Praeterita

Well, the Journal and Sketchbook class at Columbia College Chicago is over for this semester, though Patty and I are going to teach an abbreviated version of it in a four-day workshop at Interlochen’s College of Creative Arts. During the 15-week semester at Columbia, we asked the students to select an artist/writer and make a fifteen minute presentation on their choice to the class. The presentations this time were on Keith Haring, Dr. Seuss, Tolkien, William Blake, and Andre Breton. The best presentations were on Haring, Blake, and Dr. Seuss, with some particularly interesting facts about the latter coming up (for instance, did you know he did a lot of biting political cartoons during World War II?). One book that I’ve tried to push students to look at has been George Grosz’s memoir ‘A Little Yes and a Big No’, though so far no-one has taken the bait. In many ways, it would be a good choice for this class. Grosz was a brilliant caricaturist as well as a painter, and every other page...

Here is the sixteenth of the weekly Meditations on Art. The subject is a 1920 painting by Otto Dix, called 'The Skat Players'. I remember going around the bookstores on the Charing Cross Road in London, trying to find a book about this artist. I kept announcing to the assistants 'I'm looking for books on Dix', and wondered why they kept directing me to the Gay section.   Subscribe to Praeterita in a reader