THE SORCERER'S APPRENTICE

At North Farm
Somewhere someone is traveling furiously toward you,
At incredible speed, traveling day and night,
Through blizzards and desert heat, across torrents, through narrow passes.
But will he know where to find you,
Recognize you when he sees you,
Give you the thing he has for you?

Hardly anything grows here,
Yet the granaries are bursting with meal,
The sacks of meal piled to the rafters.
The streams run with sweetness, fattening fish;
Birds darken the sky. Is it enough
That the dish of milk is set out at night,
That we think of him sometimes,
Sometimes and always, with mixed feelings?

John Ashbery
born july 28 1927

CY TWOMBLY RIP

i think it may be impossible to understand what visual artists were faced w/at the end of the 20th century after pollock & warhol had answered picasso & duchamp. i'm not even sure a lot of them knew that pollock & warhol had answered the old man & the scamp. pollock's solutions seemed more of a cul de sac, while warhol seemed to open a lot of possibilites while closing off where & what an "artist" might do to "create art". the bone had really been gnawed nearly bare.

i think ellsworth kelly & cy twombly had some answers that kept them operating in an area that pushed irony away & still embraced art & the project of the artist. tracking the evolution of "olympia" from manet through dubuffet to twombly is a way of getting a sense of how visual artists approach the issue of tradition, innovation, & how working both produces a real & true advance.



http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/06/arts/cy-twombly-american-artist-is-dead-at-83.html?_r=1&ref=obituaries