Encounters · No. 8 Snake Skin, Warm Blanket Sophia Luna Portra makes sculptures from muslin and coffee, sings gothic folk songs about transformation, and thinks about clothes the way a philosopher thinks about the self. She is at the beginning of something. By Bergotte A note on this essay: the preceding pieces in this seriesContinue reading “Sophia Luna Portra “
Tag Archives: Encounters
Asger Jorn
Encounters · No. 7 The Vandal with a Vision Asger Jorn bought other people’s paintings at flea markets and painted over them. He helped invent two of the twentieth century’s most radical movements and then walked away from both. He believed that art was not a product but a way of being alive. He wasContinue reading “Asger Jorn”
Nan Goldin
Encounters · No. 5 The Ballad Nan Goldin spent decades photographing the people she loved — in bed, in bars, in hospital, in death. Then she turned the same unflinching attention on the family that had helped kill them. By Bergotte There is a photograph taken in 1984 that Nan Goldin has described as theContinue reading “Nan Goldin”
Balthus
Encounters · No. 4 The Count of Nowhere Balthus was one of the greatest painters of the twentieth century and the author of images that remain genuinely, irreducibly disturbing. Both of these things are true. The difficulty is that they cannot be separated. By Bergotte Toward the end of his life, Balthus lived in aContinue reading “Balthus”
Yayoi Kusama
Encounters · No. 15 – This was written before Kusama’s passing, and originally scheduled for a November release. Due to current events, we have moved things around. You can read her obituary here. Infinity, One Dot at a Time Yayoi Kusama has been covering every surface she can reach with dots and nets and flowersContinue reading “Yayoi Kusama”
Carl Larsson
Encounters · No. 2 The House That Light Built Carl Larsson painted the same home, the same wife, the same children, hundreds of times. The result was not repetition. It was an argument — about beauty, about Sweden, about what a life is allowed to look like. By Bergotte There is a house in Sundborn,Continue reading “Carl Larsson”
Sophie Calle
Encounters · No. 1 The Art of Following Someone Sophie Calle has spent forty years turning other people’s lives — and her own grief — into something that looks, uncomfortably, like art. By Bergotte In January 1980, Sophie Calle followed a stranger to Venice. She had met him briefly at a party in Paris, notContinue reading “Sophie Calle”
Issey Miyake
Encounters · No. 6 A Piece of Cloth Issey Miyake survived the atomic bomb at seven years old and spent the rest of his life making clothes that felt like freedom. These two facts are not unrelated. By Bergotte On the morning of August 6, 1945, Issey Miyake was seven years old and standing closeContinue reading “Issey Miyake”
Cady Noland
Encounters America Laid Bare Cady Noland made some of the most disturbing art of the late twentieth century from beer cans, shopping carts, silkscreened celebrity mugshots, and the hardware of American violence. Then she stopped. She has barely spoken since. The silence is part of the work. By Bergotte There is a work by CadyContinue reading “Cady Noland”
Peter Blake, Self-Portrait with Badges, 1961
Close Looking · One Painting Everything I Am Is on This Jacket In 1961, Peter Blake painted himself in a Chiswick garden holding an Elvis magazine, wearing Converse boots and a denim jacket covered in badges. The result is the most precise and most melancholy self-portrait in British art. It is also, accidentally, a portraitContinue reading “Peter Blake, Self-Portrait with Badges, 1961”
