by Phyllis Brotherton
Frog and Mouse by Getsujū
Hanging scroll, ink on paper, late 18th – early 19th century Continue reading “Frog Perspectives”
Frog Perspectives
Bitter Heart
by Jon-Marc Seimon
IN THE DESERT
I SAW A CREATURE, NAKED, BESTIAL
WHO, SQUATTING UPON THE GROUND,
HELD HIS HEART IN HIS HANDS,
AND ATE OF IT. Continue reading “Bitter Heart”
After the Art — Issue 13 — September 2021
Welcome to After the Art’s thirteenth issue.
We hope you enjoy these three essays:
“The Ekphrasis of the Second Self” by Alia Soliman
“Skimming the Surface” by Mary Anne Trause
“The Pieta” by Kerry Malawista
We’ve also started a Facebook page, which you can follow for posts about future issues as well as exhibits, articles, books, essays, and sites that might be of interest.
Continue reading “After the Art — Issue 13 — September 2021”
Skimming the Surface
by Mary Anne Trause
In December 2019, I saw the online image of a young girl posted by the Greg Kucera Gallery, which I had visited in Seattle often before moving to San Diego. The image captured me. I had to see it in person. I actually took an overnight trip to stand before her. Addie Mae Collins from Forever: Four Little Girls. One of the four Sunday school girls slain in Birmingham on September 15, 1963. Captured eternally in a Forever stamp replica by Paul Rucker.
The Pieta
by Kerry L. Malawista
A year after my eighteen-year-old daughter died, my husband and I went to see the literary adaptation of Colm Tóibín’s, The Testament of Mary. While I hadn’t yet read Tóibín’s work, I didn’t want to miss seeing the brilliant actor, Fiona Shaw, alone on the stage. The novella I could read later.
Continue reading “The Pieta “After the Art – Issue 12 – June 2021
Welcome to After the Art’s twelfth issue.
We hope you enjoy these four essays:
“A Digression” by Heidi Czerwiec
“Inside/Outside” by Yoshiko Teraoka
“Of Monuments and Ruins” by Travis Scholl
“On the Wing” by Dana Delibovi
We’ve also started a Facebook page, which you can follow for posts about future issues as well as exhibits, articles, books, essays, and sites that might be of interest.
Continue reading “After the Art – Issue 12 – June 2021”A Digression
by Heidi Czerwiec
If we think via perfume, can consider it intellectually and aesthetically, can that make it art? In French, flair means not only “sense of smell” but also “intuition,” a way of knowing.[1] Perfume engages not just the senses, but the intellect.
Continue reading “A Digression”Inside/Outside
by Yoshiko Teraoka
I have been thinking about walls in times of crises.
In a time of inversion – when left became right and right became left, moving forward meant moving back, and the contradictory impressions of the Covid-capitalist crisis were felt on sidewalks and screens, I found myself in a habit of returning to the same music and art, while stuck inside my domestic-turned-office walls. Comfort turned into compulsion when I began staring into the contradictions of a late painting by Mark Rothko.
Continue reading “Inside/Outside”Of Monuments and Ruins
by Travis Scholl
I was recently reminded that the word nostalgia has Greek roots: nostos for home and algia (from algos) for pain, longing, loss. But the Greek roots are not ancient. The word was invented by a Swiss medical student named Johannes Hofer in the dissertation he completed in 1688. Thus, nostalgia is distinctively modern in a way that is meant to feel, ironically enough, nostalgically ancient. In her landmark study The Future of Nostalgia, the late literary scholar Svetlana Boym distinguished between what she called “restorative” and “reflective” nostalgia. In her own words:
Continue reading “Of Monuments and Ruins”On the Wing
by Dana Delibovi
July in New York City is mercilessly hot. Street-buckling, garbage-rotting, sweat-drenching hot. No place is hotter than the subway. Not long ago, most New York subway cars lacked air-conditioning. Riders opened windows, letting in a subterranean wind when the train sped through the dark tunnels. It wasn’t much help.
Continue reading “On the Wing”
After the Art 