October 2025

 

Dear Readers,

 

This is the eighteenth year of The Art Section. I am often asked about what makes The Art Section different from other publications. It is the intimacy and thoughtful connections our writers bring to the subject matter of their articles.

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Robert Rosenblum (1927-2006) was a prominent and significant art historian known for his bold scholarship on American and European Art. A posthumous annual lecture series in Rosenblum’s honor was inaugurated at the Guggenheim Museum in 2010 with a presentation aptly titled after a quote by artists Gibert & George: “To Be with Art Is All We Ask.” Art Historian Michaël Amy has written a thoughtful text about Rosenblum as curator, critic and art historian. Amy’s personal reading of one contemporary art historian by another reinforces, the idea that it is time to revisit Rosenblum’s significance.

 

Daryl Chin, writer-editor-artist who was part of the downtown arts scene in New York City, has thought about experimental theater for more than 40 years. For TAS, he has written about the visual artist, experimental theater stage director and playwright Robert Wilson (1941-2025), who sadly passed away this past summer. Chin experienced at firsthand the work of Robert Wilson, Richard Foreman and Lucinda Childs in the 1970s and '80s. These artists changed theater and performance, and created works that exist in an entirely new realm. I am very appreciative of Chin’s personal reflections on these artists from the intimate perspective of an artist and writer. 

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Atlanta writer Alan Axelrod has written a dialogue with his spouse, the artist Anita Arliss, about her work. Arliss creates paintings in pursuit of an intimate language that straddles painting and photography. Using digital images as underpainting has led Arliss to investigate her subject matter in a way that recalls the 17th century’s Camera Obscura, a tool artists used to draw and create the structure and compositional space beneath the painted surface. Vermeer is presumed to have used this device. In this dialogue with Axelrod, Arliss cites Manet’s paintings of flowers in a clear vase as one of the inspirations for her works. Arliss’s paintings of her surroundings and portraits of her family have a stillness and tenderness.

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With great appreciation for these artists and writers,
Deanna

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Deanna Sirlin 

Editor-in-Chief

The Art Section