When we lived in Bergen, Norway, I would occasionally go to the KODE Art Museums to see pieces by Edvard Munch and other Norwegian artists. During one of those visits, I encountered the work of Nikolai Astrup, a modernist painter from Kalvåg. Walking through the galleries, I came upon his 1920 painting entitled Marsmorgen (March Morning). This work stopped me because it depicts a tree, with … Read More Upon Discovering the Work of Chaïm Soutine
Whenever you go on a trip, whether the voyage constitutes a vacation or even work, you experience a certain suspension of time. You leave your normal everyday routine and find yourself unmoored from time, even if your family, friends, or co-workers accompany you on your journey. It’s a feeling that makes you forget what day it is. It’s a feeling that detethers you from … Read More Life Continues Without Us: The Stoppage of Time When We Travel
Over the past few posts I have been writing about some of my favorite comic issues and how these issues use the comics’ medium in engaging and experimental ways to tell compelling stories. Today, I want to continue that thread by looking at Tom Taylor and Bruno Redondo’s Nightwing #87, an issue that, Like Matt Fraction and David Aja’s Hawkeye #11, present readers with a new way to … Read More One Continuous Image in Tom Taylor and Bruno Redondo’s “Nightwing” #87
Over the past couple of weeks, I’ve been reading some books from the 33 1/3 series, specifically Nick Attfield’s on Dinosaur Jr.’s 1987 album You’re Living All Over Me and Michael Stewart Foley’s on Dead Kennedys’ 1980 album Fresh Fruit for Rotting Vegetables. Each has been thoroughly engaging, and Attfield’s writing serves, in a lot ways, as a master class on writing about music while Foley’s does an … Read More The Political Power of Punk: Dead Kennedys’ “Fresh Fruit for Rotting Vegetables”
A few weeks ago, someone told me about the work of neurologist and psychologist Viktor Frankl and his time in a concentration camp duroing World War II. After the person told me about Frankl, I sought out his memoir Man’s Search for Meaning where he lays out his ideas surrounding logotherapy. Frankl explains that logotherapy, which derives from logos, the Greek word for “meaning,” “focuses on the meaning of … Read More The Importance of Art as Resistance and Existence
Interminable Rambling 