I did not visit Kassel five years ago, but I cannot forget Alyce Kaplan’s work in the hexagonal room on the top floor of the Orangerie. While I didn’t see it in person, her work appeared on the gray carpeting on the landing as a colorful reflection. I don’t recall stepping closer to that reflection, […]
Since arriving in Malaga a couple of weeks ago, I have been on a no beer diet. In this land of Sangria, Ribera, Rioja and Vermut, you’d think that would be a pretty easy task. However, scattered across Malaga city are several craft beer bars that offer the widest possible variety of temptation. Last night, […]
To give you a brief respite from documenta 14, from my memories of Athens and preparations for Kassel, here is R. B. Kitaj’s 1960 work “The Murder of Rosa Luxemburg”. I saw this sublime work at the Picasso Museum here in Malaga, as part of the exhibition “Bacon, Freud, y la Escuela de Londres” and […]
When I take students to Rome, I try to get them to to visualize the immense scale of what the Temple of Jupiter Optimus Maximus must have looked like on the Capitoline Hill by asking them to imagine a ‘Pantheon in the sky’. According to our typical itinerary, we would have seen the Pantheon the […]
How much time did you spend in Athens with your face up against a window, peering into a closed building, trying to get a glimpse of a work of art or at least the space in which it was made? Did this happen to you at Archimidous 15 and Nikhil Chopra’s Drawing a Line through […]
Did you know when you took the photograph of this quiet performance piece, with its rustle of aligning sunlight, that its creator’s name, Marie Cool Fabio Balducci, was some form of collective pseudonym? Did you read about ‘them’ in an interview article called ‘The Politicization of Anatomy’, in which ‘they’ respond to a question about […]
On your last day in Athens you booked into a tour of the Odeion, lead by a member of the documenta chorus, Denise Araouzou. You wanted to see and hear the art of this space that you had repeatedly returned to through the eyes and ears of another. You were drawn to the description of […]
Did you experience a distinct sense of déjà vu (or, more accurately, déjà vécu) when you found Olaf Holzapfel’s Zaum (Fence), 2017 waiting for you in Athens? What did you think when confronted by this artist, which the Daybook tells us, ‘was born in a country that no longer exists, and whose coming-of-age involved crossing […]
When you found Allan Sekula’s School is a Factory, 1978-1980 at ASFA, you registered a distinct sense of recognition and satisfaction. You had seen this work in Madrid, where it is part of the collection of the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía. You also felt that Sekula’s wry meditation on the institution of […]
What time did you take this photograph? Was it too early in the day for Social Dissonance? Were you curious enough to return at 7pm or didn’t you have the time? Or was it 7pm on a Monday, the day of rest for the performers? What did you make of the room, behind these doors? […]