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We’ve all experienced it. Call it a return from idleness, or simply the end of vacation, an experience as brutal as any to occur in the course of a year. Some of us feel the letdown upon return to work, or when a cascade of held mail tumbles from our post boxes. I knew it…
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Don’t call Richard Serra’s sculptures “minimalist.” For anyone who’s had a close encounter with his work in the past decade, labeling his burnt copper monuments as such feels useless. And untrue. For me, his recent exhibitions (I’m thinking of that astounding 2007 MOMA show, but also his long-term installation at the Dia: Beacon, certainly worth…
Continue readingI am Trying to Break Your Heart I am hoping to hang your head on my wall in shame— the slightest taxidermy thrills me. Fish forever leaping on the living-room wall— paperweights made from skulls of small animals. I want to wear your smile on my sleeve & break…
Continue readingThere I was sunning on an island off the tip of Long Island, as my vacation days dwindled to a precious few. Clouds rolled in. Part of me welcomed the momentary break from the rays, but another part dreaded the sun’s disappearance. I counted the minutes wondering if they would ever would. Uncertainty. In this…
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At the Robert Mann Gallery this spring I had my first encounter with the work of Joe Deal. His vistas deify the beauty found in desolation—the sprawl of fields, plateaus, and badlands beyond our urban sprawl. A space opens in your head when viewing his work, wonderlands wrought by time and the elements but miraculously…
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Dan Collin Seymour May 27, 1954-January 27, 1993
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Yep, it’s a miserable day in NYC—I’m craving heat on the kind of chilly, wet Monday that makes one wonder if spring will ever show. As any actor knows, one of the warmest places on earth is a stage bathed in light. It’s an uncommon, artificial reality that isn’t any less palpable merely because the…
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My war with memory continues. Watching the Sam Buntrock directed revival of the Stephen Sondheim/James Lapine masterwork Sunday in the Park with George, I thought how hard to judge the merits of anything when the mind, enamored (yes, I was but one of thousands of theater nerds who made the Shubert Theater his second…
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One of the saddest days of my NYC life was when I walked past the home of the Off-Broadway headquarters of Circle Rep only to find a restaurant had taken over the theater’s premises on Seventh Avenue South. It was proof positive that the landmark institution’s financial woes were insurmountable; I mourned their demise, home…
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How is it we discover too late the innovators to whom we owe a debt? The first picture frame I ever bought was a sectional one picked up at Art Brown on 46th Street; it was the only thing I could afford back in my early Manhattan years. I still own it; to its designer Bob Kulicke,…
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