The concept that guides Art Quips originates from my fascination with the writings of Ralph Waldo Emerson, America's first "public intellectual" whose style of writing was both erudite and euphemistic, borrowing from myriad sources and grappling with classic, sometimes timely and then contemporary themes, but never without a language that was hermetic, hybridized, and extremely idiosyncratic. I wa
s further influenced by the writings of Henry McBride, Clement Greenberg, Harold Rosenberg, Donald Judd, and Gregory Battcock, all of whom dealt specifically with the Arts, but who amassed and constructed their own use of language as a means of self expression, a resource for an art hungry public, and as a renewed tradition in the rigor and legacy of the art writer. The best writer is one of quips: short, loaded statements that can prove either lofty, polemical, amusing, or down to earth.
