Selfish Pleasure
From “Don’ts for Mothers,” an old book with current wisdom found at the Brooklyn Museum.
View ArticleWarhol Wisdom
Words to live by on display at the Banksy/Warhol exhibit at Amsterdam’s MoCo Museum.
View ArticleThe Best Gallery in Paris
After three days of intense art immersion, I took the early afternoon off to browse the book stalls along the Seine. Here, I found what I consider to be the most beautiful works of art in the entire...
View ArticleLe Cahier Pharmacie
Voilá our very own drugstore notebook making its début at the uber fashionable shop Colette. Guess we are on to something: a sign to keep trucking.
View Article(Un)Signed
The event of reading, of unearthing meaning applicable to life, is the only event of art. When reading is truly reading, then reading and writing are the same thing. Signs such as the one pictured...
View ArticleNo to New Neon
Neon art began in the 1960’s when an artist named Dan Flavin first displayed it in a New York gallery. Back then neon was street, current and controversial. Indeed, The New York Times compared it to...
View ArticleThe Difference between Coolness and Artness: What Turns Everyday Objects into...
The Frieze says “Hi!” via Martin Soto Climent’s Frenetic Gossamer (2016). Photo: Skye Arundhati Thomas. Inevitably, many of the highlights at this year’s London Frieze are works that turn common...
View ArticleSurvival of the Horniest
During a recent blissful Sunday afternoon on a London rooftop a friend dutifully informs me that, from an evolutionary perspective, our happiness is problematic. He then plops open the book he is...
View ArticleEveryday Poet, Everyday God
Pope Francis is to the Vatican as Bob Dylan is to the Nobel Prize in Literature. Both represent a promise, long overdue, finally made real. In the case of the Vatican, the overdue promise is to embody...
View ArticleBreak Point Break
British artist Fiona Banner turned the opening scenes of the cult classic Point Break into a huge canvas with red words. The point? Convey the break, the chiasm between what is experienced visually and...
View ArticleBon Voyage
I can think of few things I enjoy more than buying a new book at an airport. The thought of being trapped in the air inside a metal tube for hours with nothing to do but read or watch bad movies is...
View ArticleOnce a Shipwreck, Always a Shipwreck
So I read Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s “Relato de un Náufrago” (“The Story of a Shipwrecked Sailor”) in one sitting. I had my doubts when buying it beacuse I tend to find that all shipwreck stories are the...
View ArticleMagical Thinking
For a few weeks this book has been on my mind. Didion, Didion, Didion. And her “Year of Magical Thinking,” written during the first year she mourned her husband’s sudden death. This for me has proven...
View ArticlePoet-Aches and Toothaches
Pains of the soul versus pains of the tooth. From Hans Christian Andersen’s story “Auntie Toothache,” found in the Penguin Classic compilation of his “Fairy Tales.”
View ArticleTake Note
Joan Didion on the importance of note taking. From “The Year of Magical Thinking”.
View ArticleReturn
The silence of the poem returns: Perhaps it is by sudden, suburban death Close enough to cry in dry heaves of breath Perhaps it is by ever-lasting absence Of right mother — The slamming down of my...
View ArticleOne Art
This week’s “Economist” magazine includes a review of a new biography on one of America’s greatest poets ever: Elizabeth Bishop. Highlighted above is one of my favorite Bishop quotes, from her poem...
View ArticleThe Most Important Work at the 2016 London Frieze
Wolfgang Tillsman takes a selfie For some reason I wrote (most of) the post below over six months ago and never published it. For some other reason I thought about it today. Perhaps it is because I...
View ArticleLife as List
“The Time when Bookstores Went Out of Business” is a label that fits the first few decades of this century. I’ve encountered more closing book shops than I care to count. Yet, as dispiriting as it is...
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