Only What You Do For Christ Will Last: A Conversation with Tim Rollins
By Interview Issue 60
Painters Frame Contemporary Painting Painting has died and been resurrected several times in recent decades. Challenged by theory-laden conversations about art’s “post-medium” condition and a welter of deconstructionist propositions, painting seems nevertheless to have thrived in the face of adversity. Some would say it remains as manifold and imaginative as ever. In order to take…
Read MoreGravity and Grace: The Art of Richard Serra
By Essay Issue 57
RICHARD SERRA’S Torqued Ellipse I and Torqued Ellipse II (1996-97), now permanently installed at Dia:Beacon, remind me of Simone Weil’s axiom that “All the natural movements of the soul are controlled by the laws analogous to those of physical gravity. Grace is the only exception” [see Plate 1]. These lines, from the opening of her book…
Read MoreFour Corners: Painters Frame Contemporary Painting
By Essay Issue 60
Painting has died and been resurrected several times in recent decades. Challenged by theory-laden conversations about art’s “post-medium” condition and a welter of deconstructionist propositions, painting seems nevertheless to have thrived in the face of adversity. Some would say it remains as manifold and imaginative as ever. In order to take its pulse, Image asked…
Read MoreActive Sight: Vija Celmins and Jackson Pollock from Pictorialism to Perception
By Essay Issue 59
ON MAY 16 of this year, Night Sky #2 by Vija Celmins, on view at the 2008 Carnegie International at Pittsburgh’s Carnegie Museum of Art, was vandalized by one of the museum’s own security guards, who used a key to cut a gouge down the painting’s middle, damaging it beyond repair. While this act was…
Read MoreGerhard Richter: The Capacity for Belief
By Essay Issue 64
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…
Read MoreMarc Quinn: The Matter of Life and Death
By Essay Issue 69
IN 2009, BRITAIN’S NATIONAL Portrait Gallery acquired Self by Marc Quinn. The museum’s press release described the work as “unconventional, innovative, and challenging.” That is an understatement. Self is made of eight pints of Quinn’s own blood, approximately the amount in an adult male body. It was extracted over a period of a year, then…
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