Into the Seven Jeweled Mountain: Immersive, Restrained, and Refined

A simple, well-told story is worth its weight in gold in this era of overwrought content creation. I’m sure there were prehistoric humans who wished the raconteur du jour would just get to the point already in his insufferably self-aggrandizing and lengthy tale about the big Sabertooth tiger he took down. As a writer I can fall into excess description […]

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Rolling Wonder: Francis Alys, Paradox of Praxis 5, at the Cleveland Museum of Art

On the second floor of the Cleveland Museum of Art, right around the corner from Henri Matisse’s painting Tulips and Piet Mondrian’s Chrysanthemum, a tall Belgian guy wearing a scarf kicks a flaming soccer ball at night around Ciudad Juarez, Mexico. He dribbles the fireball past busted up buildings and alongside graffitied bridge abutments, he ambles past shuttered stores and […]

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Touched At The Wall: ArtLens Revisited

There are a few things I miss about living in Cleveland, proximity to my son Noah being #1, but if you pressed me about naming a specific public space I’ve pined for most since departing for Knoxville last year it would have to be the Cleveland Museum of Art. I took serious advantage of its availability through the 15 years […]

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FRONT at CMA: In Ruins, There Are Always Possibilities

Unfortunately, I’m not very plugged into the FRONT International Cleveland Triennial for Contemporary Art in 2022. I’m moving out of town and haven’t had the time, blah blah blah. Fortunately, my farewell ramble through the Cleveland Museum of Art brought me to the Glass Box gallery (#218) and the vast ocean of all possibilities, an electrifying installation by Firelei Baez. […]

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Crucifixion of the Heart

I want to say I don’t know why I like Caravaggio’s The Crucifixion of Saint Andrew (1606-7) so much, but I do know. And while it’s connected to my Catholic upbringing, it’s so much more primal as I stand at the Cleveland Museum of Art and stare at it, like a gut punch that I’m okay with, even masochistically welcoming […]

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A Van Gogh-ing

My wife and I are aesthetically simpatico, mostly celebrating (or at least affirming each other’s right to have specific tastes) the same kinds of art, music, movies, TV, etc. When we diverge it usually has to do with a high-falutin, high country of the mind conclusion or two that I’ve made about how “deep” something or other is and how intellectually sharp […]

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At What Cost Art?

  Some years ago, a friend announced to her parents that she wanted to go to art school. Her mother responded in words that carried a clear message, albeit strangely, asking, “Whaddaya gonna do? Cut paper?” Maybe she meant construction paper or poster board factory work? The sentiment that art is not a real way to make a living is […]

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