On Local Maxima

In math, and economics–thanks to its 40-year-run of mathematicity–there’s this nice distinction between global maxima and local maxima. If you assume a bounded space, and assume that space includes rationality, consumption, writ however, then all you have before you, all you can maximize has to be maximized in that local space. Let’s try that in … Continue reading →

Stunt Writing

“The basic project of art is always to make the world whole and comprehensible, to restore it to us in all its glory and its occasional nastiness, not through argument but through feeling, and then to close the gap between you and everything that is not you, and in this way pass from feeling to … Continue reading →

On Art Writing, Or: Writing Refuse I

  I’m going to post the unedited refuse of things I’ve published elsewhere. This project starts now; it won’t be backdated. Here’s the first of that: that the “prison swap” prisoner of conscience Private Berghdahl’s most difficult test will be to become what he was to all those he loved and who loved hime before … Continue reading →

On the Art-Thingness of Art Criticism: a Mid-Thought Memo

Writing about art is a lot like writing about the air at the mountain top after you’ve been there, gone told that, and now, when writing, of necessity, you’re no longer up there and it’s no longer hard to breathe: It’s hard to do well and when done well it doesn’t measure up to the … Continue reading →

Kyle Staver: Painting in Relief

Kyle Staver makes the kind of artwork I want around me: more than simply hang limp on gallery walls, it’s work that tells stories about itself and about us; serious stories related unseriously to an audience that lives in a fully contemporary, complicated world. Staver’s paintings, prints and reliefs, on view through February at the … Continue reading →