A Message From A Reader

A couple of weeks ago, I invited everybody to comment on the current edit of my upcoming book (the full sequence of images here), and name five images that should go, and five that you like best. The emails keep coming – thanks! With my elbow still in a cast and the sutures still in place, I thought I keep my own typing to a minimum and instead post one of my favorite messages so far, from a few days ago. I like this review so much that in my view the images, as Hannibal Lecter would phrase it, almost become “incidental”; stamp size copies included for reference:

“Hi Jens,

I hope you have powerful opiates with which to while away the hours…

I’m taking you up on your ‘invitation to comment’, but am trying to minimize an *overly* intellectualistic approach to the visual…

I don’t like #2, too pseudo Jasper Johns:

(–unlike #29 which nicely deconstructs Johns and seems fitting for our era of “Fake Empire”–check out the song by The National [here]):

#12 (too depressing):

#25 (most of the cones, I very much like–but here, the juxtaposition of the colors is unappealing):

#43 (a little boring?):

#78 (okay, I admit it, I’m an uncultured, simple-minded person–but the color of the stuff in the jar is just yucky!):

I like, indeed love, #8 (wonderfully enigmatic, but wry & cute at the same time):

#20 (nicely enigmatic, reminiscent of Jackson Pollock, in a good way):

#33 (fantastic! one wants to look *through* the picture, to see what’s ‘on the other side’ of the ‘surface’):

#61 (one of my two favorites: thinging things!):

#67 (great color and texture; I very much like that one can’t immediately tell whether it’s a painting, a lithograph, or a photo):

#70 (I like the tiles and the blueberries ‘interacting’):

(–this leads me to prefer #70 to #69, which may, however, be more beautiful):

#75 (my other favorite! I’m reminded of the >Rückenfiguren< in, say, any number of Caspar David Friedrich's paintings--but the blue into which the figure is looking could as easily be a void of nothingness as a site of transcendence & insight):

#86 (my third most favorite–but behind 61 & 75–I love the delicate colors juxtaposed, and the different ‘structure’ of the simple, ‘geometrical’ chair vs. the draped, flowing cloth):

and #100 (a great pendant to #20–each could be a drawing):

[...]

Cheers,

G.L.”