 |
 |
Doug wrote: <<& certainly those big ones in the Tate permanent collection are among my great meditation sites...>> Doug, for me too. It's been a long time since I've sat in that room, but the memory of those canvases remains vivid. Great peace there, perhaps paradoxically, give R's tormented life. Viz. Annie writes: <<I found it interesting that he went more and more minimal over time; reducing form to washes of colour and then finally reducing the colour to greys. It seems to me that he suicided at that point cos there was no where else for him to go conceptually.>> But this seems not only reductive to me, but to confuse cause & effect. It seems, too, sentimental to claim--& how would one know?--that an artist committed suicide because he couldn't think of any new directions. Such a claim devalues both art & suicide. If I had to choose, I would prefer to see the paintings as a record of some much larger despair. But in fact that also seems overly reductive. We have the paintings. jd ====================== Joseph Duemer School of Liberal Arts, 5750 Clarkson University Potsdam NY 13699 315.268.3967 [log in to unmask] http://web.northnet.org/duemer http://www.grammarbitch.com/ppp/index.html ====================== Times are bad. Children no longer Obey their parents, and everyone Is writing a book. [Cicero]