Ambition

From despair.com comes this fine nature photo:

Top 10 List

It is Thanksgiving Day here in the United States.  Here is a list of 10 things we are thankful for here at this blog.  These are in addition to the most obvious and most important: family, friends, good health, shelter, pets etc.
10.  Women unwilling to take off their clothes for my camera.
9.    Hahnemühle Paper
8.    Adobe
7.    [...]

Picasso and Shamanism

The third volume of John Richardson’s biography of Picasso is out. 900 or so pages covering the years 1917 through 1932. Here is the New York Times review. Having not finished the second volume yet, I did not rush out and buy volume 3. But I did pick it up and [...]

The Limits of Landscape Art

There is a new and fairly silly article about “landscape” in the current edition of Orion Magazine. You can read it here. It is by retired art critic Rebecca Solnit, author of several books including: As Eve Said to the Serpent: On Landscape, Gender, and Art (2001), River of Shadows: Eadweard Muybridge [...]

Hasselblad H3D-39 or How Mortals Can Go Broke

Today I received an email from Hasselblad extolling the virtues of its new H3Dii camera and imporning me to buy it. However, the email neglected to tell me how much it costs. For that I had to do a search beyond Hasselblad’s web sites. That explains Hassy’s new marketing strategy: “If you ask [...]

Still Waiting

Will that train never get here?

Slow Trains

When you are waiting for one, all trains are slow trains. Might as well read a good book while you wait.

Terrorist Art Critic

History’s first, and probably only, terrorist who was also an art critic was Felix Fénéon. It was he who discovered and promoted the art of Seurat, an example of which I post here. The woman is not nude but she is certainly beautiful and mysterious and makes you want to see the rest [...]