Author Archives: Linnea

Tara Donovan’s Pin Drawings at Pace

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Drawing (Pins)
Drawing (Pins), 2010


While out for some openings in Chelsea last night, I noticed Pace had kept its doors open, so I got to take a close look at Tara Donovan’s latest work. As always when I see her work in person, I love it. Her use of materials manages to be subtle and simple but transformative. I originally thought when I saw the press release that these were graphite drawings, but as you can see below, they are made by sticking pins into gatorboard.

Not only do the pins create line and shading, but there’s a nice depth to the varying degrees of how deeply stuck the pins are. The pins themselves have a sheen to them, which picks up nicely in the light as you walk around them, and at 96″ x 96″ these large works leave some room to walk.

These pieces really don’t reproduce well in photographs, so if you have the chance to get over to Pace before March 19, I recommend it. The circles drawings, like the first image, are my favorite, but most of the works are  clean and perfect gradients like these:

Kiss

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The first onscreen kiss was captured in 1896 by the Edison Co. in “The May Irwin — John C. Rice Kiss,” showing a couple kissing and talking. They were dressed formally, and he sported a large mustache. Audiences were scandalized.”The spectacle of their prolonged pasturing on each other’s lips was hard to bear,” fumed publisher Herbert S. Stone in a review. “Such things call for police interference.” Warhol’s 1963 film Kiss is a 54 minute long view of different couples kissing.

More on kissing, from The Science of Kissing: 
  • Do you tilt your head to the right when you kiss? 90% of the world does.
  • 90% off the world kisses with their mouths now, though the custom has spread from European civilization as recently as the 20th c. 
  • There here is a 50% chance that a first kiss with a person will be the last–people use the information gleaned from a kiss, like the genetic compatibility indicated by their smell, to take it or leave it.
  • Only 13% of prostitutes’ clients demonstrate an interest in French kissing, presumably because kissing involves more than physical pleasure 

Dutch Winter Landscapes are full of skaters

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Hendrick Avercamp, Winter Scene on a Canal
Pieter Breughel, Winter Landscape with Skaters

Johannes Pieter van Wisselingh, Skaters in a Dutch Winter Landscape

These lovely ideals make me long for a world where winter is playful, joyful, and beautiful. Not to mention full of some of the most gorgeous trees. Then, however, for comparison’s sake, I google “new york city winter.” 

It looks like some ideals persist.