About This Issue

Again, our writers have hit a home run, touching down on topics important to creatives and their supporters everywhere, and finding incredibly interesting ways artists bring attention to and make work concerned with the power of art to display, influence and be heard. Bone Music, written about by Richard Humann unearths a secret power play by Soviet artists in the 1960s-80s to hear western music risking their lives and livelihoods, and make it available to their peers. Jillian Goss-Holmes unearths the what’s, how’s and why of the art market, especially at art fairs this year. Jorge Benitez, with great humor and satire, addresses the lack of passion due to the academician and scientification of visual art, especially in university bred culture, overtaking seeing and feeling; the heart usurped by process and reason, content and use replacing vision and thinking above making, with love. In quoting Socrates, Benitez segues to Nancy Nesvet’s piece arguing that Gerhard Richter, as shown in his retrospective at the Louis Vuitton Fondation in Paris, has spent a long career trying to convince the public of his true identity rather than that imposed by false media.  LQ McDonald’s poem, Still Life After Richter is LQ’s emotional response after hours of viewing Richter’s work in Paris. Glad to see this honest and truthful outpouring of emotional response to artwork. 

Jeanne Stanek, who loved the new Caravaggio film, seen at the arthouse theatre, Avalon, in DC writes how the paintings speak for themselves, illustrating Caravaggio’s life, needing few words. Her view is backed up by Franco Moro’s words about emotional awareness in Giovanni Agostino da Lodi’s paintings, declaring him the midpoint between the work of Leonardo and Caravaggio with Leonardo’s emotional capacities and expressive interpretation of the truth summarized in Leon Battista Alberti’s work. Jorge Benitez argues similarly that emotion, not form nor process predominates over the best artwork, bringing it to life, and evincing reaction, connection and simpatico from the viewer.

John Jones elucidates us on the value of bringing in artists and considering artwork to be included, at the inception of the architectural developmental process, so influencing the design of the building and of entire newly developed neighborhoods.

So love and emotion and touch, truth and art in our designs and our lives triumph, making the world better for all.