Mistakes can’t be erased but they move you from your present position. —Richard Diebenkorn, from “Notes to myself on beginning a painting”
Richard Diebenkorn, Berkeley #57, 1955
Oil on canvas
Courtesy SFMOMA
Note: A version of this review of Richard Diebenkorn: The Berkeley Years 1953-1956 (De Young Museum, June 22–September 29, 2013) originally appeared…
Working toward that moment—what painters call the frozen moment—led me to a new way of narrative painting. Painting is about trying to get to that instant that is pregnant with some special kind of energy. Done right, there’s an exquisite tension in the painting that comes from a precise set of relationships—between forms on an abstract level and between people on an image level. Finding where to arrest the…
Recollect that only when habits of order are formed can we advance to really interesting fields of action—and consequently accumulate grain on grain of wilful choice like a very miser—never forgetting how one link dropped undoes indefinite number. —William James
I wish I had a routine for writing. I get up in the morning and I go out to my studio and write. And then…
Adolf Furtwängle, Lemnia Athena (reconstruction)
Marble, 1891
Staatliche Museum, Albertinum, Dresden, Germany
Note: A version of this post originally appeared on the blog Venetian Red.
For the past several months Athena, the Greek goddess of war, civilization, wisdom, strength, strategy, crafts, justice and skill (a versatile goddess if ever there was one) has been much on my mind. In…