Artistic montage, as discussed by directors such as Sergei Eisenstein and Alexander Kluge, deals with questions regarding the relationship between individual elements, especially with respect to images and scenes. In radical montage, the respective components often point beyond their specific material substrate to some sort of socio-philosophical or historical constellation.

There is a now quite famous moment in Les Blank’s documentary on the making of Werner Herzog’s Fitzcarraldo, Burden of Dreams, in which the narrator quotes the German director as stating that, “Everyday life is only an illusion, behind which lies the reality of dreams.” Not a bad slogan for a modernist program . . .

Why is it that so much writing on art today — ostensibly criticism — only skates on the surface of artworks, providing description, identifying a handful subjects and themes, maybe some precedents, and then a conclusion — or rather, an ending. The writing stops.

The main problem that the artist encounters at work — the source of all their woes and triumphs — is that materials must be transformed: made to give what they cannot. Appearance is the mask of the true face beneath.

The most recent idea that appeared to me, so insistently that I felt compelled to write it down, was of painting as a scaffold. This was related to an older idea of mine, of painting as a veil . . .

Caesura editors Patrick Zapien and Gabriel Almeida talk to Elisa Jensen about her practice.

Caesura editors Patrick Zapien and Gabriel Almeida talk to Jeane Cohen about her practice.

On December 11, 2022, Caesura editors Gabriel Almeida and Patrick Zapien hosted a live-streamed conversation with Bloomington, Indiana-based painter Peter Shear.

On November 20, 2022, Caesura editors Gabriel Almeida and Patrick Zapien hosted a live-streamed conversation with Chicago-based painter Will Gabaldón.

On November 13, 2022, Caesura editors Gabriel Almeida and Patrick Zapien hosted a live-streamed conversation with Bristol-based painter David Abbott.

Visiting the Noguchi Museum recently, I was struck by the difficulty of sculpture as art: how it's constrained by its physical presence to a degree that other media, like music, painting, and poetry, are not.

After Effect — James Turrell’s latest “Wedgework” (recently presented by Pace) — takes up this question of the imaginary dimensions of time and space and their relationship to perception, memory, and thought.

It’s not true that the world is ending — if anything, it already has. And yet life continues, alive in its death. These thoughts — speculations — give a perfunctory account of the work of the late painter and poet Manoucher Yektai, a member of the New York School whose first solo show in the city since 1984 opened at Karma two weeks ago.

Today I begin in earnest. What does it matter that my thoughts are clouded? A light will shine through in the end.

“From the artist’s perspective, it's the case that all art has to be a reconsideration of art history. Every artwork, in order to find its originality, has to reconsider all of art history.”