Jerry Saltz pays a compliment to Ptolemy

Jerry posted a comment on Facebook yesterday about Eva Hesse whose work he had just seen in a show at the Whitney. His posting read:

My review of the Whitney’s spot-on experiment in close-looking. Twelve pieces of post-war art in 12 separate spaces. Turn off your cell phones, relax, & float down the stream of art (even art you don’t like takes you places better than expected). The show also tells you Eva Hesse’s redefinitions of form, process, structure, & beauty a...

I commented on his posting: "Let me tell you sometime about Bill Agee's Hesse show at Pasadena in 1970. Total bewilderment."

Jerry was then kind enough to send me his comment on my message through Facebook:

"Themistocles G Michos: As I have ALWAYS said: You ARE a genius.
I totally get that Hesse in 1970 could throw one for a total loop. Like Pollock in the late 1940s; Cezanne his whole fucking life (Manet would NOT show with Cezanne he thought C's work was so "ugly.")
But Manet was RIGHT.
Right about Cezanne - Pollock - and now I see; Hesse: They really do take you beyond comfortable definitions of form, structure, and ugliness.
To understand ANY of these artists is to alos understand why they were mostly mis-understood when they were first seen.
In all honesty I only really 'GOT' Cezanne around 10 years ago. I struggled my whole life with him.
The, wham, a THUNDERBOLT ---

These artists are no picnic.


Thank you for your comment Themistocles."

To see the comment thread, follow the link below:
http://www.facebook.com/n/?permalink.php&story_fbid=194430960568465&id=716179266&mid=3ad3e43G29f7cc24G5d57016G13&bcode=wuuif&n_m=michos%40gmail.com

Dennis Oppenheim has passed away

Dennis Oppenheim, a master sculptor and conceptual artist for four decades or more, died January 22, 2011. A review of his career was written for New York Magazine by its art critic, Jerry Saltz. Jerry notes two remarks made to him many years ago by Oppenheim that strike home and would seem to be eminently useful to any artist working today, to wit:

"Make things that carry with them the residue of where they have been." And "Make a sculpture in the way that you speak, as a projection that dissipates."

The latter point doesn't apply to sculptures fashioned from solid substances, but in 1968 Oppenheim made a work which was both a sculpture and a drawing: an incision several yards long in the ice covering a river.

Art was dematerializing indeed.

Moslem extremists attack Egyptian Christian church

Day after Moslem attack on Coptic Christian church in Alexandria, Egypt:

http://www.clipsyndicate.com/video/play/2084172?wpid=10121