{"id":147581,"date":"2020-09-14T13:54:45","date_gmt":"2020-09-14T17:54:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/?p=147581"},"modified":"2020-09-14T15:30:13","modified_gmt":"2020-09-14T19:30:13","slug":"the-art-of-distance-no-25","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2020\/09\/14\/the-art-of-distance-no-25\/","title":{"rendered":"The Art of Distance No. 25"},"content":{"rendered":"

In March,<\/em>\u00a0The Paris Review\u00a0launched<\/em>\u00a0The Art of Distance, a newsletter highlighting unlocked archive pieces that resonate with the staff of<\/em>\u00a0the magazine<\/em>, quarantine-appropriate writing on the<\/em>\u00a0Daily, resources from our peer organizations,<\/em>\u00a0and more. Read Emily Nemens\u2019s introductory letter\u00a0here<\/a>, and find the latest unlocked archive pieces below.<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cFor many of us, the sudden shuttering of museums this spring was an upsetting jolt. Me, for one. Visual art has always been a part of my New York: my first job in the city was at the Metropolitan Museum of Art\u2014the route from my basement office to my favorite Frankenthaler is still burned onto my eyelids. When MoMA opened after its renovation in 2019, I treated myself to a membership, which meant that when I found myself in Midtown I could weave through the crowds to look at one dear painting, or two, before heading on my way. And <\/em>The Paris Review\u2019s offices are in West Chelsea, New York\u2019s premier gallery district, which meant my colleagues and I would often chat around the coffee maker about what we\u2019d visited over lunch, installations coming in, and shows closing soon. <\/em>My commute currently takes me past several bookshelves and a dog bed, but there hasn\u2019t been a total vacuum of visual arts: over the summer we\u2019ve seen art in the sky<\/a> and on billboards<\/a>, art in the mail<\/a> and online<\/a>. It\u2019s been inspiring, yet I still miss the gallery view. Incrementally, museums here in New York are opening, with timed tickets and limited capacity. While some of us are queuing up, I know others, by dint of safety and geography, aren\u2019t sure when they\u2019ll be able to visit museums again. In anticipation of returning to museums and galleries\u2014or, in some cases, as a substitute for it\u2014this week we offer selections that remind us of those big white cubes and the art therein.\u201d \u2014Emily Nemens, Editor<\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

A drawing of Vincent van Gogh by Saul Steinberg.<\/p><\/div>\n

In John Tranter\u2019s epic poem \u201cRain<\/a>,\u201d we meet a memorable, troubled artist whose work sounds like it would fit well into an abstract expressionist gallery. Here\u2019s how Tranter describes the artist\u2019s work:<\/p>\n

\u2026 He painted
\nbig canvases, twelve feet across,
\nred, black and purple zigzags,
\nthen he\u2019d blacken them with a blowtorch\u2014
\ntrying to face up to the Americans,
\nhe said \u2026<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

<\/p>\n

In the Art of Fiction no. 235<\/a>, Percival Everett, who maintains a painting practice alongside his writing, recalls his first encounter with Jackson Pollock: \u201cBut the experience of understanding that you cannot take the entire work in at once, yet that there are places you can enter\u2014I still hold onto that.\u201d<\/p>\n

A few seasons ago, we published correspondence between Helen Frankenthaler and James Schuyler<\/a>; the friends found inspiration in each other. Schuyler\u2019s unpublished poem \u201cTorcello\u201d describes their run-in at the Venice Biennale; other lines of the poem are lifted straight from postcards Frankenthaler sent him.<\/p>\n

The poet Stanley Kunitz was married to a painter, and he loved the energy painters brought into his life. They even influenced his process, as he explains in the Art of Poetry no. 29<\/a>: \u201cMy painter-friends\u2014among them Kline and De Kooning and Rothko and Guston and Motherwell\u2014were enacting an art of gesture to which I responded. When I insist on poetry as a kind of action, I\u2019m thinking very much in these terms\u2014every achieved metaphor in a poem is a gesture of sorts, the equivalent of the slashing of a stroke on canvas.\u201d<\/p>\n

And of course there are the art portfolios. It\u2019s hard to pick any as favorites, but I do like this pair: an early feature of Alberto Giacometti\u2019s drawings<\/a> coupled with a portrait of him by Saul Steinberg, whose 2010 feature \u201cPortraits and Landscapes<\/a>\u201d includes a drawing of \u201ca dear friend.\u201d<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Sign up\u00a0here<\/a>\u00a0to receive a fresh installment of The Art of Distance in your inbox every Monday<\/em>.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This week\u2019s The Art of Distance pays tribute to the museums and galleries we\u2019ve been missing for most of the year.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[63638],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-147581","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-the-art-of-distance"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nThe Art of Distance No. 25 by The Paris Review<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"This week\u2019s The Art of Distance pays tribute to the museums and galleries we\u2019ve been missing for most of the year.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2020\/09\/14\/the-art-of-distance-no-25\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" 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