Author: David Holcomb

  • Nothing if not critical …

    • “The Art Critic”, by Normal Rockwell

    The death of writer and television personality Robert Hughes in 2012 was an event that did not exactly shake western civilization to its roots. His television shows “The Shock of the New” (1980) and “American Visions” (1997) had brought him some fame in the rarefied air of the BBC/PBS universe, but despite a long and wide-ranging career – he penned an  overview of the early European colonization of his native Australia, he contributed to an array of newspapers and magazines, and he even hosted (for one week, before being replaced by Hugh Downs) the ABC television news magazine “20/20” – to most people outside the art world he was almost unknown at the time of his death.

    With or without fame, in his views on art Robert Hughes was passionate, pompous, often obnoxious, but he was also unfailingly erudite and articulate, and he left us more aware and better-informed than he found us.

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  • An insane pronouncement

    Let’s suppose you’re doing last Sunday’s crossword puzzle.

    You’re stumped on seven down: a five-letter word for “indistinct”. There are a couple of possibilities here, but the one that pops into your mind first is “fuzzy”, so you drop that in, very faintly, in pencil.

    Okay, now what? Fifteen across, a six-letter word for “mystery”, is now coming up “enizma”, which is obviously wrong. A moment’s thought gives us a 99.9% certainty that we should be seeing “enigma” in that slot, but that gives us “fugzy” for seven down, our original problem clue: once again, it’s safe to assume that something’s not clicking.

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  • Links

    It always amazes and amuses me to see how a whole nest of unconnected obsessions can manage to circle around and overlap when you least expect it.

    • “Orithyia”, 2015, by yours truly.

    I finished a painting a couple of days ago to which I gave the title “Orithyia”. The name refers to an incident in classical Greek myth in which Boreas, the god of the north wind, takes a shine to a woman (or possibly a nymph, depending on your source) named Orithyia. When his courtship — admittedly clumsy, as Boreas is the rough north wind, not the suave west wind — does not win her over, he simply carries her off in a whirlwind and has his way with her anyway.

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  • Tick, tock, tick, tock …

    • How about a round of badminton while we wait for the burgers to come off the grill?

    Yes, it’s that time again. Winter is finally over, Ice Season is melting into slushy, gritty memories, and we’re moving into that other half of the year: Tick season.

    Here in the Ozarks, tick season runs from about the first week in April through the end of December, with occasional outbreaks in January, February, and March. By mid-May roving hordes of the little monsters will be moving through the underbrush like piranhas with legs, armored specks of concentrated evil seeking whom they may devour.

    We’re all becoming pretty current on the latest tick-borne diseases in humans, and the toll on pets is equally terrifying. Repellants, foggers and sprays fill the air like morning mist; gatherings of the beautiful people are aromatic with eau de permethrin, and the rest of us bathe in Deet as if were Chanel No. 5.

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  • The Loudest Voice

    • Rafael Edward Cruz

    The ruler of the Aztec empire was called the “tlatoani”, which roughly translates to “the one who talks the loudest”. From the founding of Gran Tenochtitlan in 1325 to the final collapse in 1521, the Aztec civilization survived for a grand total of 196 years, during which time they had become so hated by all of their neighbors that even the rapacious Spanish invaders were embraced as the lesser of two evils.

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  • Beginning a Painting

    • Richard Diebenkorn: “Girl and Three Coffee Cups” 1957

    “Notes to myself on beginning a painting”
    by Richard Diebenkorn

    1. Attempt what is not certain. Certainty may or may not come later. It may then be a valuable delusion.
    2. The pretty, initial position which falls short of completeness is not to be valued – except as a stimulus for further moves.
    3. DO search.
    4. Use and respond to the initial fresh qualities but consider them absolutely expendable.
    5. Don’t “discover” a subject – of any kind.
    6. Somehow don’t be bored but if you must, use it in action. Use its destructive potential.
    7. Mistakes can’t be erased but they move you from your present position.
    8. Keep thinking about Pollyanna.
    9. Tolerate chaos.
    10. Be careful only in a perverse way.

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  • The Bird and the Fish

    • David Holcomb, “Dialogue of the Bird and Fish“, 2014

    My painting “Dialogue Between the Bird and the Fish” will be finding a new home this weekend, and I thought this might be a nice time to tell the story that the picture illustrates. So, without further ado …

    A fly, hovering near the surface of a pond, finds itself suddenly the target of not one, but two predators: a bird who darts down from the nearby cattails and a fish who rises up unexpectedly from the depths of the water. Fortunately for the fly, his attackers are so startled that he has the opportunity to dart out of reach of either (only to be eaten later by a dragonfly — such is life).

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  • What looks nice over naugahyde …?

    • Some eateries need all the help they can get.Vincent van Gogh, “The Night Cafe”, 1888
       

    At the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, our local temple of culture, an odious sculpture from the generally delightful Claes Oldenburg was replaced over the holidays by a delightful sculpture from the generally odious Jeff Koons.

    Oldenburg, a icon of the sixties and seventies, has always been champion of a kind of oversized, over-the-top whimsy, taking such commonplace items as badminton birdies and clothespins and blowing them up to the size of Atlas rockets: the piece at Crystal Bridges, “Alphabet/Good Humor”, is a giant popsicle composed of letters of the alphabet melting together like fatty entrails, all painted a horribly suggestive band-aid beige.

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  • Crossing Boundaries

    • “The Kraken”, David Holcomb, 2014

    I’ve just made my first artwork sale to a buyer in Canada. I am strangely pleased by this. Somehow it all seems more real when there are border crossings involved.

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  • Truth and lies.

    • My copy is somewhat more up to date than this one.

    I was poking around among the bookshelves a day or so ago, looking for something to entertain me as the first cool weather of the season settles in, when I spotted my rather tattered Penguin Classics copy of the Histories of Herodotus.

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