Se está agotando el tiempo. (“La vida es breve y un poco de velocidad es necesaria,” comenta Donald Judd en 1983, con cincuenta y cinco años de edad. Luego, en 1987, “El largo alcance del tiempo comparado con la vida, que es muy breve, es bastante obvio.” En 1989, “Tengo una vida breve” y “No es ninguna noticia que la vida sea breve.” En 1992…[Read more]

En realidad, no estoy tan seguro de que mirar atentamente una cosa sea olvidarse de su nombre: el chiste apresurado de Paul Valéry (“mirar, es decir, olvidarse de los nombres de las cosas que uno ve”) que así lo manifiesta parece eludir el problemático y siempre presente embrollo de visiones y de palabras. Porque, por mucho que lo intente, jamás…[Read more]

En un simposio organizado por en 1976 el Philadelphia College of Art, Robert Irwin hizo una declaración extraordinaria: “No creo que nadie sepa tanto como yo acerca de lo que yo hago”, afirmó, “ni que nadie sea más concienzudo al respecto que yo”. Esta aseveración fue franca, atrevida e incontrovertible. Sin embargo, Irwin sintió la necesidad de…[Read more]

Time is wasting. (“It’s a short life and a little speed is necessary,” Donald Judd remarks in 1983, age fifty-five. Next, in ’87, “the long extent of time compared to life, which is very short, is quite obvious.” In ’89, “I have a short life” and “it’s not news that life is short.” In ’92, “is life big or little? It’s short.” Then in a text from ’…[Read more]

My dictionary has it that “metaphysics” means abstract theory with no basis in reality. Among several problems with this grossly simplified definition is the word “no,” the declaration of utter lack, which itself verges on abstraction when taken seriously and mulled over awhile . . . after all, I’m not sure I can think of anything truly without b…[Read more]

Hell, since my text’s got to fit on seven pages, I’ll need to race through only a few of upwards of three hundred paintings by JF—that many good ones anyway, he cracks—and I’ll have to shrug off altogether a thousand drawings, a number of sculptures and prints, even several performances, videos, and video-installations (some tapes were stolen, o…[Read more]

All I’m saying is that for me, knowing little or frankly closer to zilch about their artworld context, their maker’s life, their maker’s political and literary and philosophical interests . . . (usually you’ll hear at length on each when writers turn paint into text), the thing about Kim Guiline’s works is how, for once, I can truly have a look at them.

Actually I am not so sure that to look hard at a thing is to forget its name — Valéry’s hasty quip which says as much seems to duck the troublesome and ever-present tangle of sights and words. For, try as I might, I never quite break free from language when I take in a work of art by Irwin; studying it involves in some basic way either reco…[Read more]

Here is just some of what we are given to understand John Chamberlain’s art as being like: car wrecks and dancers, artichokes and mummies and giant phalluses, drapery, a football player, ornaments for an immense Christmas tree and monstrous jungle-gyms, a sucked egg, and Titans beside themselves with rage. Next, a long list of the art-historical m…[Read more]

It is hard to keep clear how words work as you hold forth on strange art. Metaphor, analogy, and other abstract conceits tend to treat a piece under examination as already well enough understood that it can be tellingly likened to something else, another artwork perhaps or a theoretical concept, that is itself regarded as well enough understood to…[Read more]

Knowledge founded on perception always stays flexible. Imposed intellectual interpretations remain rigid, eliminating discrepancies if sensations vary from that which is expected. When viewing art, as with everyday existence in the world, a willingness to just perceive means learning, again and again, what one did not know before, even though…[Read more]

Donald Judd’s 1964 essay ‘Specific Objects’ probably remains his most well-known. In it, he described new artworks characterized by, among other features, ‘a quality as a whole’ instead of conventional ‘part-by-part structure,’ the ‘use of three dimensions’ and ‘real space’ as opposed to depiction, ‘new materials [that] aren’t obviously art,’ and…[Read more]

Robert Irwin learned to see more by studying the stripes in ‘Crazy Otto’ for days, gazing at different visual densities in front of the dot and disc paintings, and staring for hours into the silent darkness of an anechoic chamber. One can develop similar skills at the Chinati installation in Marfa, Texas. Having accumulated this knowledge though,…[Read more]