After yesterday’s rather extreme post that called for a “Classics without Antiquity”, aka the grounding of any engagement between Classicists and contemporary artists in the abandoning of antiquity (at least temporarily) by the former so as to better immerse themselves in contemporary debates, today I feel a palpable sense of responsibility to offer some kind […]
Dear Jessica, We are about to head back home to Columbus, but I wanted to send you a quick note before we go. Have you had any more thoughts about your experience at the Modern Classicisms workshop since yesterday? (I am sure it was a lot to process and engage with). I’m especially interested if […]
Dear Jessica, How are you? I can’t wait to hear all about the workshop yesterday. We’re having a great time in Cleveland and I’m writing this from the Great Lakes Brewery, while sipping their pale ale Burning River. I’ll have to make it quick. You tell me that you were joined on your panel by […]
Dear Jessica, Many thanks for agreeing to have this dialogue on Minus Plato about your participation at today’s workshop Modern Classicisms: Classical Art and Contemporary Artists in Dialogue at King’s College, London. I’m writing this to you on my way out of town, up north to Cleveland, for a well-earned weekend break (it’s Veteran’s Day […]
Today, to commemorate Classicist Emily Watson as the first woman to translate Homer’s Odyssey into English, I want to take us back to the first English translation of a Greek play, which was also by a woman, Jane Lumley, way back in 1557. Harold Child in his 1909 edition of Lumley’s translation remarks on how […]
The recent issue of the Afterall journal is dedicated to the topic of “Ethno-Aesthetics”, a term coined by the Greenlandic artist Pia Arke in her manifesto of the same name in 1995. Explored across the issue’s “Forward” by contributing editor Candice Hopkins, the manifesto itself and in two essays by Stefan Jonsson (“On Pia Arke”) […]
In preparation for his talk at the Wexner Center for the Arts next week, I have been reading Douglas Crimp’s On the Museum’s Ruins. The book, published in 1993, gathers together essays that Crimp had previously published (especially in October) in the 1980s, alongside a selection of Louise Lawler’s photographs. Mid-way through the introduction (“Photography […]
It seems equally intuitive to align Classicism with Classical sculpture, as it is to investigate Classicism in contemporary art almost exclusively through the appropriation and transformation of Classical sculpture. Two recent, multifaceted projects – Liquid Antiquity and Modern Classicisms – which aim at bringing artists and Classicists together, are both grounded in this reactivating of […]
I have just read Candice Hopkins essay “The Appropriation Debates” in the most recent issue of Mousse magazine. Hopkins, whose work on global indigenous art and culture I first encountered at documenta 14, discusses two controversial artworks of the last year: the inclusion of Dana Schutz’s painting Open Casket (2016) at the Whitney Biennial and […]
Please allow me to remind you, it’s always your business. I am your business just as our business belongs to us. Public transit seduces me with a fantasy of who we work, who we channel, in the service of. It prevents abstraction to “the human race” with all the horrible spirits lurking in its utterance. […]