More on: art essay

DUTCH-CANADIAN, of Midwestern Winnipeg, an ordinary follower of Jesus Christ. This is perhaps the most succinct way to situate the artist Gerald Folkerts. Readers may ask, “Can any artistic good come out of Winnipeg?” Come closer. Take a look. Winnipeg, Manitoba, is not like Bible-belt Alberta, but is hard-working Mennonite farming country. Under God-blue skies,…

I have stood still and stopped the sound of feet When far away an interrupted cry Came over houses from another street, But not to call me back or say good-bye; And further still at an unearthly height, A luminary clock against the sky Proclaimed the time was neither wrong nor right. I have been…

WHEN MEASURING an artist’s greatness within a particular tradition, the essential criterion is not what that artist takes from the tradition but what he or she adds to it. For almost half a century, Gerhard Richter has applied his creative aptitude and technical facility to a critical investigation of the viability of a genuinely contemporary…

A Grant of the Divine— That Certain as it Comes— Withdraws—and leaves the dazzled Soul In her unfurnished Rooms. ——————————Emily Dickinson PAINTER AGNES MARTIN, who died in Taos, New Mexico, in 2004, had the ability to make seemingly restrictive, minimalist forms pulse with life. Her paintings are nearly all made up of straight lines and…

IN THE MID-1980s, just shy of my fortieth birthday, I found myself out of work and divorced. It was a crash landing of all my aspirations, and crawling from the wreckage of two traumas, I was grieved, confused, desperate—cut off from the world I thought I understood. In the fragile years that followed, I tried…

We played the flute for you and you did not dance…. ——————————————–—Matthew 11:17 IN HIS INTRODUCTION to a collection of medieval Welsh tales, the late John Updike describes his reaction: we feel in reading these stories, he says, “as if we are dancing with a partner who hears a distinctly different music.” The Charis exhibit—an…

THE YEAR 1992 marked the release of a film that challenged all conventional notions of filmmaking—and that nevertheless received nearly universal critical acclaim, much to the surprise of its makers. That film was Baraka. Filmed at 152 locations in twenty-four countries on six continents with no narrative or dialogue, Baraka was described as “a guided…

DESIGN IS ubiquitous. Design in its graphic manifestations is, well, frankly overwhelming. Streams of printed ephemera constantly assault us, from cherished journals, to the slumping pile of unread newspapers shoved behind an easy chair in the corner, to the blur of billboards, fliers, bulletins, and posters cluttering our horizon. The democracy of digital invention compounds…

AFTER A LONG CITY bus ride traversing the outskirts of Rome, including a few transfers and a bit of walking, I arrived just in time to hear the churchyard gate clang shut. This was no simple clicking of a latch, but a resounding, ringing crash—not the kind of sound that left any doubt as to whether…