Every photographer I know, at some point in their career, has studied Walker Evans’ photographs of Hale County, Alabama made during the Great Depression. Before I made photographs, I looked to his with an almost mystical wonder and curiosity. The photographs endure as the pinnacle of what photography can and should be, as Evans himself […]

“I had a break-through in my painting when I began thinking metaphorically. It started with a vein in a forehead, then the realization that everything could be vascular. So tendrils of hair became capillary, as did tendrils of light, stripes in a shirt were arterial, a scrunchie hairband a thrombosis. This was a key for […]

This is when I love photography; when the medium born to tell a story, doesn’t. No other art form is capable of producing this kind of exchange—giving an expectation of an exact record, only to strip that preconception away, leaving form in its place. In 2012, I saw an exhibition of platinum/palladium prints by master […]

The transformation of dirt on a surface into a world of light, air, weight, space, movement — that’s art. That’s the beginning and the end. That’s not to be avoided. Georges Seurat, the Artist’s Mother, 1882-83, conté crayon on paper. Images in this article are included under the fair use exemption. This Seurat, Giacometti and […]

…criticism has smacked me against the head with recognition, racked my practice with doubt, saddled my movements with embarrassment, and struck me on the ass with a hot poker of jealousy and desire. Jasper Johns, “The Critic Sees,” 1964, sculpmetal over plaster with glass © Jasper Johns/VAGA, NY, NY. Under Fair Use Guidelines. spacer “If […]

“…a space opened up behind that paper, a space—who knows how wide—between the paper and the wall, inaccessible but hinted at by the tear. It occurred to me that this photograph was…” Frederick Sommer, “Max Ernst, 1946.” 1946. Gelatin silver print. © Frederick & Frances Sommer Foundation. Image courtesy of Bowdoin College Museum of Art, […]

…there’s also no question that locking Mr. Dial’s work into the “outsider” narrative diminishes it, turning it into artifact instead of art–-into evidence of his struggle against the often brutal and at least unforgiving injustice he was met with daily. Thornton Dial, “Tiger Likes The Lady To Stand By.” 22 x 30 inches; mixed media […]

Like we said in Part II of our Annual Recap, what stayed with us most from 2013 was mostly small and mostly quiet, meditative works that brought us back to the pleasures of long looking. Here’s a shortlist of the galleries and museums we felt did right by riding the counter-current, giving us intimately scaled […]

Happily, the best of 2013 was not the biggest. Happily, because art–and the market that seems to drive it–has trended toward the big: the big wall-power painting and print, the gigantor sculpture; and the big spaces and names that can accommodate. But what stayed with us most from 2013 was mostly small and mostly quiet, […]

We started Tilted Arc back in October because we wanted to create a conversation around ideas of practice and intention. We are so deeply grateful to the artists who have contributed fresh and often challenging insight into how art and literature get made, and the essential place that materials, memory, perception and process claim in […]