Reading “Crow Mountain” by Can Xue
"Crow Mountain." Translated by Karen Gernant and Chen Zeping. Asymptote, July 2015. When you read Can Xue's story "Crow Mountain," you're reading about a young girl who wishes to investigate a place. It's called Crow Mountain, but it's really a derelict
Russian Icons
The Museum of Russian Icons in Clinton, Massachusetts, is housed in a building so beautifully constructed, largely of wood that I’d like to move into it. I feel I could live very well there. The rooms are spacious but not
“Horseman and Dog” at Boston’s MFA
Almost every time I visit Boston's Museum of Fine Arts, I have a look at this small sculpture. It's a favorite, and I often take guests to see the piece in the Greek galleries. The terracotta figurine is a funerary
On Reading Black Elk Speaks and Seeing Plains Indians: Artists of Earth and Sky
For those who don’t know, Black Elk Speaks was written in 1932 by the poet John Neihardt, based on his translated conversations with Black Elk, an Oglala Lakota medicine man. Black Elk, who died in 1950, was a witness not
Rufino Tamayo—The Creatureness and Spirituality of “Seres Humanos”
In many of his figurative paintings, the Mexican painter Rufino Tamayo makes human beings look strange. We have to look at them as if we’ve never seen such creatures before. He portrays human beings—in Spanish, seres humanos—as creatures and as
Cathedral
Cathedral belongs to a series of paintings I've been working on for the last year or so. These 20 images on canvases measuring 30" x 30" had their genesis in sketches I made at the Asian Civilization Museum in Singapore