Category: ZiLL

  • Cy Twombly, Charles White — Art & the Unspeakable

    Cy Twombly, Charles White — Art & the Unspeakable

    Twombly’s work is a win-win because it does not force us to think or feel at all, except insofar as the work reminds us that most of what we think and feel we are afraid to speak publicly about. (And this, perhaps, for good reason?)

  • As Dylan Went Out One Morning

    As Dylan Went Out One Morning

    By Oriana Schällibaum and Marcel Grissmer As I went out one morning may strike the casual listener as one of the more insipid songs Bob Dylan ever wrote. Recorded for the 1967 John Wesley Harding album it has never been very important to Dylan; he recorded the song in only five takes and, to date,…

  • Puerto Rico, Mayor Cruz, Shakespeare

    Puerto Rico, Mayor Cruz, Shakespeare

    Speeches of San Juan, Puerto Rico, Mayor Carmen Yulín Cruz, in the Company of Consonant Words from Patrick Henry, Karuna Ezara Parikh’, Martin Luther King, Jr., Percy Bysshe Shelley, and Shakespeare 29 September 2017, as revised 4 October 2017   San Juan Mayor Cruz’s speeches to cable-news reporters and the world were heroic and heart-rending,…

  • Collage, TV President, Bonnard, Miró

    Collage, TV President, Bonnard, Miró

    In the aftermath of Trump’s election, artists and writers have had the feeling that all is changed, and their work, too, has to change somehow; they—we—have to come up with an effective response. One way I have approached this is, in my museum wanderings, to see which works from the past seem most right to…

  • The New Shadows, Judd, Artin

    The New Shadows, Judd, Artin

    At sea in these thunder-clouded days we write out of habit and wishing that we might find some magical, Archimedean fulcrum that would right the ship or allow us to gather the pieces and start building anew. At present we cannot be sure how, or if, these pieces fit together.   In any critic’s work, we…

  • Cartier-Bresson, Senior, Trump (Gaps)

    Cartier-Bresson, Senior, Trump (Gaps)

    The famous French photographer Henri Cartier-Bresson writes that the attraction of a photograph is not that it captures reality but that it just barely glimpses it. His photograph Derrière la Gare Saint-Lazare captures, in mid-air, a man in a suit and hat attempting a hopeless leap over a large puddle of water.[1] If we had been…

  • Dylan: “Gotta Serve Somebody”

    Dylan: “Gotta Serve Somebody”

    You may be an ambassador to England or FranceYou may like to gamble, you might like to danceYou may be the heavyweight champion of the worldYou may be a socialite with a long string of pearls But you’re gonna have to serve somebody, yes indeedYou’re gonna have to serve somebodyWell, it may be the devil…

  • Guston Presidents Cartoons Questions?

    Guston Presidents Cartoons Questions?

    In a number of Philip Guston’s more than 100 cartoon-style drawings of Richard Nixon, which are currently on view at the Hauser & Wirth gallery in New York City, the former President’s nose and jowls are transformed into a cock and balls (or scrotum).[1] We recognize the long-standing association of the nose and the penis, and…

  • Dylan, Nobel, Paris, Chimes Flashing

    Dylan, Nobel, Paris, Chimes Flashing

    Le monde s’étire s’allonge et se retire comme un accordéon qu’une main sadique tourmente The earth stretches elongated and snaps back like an accordion tortured by a sadic hand Dans les déchirures du ciel, les locomotives en furie In the rips in the sky insane locomotives S’enfuient Take flight Et dans les trous, In the…

  • Politics, Death Threats, Decency: The Roosevelts

    Politics, Death Threats, Decency: The Roosevelts

    Mr. Trump hangs scapegoats like piñatas and invites people to take a swing. — Arizona Republic, September 28, 2016, lead editorial   A friend is watching the PBS series, The Roosevelts. She’s taken in by the first episodes. I find myself pushed back in time, reliving the powerful impact of the series when I first…