My Two Left Feet

When Johann Wolfgang von Goethe traveled to Italy in 1786, it seemed natural that he would strike up a friendship with fellow German artist Johann Tischbein, who had been living in Rome for several years learning from the masters of the Renaissance. Born February 15, 1751, Tischbein most famous painting, Goethe in the Roman Campagna (above, from 1787), shows the Romantic and Classical author surrounded by the ancient ruins that inspired many of his Romantic refashionings of Classical themes. Goethe in the Roman Campagna owes much of its fame to its subject, but Tischbein deserves some credit for creating the perfect setting. Unfortunately, Goethe was a busy man who couldn’t sit still to have his portrait painted, putting Tischbein in a bind when trying to complete the portrait. Distracted by such concerns, Tischbein didn’t notice that he had painted Goethe with two left feet. Such blunders were rare for Tischbein, who became one of the finest portraitists of his time.

Johann Heinrich Wilhelm descended from a long line of distinguished painters in the Tischbein family. He continued the family business in taking commissions from wealthy patrons to paint their families, such as his The Children of Martin Anton Heckscher (above, from 1805). Unlike Goethe, all the boys have the correct arrangement of feet. Unfortunately, their body language, especially that of the boy seated and playing with his dog, seems to have lost something in translation. The awkwardness of the children seems even worse compared with the skillful handling of the natural setting used as a backdrop. Just as Tischbein placed Goethe in a neo-classical setting in accordance with Goethe’s writings, Tischbein places the Heckscher boys in a natural setting to play up the Romantic idealism of childhood’s innocence that originated in the neo-Platonism of the Romantic movement.

Tischbein gave Lady Charlotte Campbell (above) a similar neo-classical treatment. Painted while Lady Charlotte travelled through Italy, this portrait turns the famous beauty and future poet and novelist into a classical muse or goddess surrounded by the Edenic paradise of nature. Tischbein allegedly fell in love with Lady Charlotte while painting her, stunned by the combination of beauty and brains. The awkwardness and anatomical irregularities of other portraits disappear in this lovingly attentive portrait. It’s easy to imagine him lingering over the draping of the flowing gown, musing upon the forms hidden beneath, and asking the good Lady Charlotte to linger a little while longer until all the details were complete.

Happy Valentine’s Day

Happy Valentine’s Day to everyone out there. Make sure to get your sweetie in a firm embrace and engage in a full-throttle liplock ala Rodin’s The Kiss (above, from 1886), which I think should be subtitled “Get a room.” A very special Valentine’s Day to my one and only love, Annie, and to our beloved Alex, happy dispenser of wet kisses.



Valentine’s Day always mystifies me in regards to how a martyred saint turned into the original gangster of love. It’s only a little less befuddling than the combination of the Easter Bunny and the Resurrection around Easter. Maxfield Parrish’s painting of Saint Valentine (above, from 1904) shows the saint as dreamy romantic, perhaps wondering whether to send flowers, candy, or both.

Heroic Evolution

When IDW Publishing considered which classic comic strip to feature in the inaugural volume of their Library of American Comics series, it’s easy to believe that Milton Caniff’s Terry and the Pirates headed the list from the start. With their inaugural venture—The Complete Terry and the Pirates, Volume One 1934-1936—IDW reaches back to the very beginning of the adventure strip and provides an extended look at the birth and early evolution of the adventure comic strip, revealing just how culturally influential such strips once were.

In his introduction to the first volume, cartoonist Howard V. Chaykin admits that the early strips were rough and slow to build, but by October 1935, “it’s all there.” He praises Caniff’s “odd combination of stylized cartooning with realistic lighting, textures, props, and settings—coupled with a narrative approach that was a brilliant combination of text and visuals—a perfect balance of one with the other.” Chaykin’s introduction serves the reader best in pleading for patience while reading the early strips. Without that preparation, newcomers to Terry and the Pirates would soon give in to the tedium of the repetitious storylines and the frequent fumbling for the right notes in characterization, unaware of the pleasures just a few pages away. Given that time and effort, Caniff, known as “the Rembrandt of the Comic Strip,” more than earns that distinction.

Terry and the Pirates features a young boy named Terry Lee who owns a map to an abandoned mine in China that his grandfather left to him on his deathbed. Adventurer and beefcake Pat Ryan joins Terry in his adventure. Bruce Canwell, in his preface, “Setting the Stage: ‘Rembrandt Raises His Brush,’” explains the allure of China as a setting in 1934, “akin to a Far East Wild West: major seaports boasted a diverse, European-style population, with inland regions remaining largely untamed, fragmented, and subject more to the laws of Nature than to those of Man.” Caniff contrasts that untamed present with the long, rich history of China. “It’s a land of mellowed tradition,” Pat tells Terry in the very first strip. “The Chinese were an ancient people before America was discovered… Think of its miles of rice fields, gorgeous temples and beautiful gardens… China is the birthplace of our modern culture.” Against that complex, rich background, Caniff creates an entire universe of characters.



The most fascinating of all these characters may be Lai Choi San, better known as the Dragon Lady. Caniff based the Dragon Lady on Joan Crawford. (Caniff’s drawing of the Dragon Lady he gave to Crawford as a gift is above.) At first, the Dragon Lady seems to be the most dangerous of all the pirates Terry and Pat encounter in an endless string of attacks in which one villain is vanquished only to be replaced by another before you can blink. Her attraction to Pat, however, complicates the relationship. Deadly yet seductive, the Dragon Lady cunningly alternates between adversary and ally throughout. Pat manages to fend her off, but just barely, only to find himself in the midst of sexual tension with the next damsel in distress. Even today, the sexual frankness of Caniff’s depiction of Pat with the Dragon Lady and other women, such as Burma and the spoiled little rich girl Normandie Drake, seems shocking in the context of a comic strip.

Whereas Caniff’s Dragon Lady illustrates his cultural respectfulness, his character Connie, Terry and Pat’s interpreter and sidekick, rankles the reader with insensitivity. Admittedly, Connie provides comic relief, but the stereotypical accent and mispronunciations and the huge ears and buck teeth seem so overwhelmingly wrong today that I found myself speeding through those sections. Caniff simply followed the prejudices of his time in his depiction of Connie, but that doesn’t change the fact that they are prejudices.

Fortunately, Connie’s capers taper off as Pat evolves into more than just a chin and broad shoulders. Like any good film noir antihero, Pat gets rough with the ladies, and that’s just how they like it. Pat’s dark side emerges as he re-evaluates his life as an adventurer and sees the essential loneliness of that existence. With truly nothing to live for, he lives closer and closer to the edge. Caniff gives Pat the physique of a gymnast—all lithe muscles and trim waste—rather than the muscle-bound, steroidal silhouette we’re used to seeing in our heroes today. The combination of that physique and the development of the moody loner Pat made me think of Bob Kane’s original conception of Batman, who also looked more acrobatic than bruising and struck an existential pose while persevering against evil. In that light, the interplay between Pat and Terry becomes a template for the later relationship between Batman and Robin–just one of the many echoes of Caniff’s strip found in the comics and popular culture.

Terry and the Pirates ran for twelve years, during which, as Canwell writes, Caniff “grew from competent illustrator to consummate storyteller.” This first volume sets the stage not only for a greater appreciation of Caniff’s creation, but also for a fuller understanding of the roots of modern American popular culture. The Library of American Comics’ stated goal “to preserve the long and jubilantly creative history of the American newspaper comic strip” gets off to a great start with this inaugural effort.

[Many thanks to IDW Publishing for providing me with a review copy of The Complete Terry and the Pirates, Volume One 1934-1936 and the cover image above.]

Midwestern Values

As any average American for a short list of great American paintings and you’ll more often than not find on that list American Gothic (above, from 1930) by Grant Wood. Born February 13, 1892, Wood’s double portrait of his sister and dentist dressed as a spinster daughter and her farmer father remains one of those indelible images in American art that has crossed over into popular culture so powerfully that even people who know nothing about art (or even the name of the painting) know this image. I wouldn’t put American Gothic on my personal top five of American art, but Wood’s unique brand of Regionalism certainly makes him an interesting figure. Beneath the surface comedy of the hangdog visages of the farmer and his daughter, you sense some of the uncertainty and desperation of the people of the 1930s struggling during the hard times of the Great Depression.



American Gothic and its photorealism present an inaccurate picture of Wood as an artist. Like his fellow Regionalist artist Thomas Hart Benton, Wood depicted the world of the American Midwest through the prism of his own artistic vision. In Young Corn (above, from 1931), the rows of young corn form a hatched pattern in the foreground—more abstraction than produce. The bulbous trees that line up into the distance seem more like green clouds fastened to the earth by their trunks. Even the hillside at the top of the painting seems unreal in its roundness, as if it were a living thing inhaling and exhaling. Where American Gothic forces you to look at the faces of Midwestern living, Young Corn excludes all traces of humanity completely, making the landscape itself, or rather Wood’s revision of that landscape, the star.

In Fall Ploughing (above, from 1931), Wood creates a landscape similar to Young Corn, but accentuates the missing human element through an abandoned plough set front and center. Again, as in Young Corn, Wood reduces the landscape to basic forms, showing you the furrows left by the plough but concerning himself more with the interplay of those lines with the horizontal and curving lines all around and the perspective receding into the distance. Both Young Corn and Fall Ploughing look down upon the landscape from an unlikely angle, neither that of a person on the ground nor that of someone looking down. This odd vantage point seems even more unsettling with absence of the people working the farm. Even in the 1930s, such works as Wood’s American Gothic and his landscapes could document the increasing disappearance of the agrarian lifestyle in America—a trend that has accelerated today to the point that the small-time farmer has, as in Wood’s Fall Ploughing, literally vanished.

Wide Open Spaces

Not many artists can say they have a mountain named after them, but Thomas Moran can. Born February 12, 1837, Moran took the Romantic love of nature fostered by Thomas Cole and the Hudson River School and brought it to the American West, capturing the beauty of untouched landscapes such as those of Wyoming that would become Yellowstone National Park. Paintings such as Moran’s Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone (above, from 1872) helped inspire the U.S. Congress to creat the National Park System in 1916 to preserve these natural settings for future generations. Today, the National Park Service site contains a collection of Moran’s paintings of Yellowstone as a lasting tribute to his contribution to saving this land.

Moran may have been the purest of the American Romantic landscapists. He recognized the genius of J.M.W. Turner when few others did, and even travelled to England and Europe in the 1880s to paint landscapes in the same exact places that Turner had years before. In addition to depicting real-life landscapes, Moran created landscapes of the imagination inspired by the poetry of Percy Bysshe Shelley and Robert Browning, among others. Browning’s poem Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came inspired a painting by Moran of the same name (above, from 1859). When Moran arrived at Yellowstone with the government exploratory team to chart that undiscovered country, the hot mud lakes and geothermic geysers must have seemed like one of his imaginary landscapes come to life.




Moran’s paintings of the American West are as diverse as the landscape itself. Just in Wyoming, Moran could paint both the geysers and gorges of Yellowstone as well as The Tetons (above, from the 1870s) that would become Grand Teton National Park. Mount Moran, one of the highest and most difficult mountains to climb in that range, stands today as a testimony to the power of art to shape minds and preserve the natural beauty it captures. Whereas artists such as Frederick Remington traveled west and created fiction, Moran ventured forth and copied the majestic fact of the American landscape. Moran may have applied some of his own Romanticism to those depictions, but I prefer to see that as just another part of the truth of the landscape rather than false embellishment.

Omphaloskepsis

Not my actual navel. Or body. Not. Even. Close.

The post below is the 500th post at Art Blog By Bob. I estimate that to be around 250,000 words, give or take a few thousand. That’s a lot of typing. And a lot of reading for those of you who’ve been looking in from the start. Thanks so much for following along and joining me in my artful explorations.

At the risk of being guilty of navel gazing, or as the ancient Greeks would say, Omphaloskepsis, I thought that I would indulge myself in a little public self-evaluation using the set of questions posed to a group of more prominent art bloggers in an issue of Art in America a while back. I never really posted any kind of mission statement, except for my brief introduction. If you like getting meta, please keep reading.

What's the purpose of your blog?

To write and think about the art of the past and how it continues to influence today and tomorrow’s art and culture. I use the occasion of an artist’s birthday (or date of death, in those cases in which the exact birthday’s unknown) to commemorate that artist’s achievement and see if I can place just one more piece into the larger puzzle of how everything fits together. In the same vein, I review books on art and exhibition catalogues and use those ideas as another jumping off point for further exploration. Personally, I’ve found it highly enlightening to put all these ideas into writing and allow them to bounce all around my skull, leading to interesting intersections of creativity. I hope that my readers also find new associations building up in their minds as they discover new artists or reacquaint themselves with artists they thought they knew before.

What are the boundaries of your blog?


One of my all-time least favorite corporate pseudo-terms is boundarilessness. When I worked in the for-profit sector, it was code for “torturing you until we lay you off.” However, I’d like to think that I’m pretty boundary-free here. Art is such an all-consuming thing—touching on literature, music, history, politics, psychology, you name it—that it seems false to set up distinct parameters. I’d like to think that I’m pretty boundary-free myself, with enough interests in literature (my MA is in English Literature), music (from Coltrane to Mahler and beyond), and politics (don’t get me started), among other things, that I’d be closing off a part of my own personality by walling off some of the world from this blog. I am large. I contain multitudes. Or at least that’s what my bathroom scale seems to be saying.

Tyler Green of Modern Art Notes has cited Joy Garnett's NewsGrist blog as doing a great job of "placing art within a sociocultural and political context." What I see on NewsGrist is a magazinelike interspersing of short profiles, exhibition reviews, op-ed pieces on how other people are covering things, and Village Voice–like political takes. But what does Tyler's comment mean to you, and why are blogs in general better positioned than print to do what he describes?

I’m not sure what Tyler Green thinks, but I believe that blogs can get more in-depth than print media and provide a greater context thanks to their limitless space, versus the ever-diminishing column space dedicated to the arts and to editorial comment in general in print media. The general conservative tone of American mainstream media also disdains putting things into “a sociocultural and political context” because it would be potentially too revealing of the problems of our society and, sadly, because of the historical unawareness of the average American. The decline of education in America helped create that unawareness, but the mainstream media sustains it through adulthood and even encourages a state of ignorance in which Britney Spears’ breakdowns garner greater coverage than political debates. Another advantage of blogs over print is the absence of editorial restraint. “Professional” journalists would counter that the editorial process is what makes them the pros, but I believe that the editorial process only serves to dilute the truth and discourage bold, necessary statements. If the statement of fact that “X is lying” is edited into “accounts vary,” then editors serve the interests of the powerful rather than the truth. I’ve always believed that I’m my own best editor and that any potentially inflammatory statements I make are worthwhile not necessarily for their accuracy (although I’m always right) but definitely for their sincerity.

Why can't blogs go further, to the point where there's hardly any discernible difference between artist and critic/commentator, blog and work of art?

We haven’t even begun to scratch the potential of blogs. It’s a new medium and like all new mediums will grow as the talents and passions of individuals feed into it. I began Art Blog By Bob because I wanted to read a blog about art history, expecting some art history professor out there to be musing online and letting others listen in. When I couldn’t find that blog, I decided I was crazy, if not qualified, enough to try.

What scope and degree of editorial control do you exercise over your blog?


I write and edit all posts on Art Blog By Bob. As I said above, I believe I’m my own best editor. I like the idea of a single voice trying to come to terms with a body of information and think other people enjoy that, too. I try to bring aspects of my own personal history and my family—Annie and Alex—into the discussion where relevant because I want to stress how art is a living presence in my life and in yours, too. Relevance is in the eye of the beholder, of course, but I try to maintain a balance of the personal and the public views.

What about posting comments from readers, and what about anonymity?

I have never rejected a comment from a reader. Blogger, however, likes to eat a comment here and there, so if you’ve commented and not seen it appear online, blame them and not me. I’m perfectly fine with comments posted anonymously. I’ve purposely kept personal details out of the blog to maintain my own anonymity to a degree. People who recognize photos of Alex already know who I am. My face is unrecognizable in the photo of me with Alex on purpose. Press people at the museums that I’ve dealt with know my name and my face. One of the highlights of doing this so far was learning that I was the subject of a meeting at the Brandywine River Museum after posting on their Flights Into Fantasy exhibition and one of the curators proudly announced that she had actually met me in person at the William Ranney press preview. For one brief moment in a conference room in Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania I was famous. And that’s plenty for me.

What's "trolling," and why don't some of you allow it?


Trolling is the online equivalent of heckling. I haven’t had a troll comment yet, which I sometimes find surprising considering how openly liberal some of my posts can be. Of course, it may be that most of the people who take the time to read my work are of a like mind politically. I’ve always wondered why trolls would take the time to read things they don’t agree with and spend the energy necessary to heckle mindlessly and, usually, pointlessly. I’m always open to discussion, but trolls just want to pick a fight. It’s like a heckler at a comedy club spouting off all night. If you’re not having a good time, just finish your drink and move on. The rest of us may want to listen.

What about liability coverage?


I don’t think I need to worry about libel. First of all, I don’t have enough readers to damage anyone’s reputation. Secondly, most of the people I write about are dead. If Thomas Anshutz wants to come back from the dead and deny that he stabbed Thomas Eakins in the back, he’s more than welcome. As they say, "Bring it on."

What's the economic model of your blog?


I make no profit from this blog financially. I gain a sense of accomplishment and experience the joy of learning and writing. It keeps my mind alive and kicking when the world conspires to deaden all critical thinking. The only material gain I receive is through the review copies of the books sent to me by publishers and museums. I still get that Christmas morning thrill when I come home and see a package with my name on it. Copying something I’ve seen other bloggers do, I’ve posted an Amazon wish list, in case someone feels inclined to thank me for any joy I’ve brought to their life, but otherwise this venture is purely “free ice cream” as they say in the blogosphere.

How do you see your blog's relation to the established print art media?


I’d like to think that blogging goes beyond what the print media can do. The ability to link in a blog post creates an infinitely greater learning opportunity than a dead tree in your hands. I create a link for every artist’s name in my posts, in case you want to learn more about that individual. Most of the established print media, even when they mirror their content online, don’t do that. I’ve already mentioned what I think is my editorial advantage over establishment print media. All that being said, I’m currently marketing a long profile piece to a major print art magazine. If and when that publishes, my anonymity will be over, but I hope it will at least generate more publicity for the blog in addition to the financial rewards. This is not my day job and, obviously, not the source of health benefits, etc., but it would be a dream come true if writing could somehow become my primary source of income.

How do you attract readers/posters other than by word of mouth?


People generally find me through search engines. Often they’re students looking for a particular work or artist. Once they’ve stumbled across my writing they either take what they needed and flee or, if they’re so inclined, wander around a bit. At that point, I only hope that I can keep their interest to add another fan. Many other bloggers and artists who blog have added me to their blogrolls, for which I’m very grateful. Those links also lead inquiring minds this way.

In general, is blog art criticism more open and liberal, and print criticism more closed and conservative?

Yes, for all the reasons I’ve already mentioned above.


Where will your blog be in three to five years?


Right here, hopefully. I’m pretty good at churning out lots of (hopefully coherent) text, so I think I can keep up the current pace, barring any major life changes. Most blogs end because the blogger runs out of things to write about or opinions. Fortunately, I’ve picked an endlessly diverse field to write about and have never found myself at a loss for opinions. My dream scenario would be to keep the same personal feel while somehow creating an income stream from my writing that wouldn’t tie me down to some inhibiting editorial framework. If I have to choose between independence and money, I’ll take independence.

Thanks for reading, if you’ve lasted this long. I hope to see you here in, say, three to five years…

Bonus Belly Button From Alex

From the Outside Looking In

Tehching Hsieh, One Year Performance 1981–1982, 2007. Documentation. © Tehching Hsieh. Courtesy of the artist and The Gilbert and Lila Silverman Collection, Detroit

In the book and exhibition New York States of Mind: Art in the City, Shaheen Merali presents an outsider’s take on the sociopolitical and cultural leviathan that is New York City. Using primarily the work of contemporary artists and filmmakers, Merali praises New York “as a constant space for re-birthing and of cyclical transition, where the throbbing multitude is in itself regarded as cultural capital.” However, Merali also sees that powerful space shrinking in the face of commercialism and “the obfuscation that now stands for contemporary New York and American political discourse and art” painting “critique… as anti-patriotic and debate as politically arousing.” Where art was once “a place of disruptive strategy” in the New York scene, it is now “fully integrated into the marketas fashion and product design.” Merali first curated this exhibition in Berlin at the House of World Cultures, providing the physical and ideological distance necessary to take an honest appraisal of America and New York free of the distortions of being too close to the subject, in every sense of the word. With such distance, works of art such as Tehching Hsieh’s One Year Performance 1981–1982 (above), in which the artist, then an illegal immigrant from Taiwan, recorded his year spent on the streets of New York and never once entered a building in a prolonged, highly physical examination of the state of homelessness and of non-citizenship, can be seen as insightful and provocative social commentary rather than fodder for conservative talking points.

Iona Rozeal Brown, "a³ … blackface # 78", 2004. Mixed media on paper. © Joshua White. Courtesy of private collection, Los Angeles, CA. and Sandroni Rey

Merali’s non-American perspective allows him to push forward the internationalist elements of the art of New York, which reflect the immigrant past as well as the present of America. Iona Rozeal Brown’s "a³ … blackface # 78" (above) marries the worlds of African-American hip-hop and Japanese Kabuki in a visual representation of those two subcultures interacting within the larger American culture through the collision of the growing black and Asian communities in large cities such as New York. “In the Kabuki and Bunraku they use images in black, which is the color of invisibility in Japanese theatre,” Brown says in her interview, one of the many Merali conducted with the artists in the exhibition. Just as Ralph Ellison equated life as an African-American with invisibility in his novel Invisible Man, Brown equates blackness with invisibility, but with the added factor of Japanese culture, stirring up the pot of cultural associations even further. In another interview, the artist Ian Burns expresses his concern that the social aspect of art is under a threat of being “trivialized… as a safe ‘yes’ conversation without leading to any particular uncomfortable situations.” Just as previously confrontational art forms such as hip-hop verge on mainstream acceptance and “trivialization,” artists such as Brown change things up, create a wholly new cultural matrix of Asian art and the world of Cristal-swigging rappers.

Kehinde Wiley, St. Francis of Adelaide, 2006. Cast marble dust and resin. Courtesy of the artist and CEREALART

Another figure who takes the African-American experience and adds a different, transformative twist is Kehinde Wiley. “The trouble with painting is that there’s so much history to contend with,” Wiley believes. “I try to embrace the history and somehow operate as though it never occurred.” In St. Francis of Adelaide (above), Wiley makes a secular saint of a young black man, transforming the loose clothing currently in style into the draped robe of a medieval saint. The incongruous use of marble for a contemporary subject jars us into re-evaluating our opinion of such young men, a demographic in danger in twenty-first century America, and literally places on a pedestal lives too often disregarded by society. As Rosten Woo says in his interview, the goal of much contemporary art is “to try to cash the check of democracy.” Wiley’s St. Francis of Adelaide demands to be paid in full, with interest.

In addition to these contemporary artists, Merali presents the work of filmmakers who have made New York their greatest subject, from well known figures such as Woody Allen, Francis Ford Coppola, Spike Lee, and Martin Scorsese to little-known figures such as Jack Smith, the subject of a documentary film by Mary Jordan that hails him “simultaneously as the founding father of performance art, a ground-breaking photographer, and the William Blake of film.” As diverse as the body of artists Merali gathers together is, he always seems to be able to keep them together within his framework of presentation. The selections for the film program seem more slippery and problematic, spilling out of the framework and muddying the waters for those trying to take it all in—a testament to the diversity of the art itself and Merali’s choices, but a point of frustration when trying to come away with a coherent meaning. When Merali puts Darren Aronofsky’s film Requiem for a Dream under the category “Drugs and Reaganism,” he stretches the concepts much too thinly.

David Hammons, African-American Flag, 1990. Dyed cotton fabric. Courtesy of Ellipse Foundation – Contemporary Art Collection

“The art audience is the worst audience in the world,” laments David Hammons, creator of African-American Flag (above). “It’s overly educated, it’s conservative, it’s out to criticize not to understand, and it never has any fun. Why should I spend my time playing to that audience?” Such words echo the cosmopolitan yet anti-establishment spirit of Marcel Duchamp, the patron saint of Merali’s exhibition whom he evokes at the very beginning to inject a sense of disruptive fun. Duchamp embodied the original and perhaps quintessential “New York state of mind” through his rejection of the art world and all its certainties and safety for a playfulness and adventurousness in art that mirrored the state of a fully lived life itself. New York States of Mind: Art in the City strives to take back the streets and bring the art out of the elitist galleries and back into the lives of the everyday person, specifically the everyday American who needs these images to reflect upon and recognize the state of the world around them. Merali brings together art that should bring people together by revealing not only the connections exploited by these artists but also the commercialism and divisive political rhetoric that divides us.


[Many thanks to Saqi Books for providing me with a review copy of New York States of Mind: Art in the City and to the Queens Museum of Art for providing the images from the exhibition shown above.]