Nudes on eBay

I would really like to take a break from the day job.  That will require, however, that I sell some photographs, a daunting prospect.  So commonplace that it has become cliché, to sell a piece of art for a significant sum of money the artist must do two things: First, he must create art and [...]

But is it Art?

During my recent winter of photographic discontent, I roamed around the internet looking at pictures of naked women. Which is pretty much all I saw, pictures. There wasn’t much art being committed. Which led me to the question of what exactly do I mean when I say “art” and how does it apply [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

Buttocks?

My reader recently pointed out that I’ve yet to post one of my own photographs on this blog. (Except for the header.) She knows that I am resisting the blogger’s fatal flaw: Narcissism, but she thinks I may be over-reacting.
So, without further ado. . . .

Snapshots and Art

Snapshots as Art
In addition to an Edward Hopper show and the J.M.W. Turner show, the National Gallery of Art in Washington has a show of anonymous snapshots taken in the United States from 1888 to 1978. Sadly, the National Gallery still maintains one of the most boring websites you’ll attend this year and they [...]