Service Artiste.” At least, H. Niyazi thinks so. Niyazi is the invaluable art history maven and pundit behind Three Pipe Problem, a lively blog aka 3Pipe.net. He nominates David Lynch, included on 3PP’s posted list of key topics—Caravaggio, Georgione, Titian, Vermeer, et alia. (Just why Lynch is sneaked in to the pantheon is something to take up with 3PP. I am just telling.) If you are old enough to remember Twin Peaks,  a top-rated TV serial in the 1990s, you should know Lynch. Continue Reading
James Franco, Artiste

I NEVER WATCH THE ACADEMY AWARDS, not necessarily out of scruple but because I can’t. There is no working TV in my house. (Part scruple, part laziness, on that point.) So I had no idea who James Franco was until I came across Joe Queenan’s description of him in The Weekly Standard:
For decades, Hollywood has been waiting for the full-service artiste—writer, director, producer, screenwriter—who can lay claim to the scepter of Renaissance Man once held by Orson Welles. Woody Allen couldn’t quite pull it off.
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Elizabeth Bishop, Poet-Painter

WE KNOW ELIZABETH BISHOP (1911-1979) as a poet.  An eminent woman of letters, she was poet laureate of the United States (1940-50) at a time that title carried weight. Deeply private, she avoided publicity as well as the public, steered clear of academic and literary discourse. She deflected blatant biographical interpretations of her work, refusing to be pigeonholed as a “lesbian poet” or tucked neatly into the Woman Poet’s corner. In the words of a friend:
Elizabeth was a very private person.
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Grashow vs. Ozymandias

A READER EMAILED ME TO TAKE ISSUE with a comment in the previous posting on James Grashow. The complaint was that my phrase create for the ages was a tad “overblown.” Point taken. Perhaps it would have been better, not so grandiloquent, to have said simply create for tomorrow. Create for the world our children will inherit. Create in the expectation of futurity rather than, in Grashow’s case, futility. Art that makes no gesture toward posterity is nothing more than a creature of the market. Continue Reading