Should we need a laugh...

Save this piece from McSweeney's for Criticism Seminar next summer...or read it now if you need a laugh:

An Art History Professor Explains to his 4-year-old Daughter Why The Fair Market Value of Her Picture is Actually Far Less and that of a Thousand Words , by Ethan Ryan

It's not like this in my home. Really.

Things I wish I'd seen...Notes on the Remote and the Invisible

I suppose it's maudlin to post about a show I couldn't get to, but I wanted to remark on the Tauba Auerbach show that just closed at Deitch. Or rather, I wanted to remark on the sadness I have for not seeing it. Sometimes you find out about these thigs too late, sometimes they're three thousand miles away. This looked like something I really should have seen...if only to make me feel stuck in my ways and unoriginal. Now and then, a kick in the pants like that is good thing. From the images on the Deitch site, one can see that Auerbach's work is playful with language, if not staggeringly original in its maneuvers or approach to the subject.

Perhaps because I’ve been reading thesis papers and thinking about influence and context a great deal, I feel rather without context these days. I read Steven Millhauser’s story, In the Reign of Harad IV, in a recent New Yorker a few days ago and it’s been haunting me. In it, the master miniaturist (I don’t pretend to that level of authority…) realizes the potential for his craft and embarks on a journey into the invisibly small. At the conclusion, two students come to see his recent work and there is - literally – nothing to see. It’s too small. They compliment him on it nonetheless, and the master miniaturist

…returned with some impatience to his work; and as he sank below the crust of the visible world, into his dazzling kingdom, he understood that he had traveled a long way from the early days, that he still had far to go, and that, from now on, his life would be difficult and without forgiveness.

This is what I thought being an artist was – finding that thing that you want to see, whether anyone wants to see it or not, and making it visible…if only to yourself. As I think about the humor and charm of Auerbach’s work, I find myself at once humored and charmed and slightly annoyed. Playing in the same field with language, I’m not too terribly interested in the kind of cleverness I see in that work. But I’m interested in something it contains or reflects.

And so, with some impatience, I must return to my work.

2006 MFA Thesis are online

Candidates for the degree of Master of Fine Arts in Ceramics, Painting, and Sculpture are in the final stages of completing their Thesis Exhibitions. Cards have begun to go out, and Thesis Papers are being recieved. You are invited to review the thesis papers by visiting the class website.

The receptions for the Thesis Exhibitions will take place Friday, December 8 from 6-8pm at the University of the Arts Galleries and Saturday from 5-8pm at Highwire Gallery, 1315 Cherry Street in Center City Philadelphia.