Speed of Life

Joseph Mallord William Turner ( April 23, 1775-December 19, 1851) The Fifth Plague of Egypt 48" x 72" oil on canvas 1800 Indianapolis Museum of Art photo courtesy of the Indianapolis Museum of Art Spurred on by fellow artblogger, Tyler Green , the New Orleans Museum of Art and the Indianapolis Museum of Art are putting their paintings on the line over next weekend's Super Bowl between the New Orleans Saints and the Indianapolis Colts. I'm calling an improbable New Orleans victory over the Colts. In which case the Indianapolis Museum of Art will lend Turner's vibrant and mysterious The Fifth Plague of Egypt to the New Orleans Museum of Art. If the favored Colts win, the New Orleans Museum of Art will lend Claude Lorrain's Ideal View of Tivoli to the Indianapolis Museum of Art. Check out Tyler's blog for the ultimate in museum director trash talk and mannered New Orleans (and Indianapolis) grace as well. New Orleans Museum of Art director E. John Bulla...

Full Text of President Obama's State of the Union Address ( as provided by the White House) Madame Speaker, Vice President Biden, Members of Congress, distinguished guests, and fellow Americans: Our Constitution declares that from time to time, the President shall give to Congress information about the state of our union. For two hundred and twenty years, our leaders have fulfilled this duty. They have done so during periods of prosperity and tranquility. And they have done so in the midst of war and depression; at moments of great strife and great struggle. It’s tempting to look back on these moments and assume that our progress was inevitable – that America was always destined to succeed. But when the Union was turned back at Bull Run and the Allies first landed at Omaha Beach, victory was very much in doubt. When the market crashed on Black Tuesday and civil rights marchers were beaten on Bloody Sunday, the future was anything but certain. These were times that tested the coura...

photo by Jim Wilson/The New York Times Apple chief executive, Steve Jobs, unveils the iPad. Price Starts at $499: 16 GB 32 GB 64 GB Wi-Fi $499 $599 $699 Wi-F 3G $629 $729 $829 Here's the link to Apple's official iPad page: Ongoing commentary at Brad Stone's Bits Blog Specs: Half an inch thin. Weighs 1.5 pounds. 9.7-inch IPS display — super high quality, great angle of views, Mr. Jobs says. Full capacitive multi-touch screen, same as the iPhone — “super responsive, super precise,” Jobs says. The iPad is powered by Apple’s own custom silicon, Jobs says — a 1 GHz A4 chip,, 16 GB of memory, 32 or 64 Gigabytes of storage. There’s Wi-Fi, 802.11n, and the latest Bluetooth. 3G wireless on the most expensive model. Accelerometer, compass, speaker, microphone.

Eddie Vedder Haiti Relief Single Eddie Vedder’s full audio performance of Bruce Springsteen’s “My City Of Ruins” from the recent Kennedy Center Honors is now available for purchase through Ten Club and iTunes for $.99. Proceeds from the sale of the track benefit Artists for Peace and Justice Haiti Relief. Benefit Single is available here from: Pearl Jam's Ten Club Also available on iTunes: "My City of Ruins" for Haiti From Eddie about the song and the cause: About Artists for Peace and Justice Artists for Peace and Justice (APJ), established in early 2009, is a fundraising effort founded by Paul Haggis and friends that encourages peace and social justice and addresses issues of poverty and enfranchisement in communities around the world. Over the past year, APJ has directed its efforts to raising enough funds to fully sponsor three schools in Haiti in support of the initiatives of Father Rick Frechette and his team. These schools aren’t just a place to learn but prov...

Gotham - mvt 1, excerpt from Bill Morrison on Vimeo . Excerpt from “Gotham”: film by Bill Morrison, music by Michael Gordon. Composer Michael Gordon has an inspiring piece on art, family, home, and music in today's online New York Times: Once, at my last piano lesson before heading off for vacation, I asked Mrs. Kutzen what her plans were for the summer. Her reply: “Michael, musicians don’t take vacations.” I filed this line away in a special part of my brain, an informal collection of “accidental music lessons.” My interpretation of Mrs. Kutzen’s words has changed through the years, like a Talmudic discourse that is argued from different points of view: 1. Musicians just don’t ever feel quite right going an extended period of time without playing their instrument. 2. Music isn’t a job that you punch in and out of. It’s an obsession, a calling and your purpose in life. 3. Musicians don’t make a lot of money and you’re not going to be able to afford a vacation anyway. -January 25,...

Jean-Michel Basquiat Untitled (Quality), 1983 Oil paintstick and ink on paper, 19.5x15.5 inches Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; Artist Jean-Michel Basquiat's father, Gerard Basquiat was born in Port-au-Prince, Haiti and his mother, Matilde was born in Brooklyn of Puerto Rican parents Trailer for Julian Schnabel's inspired film on the life and art of Basquiat. Jeffrey Wright's performance is amazing.

Bruce Springsteen Sings "We Shall Overcome" at Hope for Haiti Now Jennifer Hudson Sings "Let it Be" at Hope for Haiti Now Telethon

"We must build dikes of courage to hold back the flood of fear." (Martin Luther King, Jr.) An August Dream 18"x36" oil on linen 2009

Gregg Chadwick Kyoto: March (for Gary Snyder) 36"x48" oil on linen 2010 Kyoto: March BY GARY SNYDER A few light flakes of snow Fall in the feeble sun; Birds sing in the cold, A warbler by the wall. The plum Buds tight and chill soon bloom. The moon begins first Fourth, a faint slice west At nightfall. Jupiter half-way High at the end of night- Meditation. The dove cry Twangs like a bow. At dawn Mt. Hiei dusted white On top; in the clear air Folds of all the gullied green Hills around the town are sharp, Breath stings. Beneath the roofs Of frosty houses Lovers part, from tangle warm Of gentle bodies under quilt And crack the icy water to the face And wake and feed the children And grandchildren that they love.

Kenneth Noland (1924 -2010) Spread 117" x 117" oil on canvas 1958 Gift of William S. Rubin, Grey Art Gallery, New York University Art Collection. © Kenneth Noland / Licensed by VAGA, New York, NY From the exhibition “New York Cool” held at the Museum of Art, Brunswick photo by Tommy Wilcox for The Bowdoin Orient "Mr. Noland’s signature motif was a radiant target made of rings of pure color strained directly on raw canvas, with that canvas contributing a wonderful sense of breathing room between each band of color. The power of the colors, their often discordant interaction and the expanding and contracting rhythms of the bands of paint and the raw canvas, could be stunningly direct and vibrant." - Roberta Smith on Kenneth Noland. "But beautiful ideas are rarely entirely wrong, and something close to Lorentz’s idea is embodied in modern QCD. Quarks carry color charge, and generate color electric fields analogous to the ordinary electric fields around electrons....

Against the Light - سهراب - Sohrab 29"x69" oil on screen 2009 (detail) "Also arrested were the mother and brother of Sohrab Aarabi, a young Iranian man slain during protests in June." - Los Angeles Times - 28 December 2009 Leading Iranian dissidents arrested, body of Mousavi's nephew missing "This is a very important moment in Iranian history, and it is probably time to start asking whether Iran's uprising could become a Berlin Wall moment. It's not just an issue of the sporadic protests once or twice a month... It's also one of the most vibrant and imaginative civil disobedience campaigns anywhere in the world." - Robin Wright, author of "Dreams and Shadows: The Future of the Middle East," from a conversation with CNN.

Photo by NASA Happy Holidays to all! *Note to DC residents - be careful throwing snowballs ...

photo courtesy Christie’s Rembrandt Portrait of a Man, Half-Length, With His Arms Akimbo 421⁄4" x 341⁄4" oil on canvas 1658 Carol Vogel in the New York Times reports that the mystery buyer of Rembrandt's Portrait of a Man, Half-Length, With His Arms Akimbo at Christie's last week was casino mogul Stephen Wynn. The $33.2 million is a record for a Rembrandt at auction. The painting has an interesting recent provenance and after its donation by George Huntington Hartford II hung in the President's office at Columbia University in New York for ten years from 1958 to 1968. My hope is that Stephen Wynn will put the painting on public display in the near future. After closing his private gallery at the Wynn hotel, Las Vegas lost an intimate collection of important paintings. I enjoyed the Wynn collection immensely and as a non-gambler I was intrigued with the mix of great art within the glowing and at times tawdry Vegas of American pop culture. photo courtesy Reuters ...

Very nice 3D animated video of the planned Michigan State University Eli and Edythe Broad Art Museum slated for groundbreaking on March 16, 2010. Opening in 2012. Architecture by Zaha Hadid. For more on the project: Michigan State University Eli and Edythe Broad Art Museum More on Zaha Hadid and her work at Zaha Hadid

"Food is our common ground, a universal experience" -MFK Fisher This week three of my greatest enjoyments come together in a rich mix: painting, food and film. Opening this week in New York State is a brand new restaurant headed by Executive Chef Chris Brandt, and Sushi Chef Satoshi Yamaguchi. My painting Silk was commissioned for the space. Also this week, the film La Cucina , in which a number of my paintings are featured, is being shown on Showtime. The Blu Ray is on pre sale at Amazon and the Dvd is available at Turner Classic Movies. The film stars Christina Hendricks (Mad Men), Joaquim de Almeida (24), Leisha Hailey (The L Word), Rachel Hunter (Supermodel), Clare Carey (Crash), Oz Perkins (Star Trek), Michael Cornacchia (Hannah Montana), Kala Savage (8 Simple Rules), Cinematography by Alan Caudillo (Day Without a Mexican), and Ian Ball (Gomez) scores the film. Gregg Chadwick Silk 7'x5' oil on linen 2009 Executive Chef Chris Brandt, and Sushi Chef Satoshi Yamagu...

Leo Ballate, the Head of Information Systems and Services at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art goes on vacation for a week and finds upon his return ... Full story at: SFMOMA's blog Open Space

photo by Richard Perry / New York Times Pictured in the New York Times is my courageous family member Hannah Johnson tearing up as she applauds a New Jersey Senate committee vote on a bill to legalize gay marriage. The bill cleared the committee, 7-6, and will be voted on by the full New Jersey Senate on Thursday. Last night on his website Bruce Springsteen lent his voice in support of marriage equality: A BRIEF STATEMENT FROM BRUCE Like many of you who live in New Jersey, I've been following the progress of the marriage-equality legislation currently being considered in Trenton. I've long believed in and have always spoken out for the rights of same sex couples and fully agree with Governor Corzine when he writes that, "The marriage-equality issue should be recognized for what it truly is -- a civil rights issue that must be approved to assure that every citizen is treated equally under the law." I couldn't agree more with that statement and urge those who...

Andrew Wyeth (1917-2009) Above the Narrows 48" x 32¼" tempera on panel 1960 Andrew Wyeth's Painting "Above the Narrows" sold for $6,914,500 at Christie's. Wyeth's painting is an evocative portrait of his son that captures the mysterious journey from boy to man.

Lift up your faces, you have a piercing need For this bright morning dawning for you. History, despite its wrenching pain, Cannot be unlived, and if faced with courage, Need not be lived again. Lift up your eyes upon The day breaking for you. Give birth again To the dream. -Maya Angelou Twenty years ago on December 1, 1989 the first Day Without Art was held to spark dialogue and create a day of action concerning the AIDS crisis. At least 800 museums and galleries across the United States closed their doors, shrouded artworks or removed them from view as symbols of mourning and loss. The goal was to show that AIDS can touch everyone. And it worked. Today on December 1, 2009 museums are again engaged in remembrance for those lost to AIDS and are actively marking the gains that have been made so far. In 1997 the day became known as A Day With(out) Art to reflect the force art can bring to the cause. Today, A Day With(out) Art has grown into a international collaborative project in wh...