art writing

friendship (1963)

in

agnes martin, friendship (1963). museum of modern art, new york.

gold leaf.

it glows. wherever the light hits. your form leaves a darkened center when you stand in front of it. a shadow.

as you move around it, it changes. changes everything about itself. colour, texture, hue, dimension.

from the left it takes on the shape of paper time cards stacked beside a clock. from the right it smooths out like an expanding field of wheat. a sea of gold. far enough back it’s smooth & faint.

up close it becomes rugged, pocked with texture & moments of almost red scratched through. the lines, etched down to the canvas, become gashes across a face or the raised scars on a wrist. the moments of red… blood?

it undulates & the gold rolls as you tilt your head. between water & oil…

something else, mercury like & waiting to either poison you or wrap you in warmth.

I close my eyes. I can feel the gold on my face like the sun.

on being seen

in ,

12:18 - 53rd street - MoMA

what does it mean to be seen but not SEEN? maybe its the difference between observation & objectification? photographs are about seeing yes, but they’re also a way of erasing the viewer or the maker of the photographer. they’re like windows with one way glass. we can see in but they can’t see out. in fact, they don’t even know we’re looking at them. I guess that’s pure voyeurism.

sometimes they do know I suppose. it’s a different kind of feeling. more about being on display for a purpose. if you can even call it being on display at all.

everything becomes a performance OR it already was one.

to be seen

an eye immobilized
against grey. a
mystery–
that’s solving itself
& never revealing
its answers.

 

on context

in ,

on cy twombly at the getty
untitled (to sappho) 1976

the chunk of colour feels lonely until you slow down enough to decipher the text. the handwriting is scrawled long & pulling against itself–stretching into the margins.

it’s sappho. recounting the violent crushing of purple petal underfoot. the visceral feeling of it. the petals bruised from the pressure smashing down on them once delicate, now devolving into only colour. devolving into feeling.

the purple makes us feel the ache of the bruise blooming on pristine skin.

the getty center’s cy twombly exhibition, “making past present,” runs until 30 october, 2022.