Patterns of intention

Walking up to Martha’s recent art show at Mother Foucault’s, I saw Patterns of Intention in the window. They’re distressingly good at putting books I want in the window – I think 90% of the books I’ve bought there have come from the window. Or maybe I’m just a lazy browser and need to literally see it from the street to pay attention.

At the moment, I’m still trying to figure out why and where from I know this book. I might have cited it before, or seen it cited, or something. Baxandall has certainly come up before. TBH I’m kind of hoping that I actually don’t have a good reason and it was just one of those Slow Motion Bullseyes

I’ve really just started it, but it’s pretty compelling so far. I’m automatically on board with one of the central ideas, that when we describe images we are mostly making statements about the description – we can’t assume that there’s this special unbroken connection between the nature of the painting and the things we’re saying about it. This is very conceptual-labor-y – that we’re working with our model of the image, and can refine it to get closer to the “actual” image, but never escape it.

Was on my mind when writing about Amy Bay at Nationale. Thought I’d write about paint, ended up writing about what I think about paintings.