The End of the Day in Florida

On my way to the 7-Eleven (a trip I take a few times a day), I walked through the empty studio courtyard. The amber-colored light was falling on the hibiscus and the silver-button bushes; the air was warm, had some salt in it and it smelled, as it often does, of soap thanks to the laundromat three buildings away.

Late afternoons in Florida have the stillness and glow of de Chirico paintings, except here the sky has more range. Since I am leaving soon, I stopped to notice it, and while looking around at the palm trees and sandy soil, I wondered why I paint winter landscapes.

I wasn’t there long when the repair shop next door, which usually closes early, began grinding something. It was annoying at first but then it helped settle some sort of order, an order in which the winter paintings didn’t seem as odd. However, it was not a relief.

Intellectual Affectations

Today a press release arrived via email. Here it is:

In his first solo exhibition at the Fredric Snitzer Gallery, Timothy Buwalda presents ambitious, large scale paintings, and several mono-prints that investigate the theme of hope in the negative; or, to take it a step further, hope in negation. They are reminiscent of what Richard Diebenkorn wrote in Notes to Myself on Beginning a Painting: "Mistakes can't be erased but they move you from your present position."
Buwalda uses wrecked cars as a metaphor for potential being squandered or not realized, but is ironically hopeful and quiet. The images weave back and forth between photorealism and abstraction. The use of various painting techniques within the same painting points to a search of painting language and the exploration of its limitations (this too at times explores negation).
Buwalda writes, "These paintings arrived from two distinct places for me. Firstly, reflection of my own life and how there are these 'check points' you are supposed to arrive at by certain time constraints (what do you do if you miss these?). Secondly, the process of paint itself. I feel these things overlap along the way, that there is a parallel between the process of painting and life, how you have to work with the negative, oftentimes, to get somewhere further than your original vision."
The exhibition will be on view at the Fredric Snitzer Gallery 2247 NW 1st PL Miami, FL 33127. Hours are 10am to 5pm Tuesday through Saturday. There will be an opening reception held on Saturday, September 8th, from 7:30 - 10 pm.


For some time now people have been exploiting the potential of art and its discourse as signs of intellectual prowess. In my experience of the contemporary art world, the desire to be brilliant trumps most other whims and vanities.

In this brief entry I will not explore why this might be the case. Instead, I will suggest that there are better ways to give the impression of intellectual rigor than this press release. It should be apparent that, even if poorly executed, a strategy is at play here: the press release could have mentioned Robert Bechtle or Charles Ray instead of the somewhat puzzling Diebenkorn reference (that R.D. is sharing space with the claims in this press release shows no one is safe in the art world), or the emphasis could have been on the choice of subject matter or on another other topic that the artist and his representatives actually understood. But instead they chose to write of negation, painting language and its limitations hoping to decorate what is obviously fairly thin content with the afterglow of Saussure, Baudrillard, et.al.

This gesture is, unfortunately, commonplace—it is a strategy of choice.

Intellectual ornament is popular because it only demands minor understanding of the ideas at play (perhaps as little as just the names) and it works because it only requires recognition, not understanding, from its audience. It relies on fast reads on the hope of getting away with statements like, “The use of various painting techniques within the same painting points to a search of painting language and the exploration of its limitations (this too at times explores negation).”

The "hard thinking" which has been de rigueur in the last forty years (just to pick a time) is at best amusing and at worst pathetic. Wasted time. I wonder how much could be done by Timothy Buwalda if he were to actually consider and work within the complexity of painting, without the tiresome escape of theories he has heard mentioned. Authentic engagement might show him, as it shows us all, that it is easier to hit against one’s limitations than those of painting.

Adorno as Cliché

The frequent reference to Adorno’s pronouncement, “to write a poem after Auschwitz is barbaric,” is problematic for at least four reasons:

1. The phrase is customarily presented outside of the context in which it appeared: “The critique of culture is confronted with the last stage in the dialectic of culture and barbarism: to write a poem after Auschwitz is barbaric, and that corrodes also the knowledge which expresses why it has become impossible to write poetry today."

2. The reference frequently comes with—particularly in academic contexts—a pompous undercurrent, as if seeking “ahhh” as a follow up.

3. It is rarely acknowledged that Adorno reconsidered his words: "Perennial suffering has as much right to expression as the tortured have to scream... hence it may have been wrong to say that no poem could be written after Auschwitz."

4. If Auschwitz invalidates anything is poetry whose nature or quality does not measure up. Auschwitz didn’t draw a line on the landscape of art that was not already there.

Anderson Ranch Reading List

I am enclosing a starter list of books on art and ideas that I consider useful to have read. Don’t look for a common point of view: it is not here: this list does not “add up.”

Art After Modernism by Brian Wallis
The Genius Decision by K. Ottmann
Camera Lucida by Roland Barthes
The Anti-Aesthetic by Hal Foster
Less than One by Joseph Brodsky
The Shape of Content by Ben Shahn
Nietzsche's Philosophy of Art by J. Young
Culture and Value by L. Wittgenstein
Selected Essays by John Berger
Painting as an Art by Richard Wollheim

The First Entry

The name of this blog is from Brecht.