Excerpts from Deborah Barlow's blog, Slow Muse
Leonardo Drew's show at the deCordova Museum is strong, clear and grounded. Drew has artistic tendencies I admire, the same ones that separate his approach and his work from the current art mainstream. His is a quiet defiance because there is no raised fist or defensiveness, just the masterful seduction into a world where a discarded wood fragment can be its own universe of breathtaking beauty. Where a wall of found and slightly modified artifacts is a feast for the eye and for one's inner (and often under expressed) sensibilities.
In Hamlet's BlackBerry: A Practical Philosophy for Building a Good Life in the Digital Age, William Powers quotes Henry David Thoreau who wrote that the man who constantly and desperately keeps going to the post office to check for correspondence from others "has not heard from himself in a long while."
Sounds like a contemporary proclivity with so many who interrupt their lives to constantly check email, Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. "Of the two mental worlds everyone inhabits, the inner and the outer, the latter increasingly rules," says William Powers. "We're like so many pinballs bouncing around a world of blinking lights and buzzers. There's lots of movement and noise, but it doesn't add up to much."
Sounds like a contemporary proclivity with so many who interrupt their lives to constantly check email, Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. "Of the two mental worlds everyone inhabits, the inner and the outer, the latter increasingly rules," says William Powers. "We're like so many pinballs bouncing around a world of blinking lights and buzzers. There's lots of movement and noise, but it doesn't add up to much."
The story of how painting as survived successive waves of being disregarded is certainly more complex than a single newspaper article can cover, but Christopher Knight of the Los Angles Times pulls on a few of the key threads that feed into a knotty tapestry of influences and trends. He starts by sharing the dilemma of a young painter still in school (which is, uncannily, almost exactly the same sentiments I encountered when I was an art student years ago.) "They sneer and say I'm foolish because painting is obsolete, and I don't know what to say to them," she said.
Ah, that old chestnut: the belief that art is like science and technology, to be discussed in the context of progress. In that view the old traditions, like painting, become obsolete, "like absolute monarchy or 8-track tapes."
Knight's advice to the young artist about what to say to her peers is clear and straightforward: Say thanks, and mean it.
"The short explanation for expressing gratitude is that every young artist should take hostile groupthink — the promiscuous pressure to conform — as a cue that she's on the right track. Those pressures can be especially acute at school. That's one hazard of the current pervasiveness of academic training for artists."
Ah, that old chestnut: the belief that art is like science and technology, to be discussed in the context of progress. In that view the old traditions, like painting, become obsolete, "like absolute monarchy or 8-track tapes."
Knight's advice to the young artist about what to say to her peers is clear and straightforward: Say thanks, and mean it.
"The short explanation for expressing gratitude is that every young artist should take hostile groupthink — the promiscuous pressure to conform — as a cue that she's on the right track. Those pressures can be especially acute at school. That's one hazard of the current pervasiveness of academic training for artists."
Basilico's photographs capture a centerless, ambient foreboding that something here isn't right. How he does this is beguiling and mysterious. And he achieves it without resorting to manipulative gestures or a need to patronize the viewer. These images feel fresh. Raw, yes, but starkly fresh.
Perhaps it is his method of work: "To slow down vision," Basilico wrote, "was for me a small revolution in the way of seeing." In Byles' view, the emptiest photographs are the most powerful. "Basilico is the de Chrico of sprawl." Well put.
Perhaps it is his method of work: "To slow down vision," Basilico wrote, "was for me a small revolution in the way of seeing." In Byles' view, the emptiest photographs are the most powerful. "Basilico is the de Chrico of sprawl." Well put.