Tag Archives: painting

TWENTY-TWO: EXCURSUS: SO MUCH DEPENDS

Posted on April 23, 2023 by Mark Kerstetter

We may live to see the day when we recall that everything changed at the beginning of 2023. Some of us may even pin it down to a specific day—say the day they read that article about a work created … Continue reading →

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FOURTEEN: IN MY LIFE THE FURNITURE EATS ME (pages 38-45)

Posted on April 15, 2023 by Mark Kerstetter

We’re up to poem IX and as with VIII we’ll look at the prose section that follows and then go back and reread it. Allen Ginsberg gives a nice reading of this poem. But the poem is not as clear … Continue reading →

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THIRTEEN: OF SPANIARDS AND MORGANS (pages 32-38)

Posted on April 14, 2023 by Mark Kerstetter

By now we have noticed that the prose sections reiterate a small constellation of ideas about making art, how it relates to the all-important word “imagination”, how it connects to “life”, and how this new art is different than illusionistic … Continue reading →

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ONE: DEDICATION TO CHARLES DEMUTH

Posted on April 2, 2023 by Mark Kerstetter

Spring and All is dedicated to Charles Demuth, American visual artist, born in 1883. He and Williams were lifelong friends. Demuth was an early modernist in the United States, as Williams was. He in painting and Williams in poetry were … Continue reading →

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Time as a Theme in de Kooning and Ashbery

Posted on October 13, 2021 by Mark Kerstetter

Time is an emulsion—Ashbery I have to keep the paint wet so that I can change it over and over, I mean, do the same thing over and over+I’m really slipping most of the time into that glimpse—de Kooning The … Continue reading →

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Learn the Art of Looking at Art with Gene Wisniewski

Posted on November 19, 2020 by Mark Kerstetter

As Gene Wisniewski explains in the Preface to his book, The Art of Looking at Art, published in October by Rowman & Littlefield, This book grew out of a seminar…. Entitled the Six-Hour Art Major…. Its ultimate goal is to … Continue reading →

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Gombrowicz on Limits

Posted on August 5, 2020 by Mark Kerstetter

Painting is one great resignation from what cannot be painted. It is a cry: I would like to do more, but I cannot. This cry is oppressive.—Witold Gombrowicz, Diary, Volume Two, p 49 “I would like to do more, but … Continue reading →

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Robert Rauschenberg and Working in the Gap

Posted on March 19, 2019 by Mark Kerstetter

It’s hard to read about Robert Rauschenberg without encountering a Great American Image: a uniquely American hero in modern visual art. It seems to me rather that he was more like the Slavoj Žižek of the art world of his … Continue reading →

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Rimbaud and de Kooning

Posted on February 5, 2019 by Mark Kerstetter

Arriving from always, you’ll go away everywhere. —Rimbaud We are modern. We are so because Rimbaud commanded us to be. —Ashbery It is one of those curious accidents (but are they really accidents?) that I have resumed my de Kooning … Continue reading →

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Conversations with a Clown by Michael Welzenbach

Posted on May 29, 2016 by Mark Kerstetter

Conversations with a Clown, published in 1991, is the only novel by art critic Michael Welzanbach who died far too young in 2001. The novel concerns art critic Corry Peters who lives in Washington D.C., has profoundly ambivalent feelings about … Continue reading →

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