A Forum for Diary Entries, Essays, Observations, Poetry, News, and Reviews
February 3rd, 2024
Historical reverence begets memorials of persons of patriotic and moral leadership, political righteousness, valor in military battle, and figures of religious influence and scientific genius. Before and after the Civil War drastically altered the social, economic, and cultural conditions of the nation, American artists, many of whom were trained in Italy, adopted individual styles in which naturalism played a role not only in sculptural portraiture but also with regard to animals, creating an entire genre of beguiling beasts in bronze. READ MORE >
January 26th, 2024
To be in Central Park is to enjoy one of the world’s greatest and most beautiful outdoor recreational arenas, savor the changing scenery of the four seasons of the year, observe varieties of wildlife and annual events of bird migration and botanical blooming, and take routine walks with your pet dog and stroll randomly with family members and friends. Over the years, as in the case of other regular Central Park goers you will have numerous non-living acquaintances like the ones you pass when walking down the great hallway lined with bronze sculptures by Rodin on the second floor of the Metropolitan Museum.
To put things on a pedagogical level, I have begun to write about the bronze animals and monuments of deceased persons of fame to be discovered if you follow me along Literary Walk on the Mall and elsewhere within Central Park. Please allow me here to be your docent as we examine the evidence that makes Central Park an urban outdoor museum.
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December 11th, 2023
The creation of independent works of art within the context of a great work of land art, whether as integral architectural design embellishments or independent selected art works on temporary display is a recurring theme in my recent journal postings. The current entry is an examination of how a permanent, outdoor, all-weather electrical installation can be considered a work of art whose design is thematically governed by beauty in the geometries of form and line exemplified by nature. READ MORE >
September 29th, 2023
The term “art in the park” has many connotations and, depending upon your definition, it can take a number of different forms. Following the thematic thread of my last four journal posts, which embrace the notion of Central Park as a naturalistic and architecturally embellished landscape that is a great work art in and of itself, is the story of the park conceived as being a ready-made outdoor art gallery with a congenial circulation system. To walk through it, enter here with me and read about the artist Christo’s consideration of the current surface of Central Park as a gallery floor upon which to erect an all-encompassing extraneous work of land art. READ MORE >
September 8th, 2023
Although Central Park’s beauty is innate to its site, it is fundamentally a work of nature and art fused into a single imaginative design. Contributing to this outcome was an often-overlooked collaborator with Olmsted and Vaux, the architect, Jacob Wrey Mould, as can be seen by my journalistic tour of some of his most beautiful design contributions to Central Park, including Bethesda Terrace. READ MORE >
July 31st, 2023
Because Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux used the existing schist bedrock foundations and outcrops as well as hundreds of thousands of cartloads of soil imported from New Jersey and Long Island to build Central Park according to their Greensward plan with its bedrock-based and bedrock-strewn glaciated topography, this 830-acre landscape can be considered to be a work of land art, a stylistic precursor of the 1960s and ‘70s movement to use on-site natural elements and related open spaces to build large landscapes of a conceptual nature. READ MORE >
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