Left: Karin Bubas, Lauren Crying (2009). Pastel on paper, 9.5 x 12.5 in. Right: Karin Bubas, Heidi Pouting (2009). Pastel on paper, 9.5 x 12.5 in. Both images courtesy Charles H. Scott Gallery, Vancouver.
Some summertime offerings from the internets.
Pastels Not Dunzo: Joshua David Stein watches the cast of “The Hills” getting pastel’d.
“Chalk pastels are the soft focus of the art world — the Lifetime channel on paper — and for the characters of the notoriously high-definition, supersaturated “The Hills,” the medium is humanizing.”
Turn Your Back On Me: Jennifer Higgie turns her gaze on men who love women who turn away.
“She turns her back on you; this, it would seem, is her appeal. She’s been painted like this for centuries, and, more recently, photographed. Often she is naked, in a bathroom or bedroom, solitary, sleeping or day-dreaming….”
Pale Fire: Arthur Danto on Suzanne P. Hudson on Robert Ryman (Season 4) on everything.
“Suzanne P. Hudson’s Robert Ryman: Used Paint is the first book-length study of the artist’s achievement, and it comes with an interesting thesis, namely that his paintings exemplify what the author calls ‘embodied thinking,’ which I interpret to mean that his paintings are not the product of thought, but thought itself.”
Script Vicious: Lyra Kilston dissects Pablo Helguera’s panel freak-out.
“The play presents a public discussion between a cast of art world archetypes—curators, a collector, a thwarted artist and an arts administrator—as they meet to discuss the life and work of the artist Juvenal Merst, a character that Helguera named after the early second century Roman poet Juvenal, who is credited with developing the nascent genre of satire.”
Hey Papi: Ara Merjian takes to the work of Marco Papa.
“A hint of Joseph Beuys’s notion of ‘social sculpture’ perhaps echoes in Papa’s interdisciplinary, participatory affinities, as well as his investment in a kind of collective, symbolic catharsis around specific objects. But Papa steers clear of the specious naïveté that marked Beuys’s self-styled shamanism, with its quixotic faith in the autonomy of artworks.”
You Wish: Heike Munder assembles a list.
“‘Live in Your Head’ is a motto that could well serve to guide a revival of interest in processes, for the latter remain inconclusive, continually opening up new possibilities of interpretation. I should add the following keywords to my wish list: intellectually stimulating materials, forms and ideas.”
Soft Touch: Jorge Colombo’s iPhone finger painting archive. They’ve been the splash this summer, yes, but they’re just so nice.