Praeterita

After a bit of a break (it seems to be slowing down as I approach the stated goal of 100), here is number 99 in the series of short talks on works of art.

Number 91 in this series is about colour and eyes.   Subscribe to Praeterita in a reader

Number 90 is a preview of the interview with London artist Dragica Carlin (originally from Croatia) that I will post next Monday. It uses an excerpt from the more than 60 minutes of recording that I made when I visited her London studio three weeks ago.   Subscribe to Praeterita in a reader

Following on from the talk I did a few weeks ago on Alan Sundberg's etchings, here are my thoughts about one of the works that made me study printmaking in the first place.   Subscribe to Praeterita in a reader

Another of the YouTube videos on art that I call Meditations has just passed its one thousandth view. This is no big deal given that when I typed 'kittens' in the YouTube machine, the first results had 707,000, 13 million, and 49 million hits respectively. But in my little world, I'm pleased that it did -- and surprised that it's the one I did on painter Cecily Brown:   Subscribe to Praeterita in a reader

Eighty-five years old and still going strong, British painter Leon Kossoff is the subject of my 72nd meditation on art. To view the previous 71, go to the 'Videos' page above.   Subscribe to Praeterita in a reader

Number 69 in this series discusses the strange work of Swiss installationist Urs Fischer.   Subscribe to Praeterita in a reader

Number 67 in the series of webby talks on art for the internet machine is a direct response to taking some students to the Art Institute of Chicago, last Thursday.   Subscribe to Praeterita in a reader

Normally I don't go negative in these, but this one on the minutely talented British former 'infanta terible' starts on the dark side, before I manage to say something positive about one of her prints.   Subscribe to Praeterita in a reader

Ever heard of John Marin? I hadn't, until I started living in the USA. And not many people here would either know his work or bother with it once they saw it. Medi-web-talk-Tation number 65 is a small contribution to changing that.   Subscribe to Praeterita in a reader

Meditation Number 64 starts with a personal memory of Joseph Beuys, the great German artist of the second half of the twentieth century.   Subscribe to Praeterita in a reader

Meditation 63 is on one of the first paintings I remember seeing in a gallery where I stopped and thought: "Wow, that is the most beautiful thing I've ever seen. Me want to paint. Me want to become painter."   Subscribe to Praeterita in a reader

Number 60 (yes, I've been posting one of these a week for 60 weeks now!) discusses the work of Ghanaian artist El Anatsui. I saw his work for the first time in Art in America only a couple of years ago. If I won the lottery, I would probably buy one of his pieces straight away.   Subscribe to Praeterita in a reader

Meditation number 59 was inspired by my recent trip to the Hirschorn in DC, and encountering a room full of mobiles by Calder, all of which I was seeing for the first time, having only previously known about them, and grown to love them, from seeing reproductions in books.   Subscribe to Praeterita in a reader

This week's Meditation is Number 30, and as I've been so engrossed in Van Gogh's letters recently, I thought it was time to consider something by the loony low-lander.   Subscribe to Praeterita in a reader

This week's Meditation is on a painting by Philip Guston from his abstract expressionist period. This latest web-talk is number 26 in a series that I am intending to do weekly for a whole year. So I guess this marks the half-way point.   Subscribe to Praeterita in a reader

Meditation on Kerry James Marshall's idea of black from Philip Hartigan on Vimeo . This week's Meditation is on work by Chicago-based artist Kerry James Marshall.   Subscribe to Praeterita in a reader

This week's Meditation is on a sculpture by David Smith (1906-1965).   Subscribe to Praeterita in a reader

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

This week's Meditation is on a stunning installation by Richard Wilson, which is back on show again at the new Saatchi Gallery in London, for which the piece was first created in 1987.   Subscribe to Praeterita in a reader