"We always said we would only return to Girls if there was a specific story we were burning to tell."

"I’ve missed these characters, but for a long time I couldn’t quite picture them in the present day. Then, right around my 40th birthday, they started talking to me in the shower.”

Said Lena Dunham, quoted in "Girls is coming back — bring on Hannah, the uber-competitive Brooklyn mum/Lena Dunham has announced a five-episode coda for her hit show, a decade after it ended. The absence of Adam Driver’s character aside, it may just work" (London Times).

 

ADDED: At the London Times, I clicked on a link to "We love Lena Dunham and Tracey Emin — but, once, we loved to hate them/The violent derision that first greeted the American writer and the YBA from Margate shows us that they got it right." That referred to "Tracey Emin’s big, flashy retrospective at Tate Modern," and I'm telling you this because it took me to one of the most absurd headlines I've ever seen:

"When you inspect these paintings — and even feel them, through tactile replicas of four paintings with four different kinds of dotting — you may be surprised..."

"... by their nubbiness, and how thickly the pigment has been lashed through a punched aluminum screen. The dots are raised. They grow and shrink, chafe or splinter. The sun may be setting on humanity, but look up close: Every dot, and every pixel, means nothing without you and me."

Writes Jason Farago, in "Connecting the Dots Between Roy Lichtenstein and Today The Whitney’s retrospective is full of jokes, but it captures our image overload with surprising tenderness. Our critic calls it 'the most momentous exhibition of the season'" (NYT).

That "sun may be setting" line has resonance because: "A remake of [Lichtenstein's] 1967 'Super Sunset Billboard' stands in front of the Whitney’s western picture window, so if you come at day’s end you can see two sunsets in one."

Speaking of breaking images up into tiny components and the effect on humanity:

"One of the things I am most proud of is introducing people to Bob through the building. Anytime I brought anyone there, they gasped..."

"... and had an immediate inhalation of what New York once was like, and who Bob Rauschenberg was. I thought the building felt like Bob in its elegance and eccentricities. He brought a lot of junk in."

Said Kathy Halbreich, former executive director of the Rauschenberg Foundation, quoted in "Should Robert Rauschenberg’s Art Studio Be Saved? The potential sale of the groundbreaking painter’s home in New York by his foundation, on the heels of the sale of his Florida studio, has alarmed many in the art community" (NYT).

A description of the endangered real estate: "Unlike more famous artists’ haunts, like Claude Monet’s water-lily garden at Giverny, the Rauschenberg manse, for which he paid $65,000, is grittily urban, a 9,200-square-foot townhouse set on a wide, truck-rumbling block just north of SoHo. For years gold letters were visible above the red door — Mission of the Immaculate Virgin — hinting at the building’s former life as a home for orphaned boys. Rauschenberg set up his studio on the ground floor, in a high-ceilinged room that was once the chapel."

Here's a short clip from a documentary, with Rauschenberg, in his deconsecrated chapel, speaking about his art (and, oddly, reminding me of George W. Bush):

"What we had in common was touch. I was never interested in their pessimism or editorializing. You have to have time to feel sorry for yourself if you're going to be a good Abstract Expressionist, and I think I always considered that a waste. What I did that looks like Abstract Expressionism is that with their grief and art passion and action painting... they let their brush strokes show."

Julianne Moore wants you to see her interact charmingly with all the cool objects she has in her apartment.

Including a copy of "The Joy of Sex," which she keeps on the table by the bed because she's making a movie out of it. I guess it's like that time Woody Allen made a movie out of "Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex/But Were Afraid to Ask." Oh, no, actually, per IMDB, it's the story of the the author, his wife, and his wife's best friend. Somehow they lived in a way that inspired the big best seller.

My favorite part of the Architectural Digest video? When she pulled the sleeve of her sweater over her hand and used it to polish the nickel light switch in the bathroom. The wealth + humility mix was ideal. 

"With striking dexterity and range, he explores how advocates reawakened Bach’s compositions and Vermeer’s paintings after one and two centuries of slumber..."

"... how technological advances rekindled theories of continental drift and black holes; how accidents resuscitated hand-washing and genetics; and how war renewed interest in the submarine and 'The Great Gatsby.'"

From "What if the Best Ideas Are Already Here, Waiting to Be Rediscovered? 'Sleeping Beauties,' by the musician David Byrne, explores artistic and scientific innovations that were overlooked before being embraced" (NYT).

The article is by Adam Grant, who is organizational psychologist at the Wharton School. Instead of embedding a David Byrne video, I'll show you this Adam Grant TED talk:

"The painting was discovered in July when a man, nosing around at an estate sale in Kalamazoo, Mich., stumbled upon the enigmatic painting on the wall of a dimly lit corridor leading to the garage."

"The man, who wishes to remain anonymous, was familiar with Abercrombie’s work and was stunned to see the still life bearing the painter’s distinct signature. Zachary Wirsum, a senior vice president at Freeman’s [auction house], said the man told him he 'was shaking as he walked out to his car,' with his discovery. 'I think, objectively, had he not purchased it, this would have just ended up in the dumpster,' Mr. Wirsum added. 'So I think that he saved it from forever being lost in time.'"

From "Bought Months Ago for $30, This Painting Set Off a $1.35 Million Bidding War/'He saved it from forever being lost,' the auction house said of the person who found a Gertrude Abercrombie painting at an estate sale in Kalamazoo, Mich." (NYT).

"He chose the name Faust because it sounded cool, he said, and because, 'as a kid doing graffiti, you’re making this Faustian deal...'"

"'... this deal with the devil in exchange for fame. I was 15 years old, I was breaking the law, running from cops'... He now works out of a fifth-floor studio in a walk-up building on the edge of Chinatown. At the top of a rickety flight of wooden steps, the space is spare and well-organized.... 'Being born and raised in New York, really being inspired by this 50-year history of the culture and really trying to do whatever I can to continue to carry that narrative forward, I looked at all the pioneers before me and really tried to channel the ethos of New York City graffiti until I eventually was able to find my own voice within that,' he said."

From "The Graffiti Artist Top Brands Call On for That ‘New York’ Look/If the city had a font, would his lettering be it?" (NYT).

"It's an example of someone who isn't governed by tidying up."

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The full version:

"His 'cosmic jumper,' a young man in bell bottoms traversing the globe in giant strides, became an emblem of modern youth, eager to explore the far reaches of inner and outer space."

"Barefoot and surrounded by puffy clouds and chubby birds, the jumper appeared on the 10-cent stamp commissioned for Expo ’74, the conservation-themed World’s Fair in Seattle. In 'The Universe of Peter Max,' a memoir published in 2013, he wrote: 'My cosmic art subjects were always euphoric: Himalayan sages levitating under a shower of flowers beside snowcapped mountain peaks; faces and flowers exploding into a symmetrical cosmic butterfly; mirrored lakes and waters with a cascade of stars and planets; flowers in perpetual states of organic growth, begetting blossoms. My inspiration came from the new youth movement in America and in return spoke to it.'"

From "Peter Max, Trippy Artist of Counterculture Era and Beyond, Dies at 88/With work that breathed the spirit of the 1960s, he became fabulously wealthy from licensing his paintings and posters in all their euphoric Day-Glo glory" (NYT gift link).

Things were so much more colorful when we were young in the 60s, and Peter Max was a big part of it.

Look around at all the gray, white, and black and remember when everything was over-the-top colorful. Mourn the loss of everything that was Peter Max. RIP.

"He seeks to unsettle and entertain; after all, an alternative pronunciation of his alter ego’s name, Miss Chief Eagle Testickle, is 'Mischief Egotistical.'"

I'm reading "An Indigenous Painter Sees a Vermeer, and the Sparks Fly/For a new show at the Frick Collection, Kent Monkman imagines what Indigenous people see when they see fur trappers, General Custer and even Jeff Bezos" (NYT gift link)

"In the mid-eighteen-hundreds, amid the advent of photography, the Victorians shot still-life arrangements of lizards crawling over fruit and dead game birds hanging from a nail..."

"... capturing with their new technology the savagery of hunger, the oneness between natural decay and human appetite. For much of the following century, food photography functioned as a sort of ethnographic art, a form of restrained realism preoccupied with light and shadow, shape and symbolism. But, in the nineteen-thirties, the introduction of color printing to advertising changed how food was shot on camera, and thus conceived of culturally. Dishes were now a thing to be drooled over and sold, products that emphasized the sensual, the luscious, the beautiful.... The surreality of commercial food photography and its later evolution into food porn may have been an artificial and sensationalist representation of the things we ate, but it at least managed to seduce.... Restaurants choosing to showcase computer-generated approximations of the dishes they serve inspire neither gluttony nor lust...."

Writes Brady Brickner-Wood, in "The Unique Horrors of A.I. Food Slop/Why does it feel so unsettling when restaurants use generative A.I. to create their menus and promotional materials?" in The New Yorker.

No 19th century photographs at that link, so I found 2 for you: "The First of September" (1855)(showing 2 dead game birds hanging from a nail) and  William Louis Henry Skeen, "Still Life of Exotic Fruits & Lizard from Ceylon" (c. 1880)(with, of course, lizards crawling over fruit).

Those 2 old photographs are not as exciting as I'd leapt to imagine they were. I should have noticed the promise of dreariness in those words "ethnographic art" and "restrained realism."

My imagination was fueled with images of old still-life paintings like this:

"We Who Are Captivated by the Utmost Beauty of Everything We Know and Shed Tears as We Were Monstrously Touched by the Mystery of the Beauty" and other works...

... can be seen at "Yayoi Kusama: A Life in Pictures/Whether making dot-covered sculptures or wild performance pieces, the Japanese artist grabbed critical and popular acclaim" (NYT gift link).

Kusama's "death at age 97 was announced on Thursday."

"[Yayoi] Kusama was... part of the artistic avant-garde. Her death, at 97, is a cold reminder that the avant-garde no longer exists...."

"It was an attempt to see the world afresh. For many of its leading figures, from the Impressionists in the 1870s to conceptual artists a century later, this also meant proposing new and better solutions to the problem of how to be and how to live together. These proposals, many times rooted in sympathy and love, were presented as alternatives to the political structures and market logic that had so often led to war, exploitation, hopelessness, and suffering. Even when attempts to turn these imagined alternatives into reality failed—and often dismally—the avant-garde stood in a clear relationship to modernity’s traumas. It was like the whistle cap in the spout of a boiling kettle: both a release of suppressed pressures (psychic and cultural) and an alarm. But society got sick of hearing the alarm. And the kettle got tired of whistling...."

Writes Sebastian Smee, in "The Limits of Yayoi Kusama's Infinity/The visionary artist once challenged ways of seeing—until she was seen by everyone" (Atlantic gift link).

"Kusama... talked about her repeating dots as an expression of an inclination toward 'self-obliteration' —an urge to dissolve into forever-expanding patterns.... The artist—an adorable maker of giant spotted pumpkins who lived in a psychiatric institution—became beyond criticism. You could no more criticize her than you could a grandmother giving a teddy bear to an orphan.... Successful branding is exactly what art at its best is not: a form of general seduction rather than specific engagement...."

The news from Sicily.

1. "American Hiker Dies After Lightning Strike on Mount Etna in Italy/Rescuers found a 29-year-old man in serious condition on the volcano’s eastern slope on Sunday. He was later pronounced dead at a hospital in Catania" (NYT gift link)("On Monday, Italy’s National Institute of Geophysics and Volcanology reported that another volcanic vent had opened in the valley, with fresh lava flowing overnight.... During a volcanic eruption, tiny collisions among the rising particles of ash can create static electricity, which may in turn produce volcanic lightning").

2. "Thieves Steal 4 Renaissance Paintings From Italian Museum in Brazen Heist/The works, by Antonello da Messina, were taken as the Sicilian city of Messina held a religious celebration" (NYT gift link)("The celebration, the Procession of the Vara, is a religious ritual that takes places every Aug. 15. Some 100,000 people attended the celebration and the city’s law enforcement officials were focused on maintaining order there, city officials said....The theft is a blow to the city.... [F]or the past few years the city has focused on the 'Messina, City of Antonello' brand...).

3. The Procession of the Vara:

"An early affection for tossing pots on the wheel led her to graduate school... where she studied both ceramics and sculpture with Peter Voulkos... who believed in subjecting clay to Abstract Expressionist theatrics."

"As Ms. Heilmann later recalled, Mr. Voulkos liked to walk across the classroom holding a homemade pot, then trip (or rather, as she said, 'fake trip'), with the pot smashing on the floor. He would collect the broken shards and assemble them into a surprisingly interesting sculpture. Ms. Heilmann’s own early sculptures, which consisted of ragged-looking objects constructed from inexpensive craft-shop materials like plastic clay, tin foil, cotton balls, bamboo and glitter, similarly sought to foreground the process of their making."

From "Mary Heilmann, Painter of Vividly Wobbly Abstractions, Dies at 86/An emblem of the obstacles faced by women artists of her generation, she was 67 when her first museum retrospective opened to rave reviews in 2007" (NYT gift link).

ADDED: Something about the attitude in the comments here made me remember a line from the movie "Blue Moon":

She’s a college student. Sophomore. Yale. Not the general school; that’s for the guys. This is the School of Fine Arts! Bohemian goddesses in gray smocks mixing paint in morning light. She’s all of twenty years old.

I bought the screenplay so I could quote that. (I highly recommend that movie, by the way. It's the most like "My Dinner with Andre" that I've ever run across: An unusual man talks about theater for a long time. Catch it on Netflix.)

I do appreciate the commenters focusing on the phrase "An emblem of the obstacles."

3 outlooks on beauty.

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3 very different places to live.

These 3 architectural idiosyncrasies charmed me today:

"A comedian and his friends are transforming a vacant retail space at the West 4th Street station with freebies, art and puppet shows to make commutes more enjoyable."

I'm reading "A Newsstand That Aims to Delight N.Y.C. Subway Riders" (NYT gift link).

Trading cards that highlight fun facts about retired subway conductors and operators. Key chains with a fake rat’s foot for “good train luck.” A bucket hat with a sliding veil that riders can borrow to cry in private.... The transit-themed newsstand will have no other purpose than to amuse and intrigue New Yorkers....

Nice photos. I like this kind of art installation. Comical. For the people.

"Moko was asleep at the time. We decided we want to wake this thing back up again."

Said Mark Kopua, who "grew up in a Māori community that had lost all its tohunga tā moko, or ritual tattoo artists."

He is quoted in "A Once Outlawed Māori Art Form Is Alive and in the Flesh/Young Māori in New Zealand are embracing tā moko, the ritual tattoos that were banned under British colonial rule and became an act of protest in the 1970s" (NYT gift link).

Without forebears to teach them, Mr. Kopua — a tohunga whakairo, or a master woodcarver — learned tā moko from the patterns he used in carving and weaving. They studied moko kanohi patterns on decapitated heads that were under the care of New Zealand’s national museum. Māori warriors believed that decapitation severed their enemies’ connection to the gods. In the 19th century, British settlers collected the heads as curiosities and trophies and offered guns and gold in exchange — prompting some Māori people to hunt down those who wore mataora and moko kauae.

"It's very beautiful in its shattered state.... Do you see how wonderful it is?"

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