What is the middle class if not America’s infrastructure of collective civility and individual enterprise? It is as much a concept as it is an income level, it is the communal space where social mobility is achieved through personal choice. It is an attitude, an indoctrination, a style; it is flexible, fungible, and functional. I … Read more →

Randy Bloom’s new paintings are big, squared-away fields of color, luminous and subtly textured.  This would be enough to say if they were nothing more than that—and it’s worth stopping for a moment to ask why they should be anything more.  Ever since Kazimir Malevich painted White Square on White, in 1918, monochrome has been … Read more →

Wishing the Tea Party Away? By Kyle Spencer   The Whites of Their Eyes: The Tea Party’s Revolution and the Battle over American History, Jill Lepore, Princeton University Press. The Big Sort: Why The Clustering of Like-Minded America is Tearing Us Apart, Bill Bishop, Mariner Books. Boiling Mad: Inside Tea Party America, Kate Zernike, Times … Read more →

Gloop Gluckness of the Droopy Drop Underworld               Painting, Willem De Kooning. 1948. By JESSIE MAC Published: September 29, 2011 Indulge yourself in a medicinal swig of bitter whiskey and embrace the burning in your chest before getting sucked into a sticky vortex of De Kooning at the MoMa. … Read more →

ON THE BIG SUR HENRY MILLER MEMORIAL LIBRARY  by Morgan Heringer On an idyllic windy day in late August, my mother and I drove down the California coast from Carmel Valley, where she raises cattle, to Big Sur’s Henry Miller Memorial Library. I spent all summer reading Big Sur and the Oranges of Hieronymus Bosch, … Read more →

Juice!  by Ishmael Reed. 2011 Dalkey Archive, New York. 336 Pages.  $14.95.  Trade Paper. When Ishmael Reed spoke novelist listened. He would often speak to the freedoms possible in the novel form and practice such.  And now, some decades

“Clem Greenberg” A review of Art and Culture, by Clement Greenberg   As far as the essays collected in Art and Culture, Clement Greenberg represents the end of Modernism. He maps out a certain modality of artistic practice that went South around the time of Warhol. Yet this does nothing to challenge his importance as … Read more →

  Once outside of the Punta della Doganna there was Charles Ray’s huge “Boy with Frog” which has been standing at the forefront of this new/old restored/restauro space since 2009.  A policeman was right up at it chatting away on his cellphone…..  so this did nothing to lessen the atmosphere of the casually bizarre that … Read more →

Ashbery as Symbolist A review of Illuminations by Arthur Rimbaud                                                                                                                                           Translated by John Ashbery When one speaks of Rimbaud’s “intentions” as a writer, it should never be broached that the young voyant did not uniquely anticipate what is today understood as the Death of the Author. Je est un autre—“I am something else.” This insight … Read more →

The poet John Farris said “Its not About Time” , but it is just ask the LIon D’or 2011 winner for best art piece in the main exhibition “illuminations” , Christian Marclay who has taken moments from cinema and verbally or visually quotes virtually every minute of the 24 hour day. And a Biennale is … Read more →