Speed of Life

by Gregg Chadwick Last night the L.A. Louver Gallery held a rousing discussion: R.B. Kitaj's Life & Passion , with Tracy Bartley (director of the R.B. Kitaj studio), Derek Boshier (artist), David N. Myers (professor and chair of the UCLA History Department), and Paul Holdengräber (curator, instigator and Director/Founder of LIVE from the New York Public Library). Titian Orpheus and Eurydice   15 9/16" x 20 7/8"   oil on wood  ca . 1508–12 Accademia Carrara, Bergamo photo courtesy Metropolitan Museum, New York As I listened to the conversation, I scanned the room full of many of Kitaj's last paintings and was struck by the realization that in these artworks Kitaj was attempting to bring his deceased wife Sandra  back from death - Kitaj as the poet/artist incarnation of the mythic Orpheus would bring Sandra (his Eurydice, taken too soon) back from the underworld. These vibrant paintings were not just a testament to their passion but inste...

Gregg Chadwick 76cm x 61cm oil on linen 2010 Currently on exhibit at Manifesta Maastricht, the Netherlands A Bowl of Roses by Rainer Maria Rilke You saw angry ones flare, saw two boys clump themselves together into a something that was pure hate, thrashing in the dirt like an animal set upon by bees; actors, piled up exaggerators, careening horses crashed to the ground, their gaze thrown away, baring their teeth as if the skull peeled itself out through the mouth. But now you know how these things are forgotten: for here before you stands a bowl full of roses, which is unforgettable and filled up with ultimate instances of being and bowing down, of offering themselves, of being unable to give, of standing there almost as part of us: ultimates for us too. Noiseless life, opening without end, filling space without taking any away from the space the other things in it diminish, almost without an outline, like something omitted, and pure inwardness, with so much curious softness, shining i...