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8259. TheWizardOfWhimsy - 7/18/2006 7:22:51 PM Sorry for the indulgence, but I wanted to share this with some of the people here who are rooting for this guy's efforts . . .
Review by Patricia Rosoff for September Issue of Art New England Magazine, Boston
Exhibition: Italy, Ephemeral and Eternal, at the Center for Contemporary Printmaking, Matthews Park, 229 West Avenue, Norwalk, Connecticut, April 2-May 20, 2006.
A salient reality of Bob Dente’s prints—filtered through the dreamlike haze of their incorporeal yearning—is the fingerprint of pigment, which constitutes both the temporal and the ephemeral in this work. A sensitive photograph might render as well the ageless vistas set before us and their sleepy dance of tone, but it is the powdery reality of earthen color that lends these twilights their mood and these dawns their misty, blushing warmth. Always, beyond the dreamlike quality of these images, so evocatively pensive, there is always the utter factuality of printmaking as a physical act.
Much as these views of the ancient Italian countryside may echo in the footsteps of such earthy nineteenth-century poetic romantics as the Frenchman Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot (1796-1875) and the American George Inness (1825-1894), they proclaim their modernity in their emphasis on image-making—and image-seeing—as a physical act. Consequently, the “narrative” in these works is as thoroughly abstract as their agenda is ethereal.
These are meditations, all right, but they are also stories of pigment smeared and pigment stamped. Of pigment brushed wetly across a printing plate that must suffice for a sky, of landscape that overlays it with a sticky thumbprint of earthen architecture. Devoid of human figures, though pregnant with the fact of timeless human occupation, these are pictures animated, literally by the touch of the artist—who is in effect, and for our benefit, their sole occupant.
What is most interesting and poetic, ultimately, is the way the pictures play with the construction of pictorial space. A landscape, by all conventional rights, should read in perspective depth; instead, Dente’s somehow read vertically—rise, rather than recede, more like a Rothko. Their interplay of push-and-pull constitutes a compressed dialogue of surface color and touch.
In works like “Tuscan Farm, Longs Shadows with Early Morning Mist,” the distant, misty view of serpentine woods snaking through ochred hills rises like a dream above the foreground in which a glinting cubicle of a red-roofed farmhouse paired against a dark curtain of woods with the solitary sentinel of a cyprus tree. A dream within a dream, worthy of a haiku, and indelibly grounded in a dialogue between the art of today and that of the nineteenth century.
8260. wabbit - 7/18/2006 8:41:32 PM WoW, great review, and fully deserved! I'm going to pick up the mag next time I'm in Borders. 8261. TheWizardOfWhimsy - 7/18/2006 10:30:44 PM Thanks wabb, but don't waste the money–besides, the last time I was in Borders, they didn't have it on thje shelves. It was taken over by new people and I think their circulation dropped significantly. Wait for the Robert Hughes' book! ({;?})
8262. wonkers2 - 7/18/2006 10:39:12 PM Congrats, Wiz! Your prints are beautiful. And good luck with your recent paintings. 8263. TheWizardOfWhimsy - 7/18/2006 10:43:30 PM Thanks wonk. 8264. wabbit - 7/19/2006 12:17:04 AM Hughes? Cool, alrighty then! 8265. arkymalarky - 7/19/2006 2:57:14 AM Posey Hill made the list on CDBaby. I'd never heard of it, but Bro says it's a good thing.
I guess this can go here too: I just ordered a set of these poi. A neighbor in CO does it and it looked so fun I had to try it. She loaned me a set of hers and I had a great time with them. I hope it cools down by the time I get mine in the mail.
8266. TheWizardOfWhimsy - 7/19/2006 11:06:16 PM That was a joke, wabb, but a guy can dream! 8267. judithathome - 7/20/2006 1:57:22 AM Arky...this year's party is looking like a BANNER year!
Oh, and sorry to report, Frankster can't make it because he has moved and has some other unexpected expenses come up but he sends his regards to everyone...here AND at the bash in Arkansas. Never heard back from Seadate. I like to think he'll just show up, unannounced. 8268. judithathome - 7/20/2006 2:01:48 AM Wait for the Robert Hughes' book! ({;?})
I love Hughes but I don't think even HE could write a more evocative review of your work, Wiz...beautifully done...and you must be so proud!
8269. arkymalarky - 7/20/2006 2:46:04 AM I'm really looking forward to it! That's a bummer about Frank, but I will hold out hope for Seadate. And I'm hoping Frank will surprise me again one of these days!
8270. TheWizardOfWhimsy - 7/20/2006 4:26:59 AM Thanks Judith, I'm grateful but even more pleased that there's a reviewer out there who actually gets it–it's hope for all artists in this trendoid-driven art scene. 8271. anomie - 7/29/2006 12:29:06 AM So, Ms. No, I was all cool with Tori Amos. She's good looking, talented and compelling to look at even if her videos are sometimes cheesy. I bought the two disk set of videos...no problem, until the one where she played with RATS. Yes Rats! Not pretty cuddly lab rats but regular RATS! And snakes. Snakes I can handle.
I'm reevaluating my committment. Ha! 8272. wonkers2 - 8/5/2006 10:28:22 PM The Gypsy Strings at the Rivera Court 8273. wonkers2 - 8/14/2006 5:26:00 PM Here's a shockerGunter Grass admits he was a member of Hitler's Waffen-SS.
Grass is Germany's best writer, author of the widely acclaimed "Tin Drum," which is perhaps the most biting satire of the atrocities of Nazi Germany. 8274. judithathome - 8/14/2006 7:05:31 PM I don't know that he is their best writer but he is certainly very good. 8275. PelleNilsson - 8/14/2006 7:57:40 PM Have you read Grass, wonkers? Personally, I think 'The Flounder' is better than 'The Tin Drum*. 8276. wonkers2 - 8/14/2006 8:01:12 PM Well, he's my favorite living German writer. Very imaginative guy. If you haven't seen Tin Drum, put it on your list. Or better, read the book. It's incredible that the man who wrote that book was in the SS. He was only 18 at the time and I guess he was drafted. 8277. judithathome - 8/14/2006 11:50:52 PM I've seen the movie AND read the book. I think the best German writer is Thomas Mann but if you narrow it down to living author, I won't quibble. 8278. wonkers2 - 8/15/2006 5:27:14 AM No doubt Thomas Mann is widely considered to by Germany's best. I like Grass better although I've read several of both.
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