Arden Reed

The Climates of Coleridge and Baudelaire

ROMANTIC WEATHER

Constance DeJong

Gus Blaisdell

This retrospective account of Constance DeJong's artistic career begins with the Steel Drawings of 1978 and ends with the Four/Three series of 2002. During this period of stylistic and theoretical change in the art world, DeJong's is a story of invention within consistency, as each new series grows out of the preceding one in unexpected ways. DeJong is sensitive to metal, which she employs not as a tool but for its own sake. She is a poet of steel and copper, of stain and patina, plying the boundary between sculpture and painting. She brings out the denseness of metal but also dissolves its heft. Her compositions are at once hard-edged and mysterious; her Light Drawings use empty space to do the work of metal sheets. She works with line to wed the illusory character of painting to the substance of metal. This rich collection of photos captures the essence of DeJong's work. Complimented with descriptive text by Arden Reed, and an interview of the artist conducted by Gus Blaisdell, Constance Dejong metal vividly documents the evolution of DeJong's art. Constance DeJong teaches in the Department of Art and Art History at the University of New Mexico.

Metal

"More Americans visit art museums annually than attend all major-league sporting events. Yet many come away dissatisfied, because art rarely yields itself to the few seconds most viewers spend on individual works. In a culture of distraction, Slow Art models ways to extend and enrich acts of looking. This study defines a new aesthetic field crossing centuries and mediums, including video, photography, land and installation art, painting, performance, sculpture, and fiction. Also tableaux vivants ("living pictures"), live restagings of artworks. Often dismissed as marginal, the practice is fundamental--poised between motion and stasis, life and art--witness its current flourishing. This history of looking includes Diderot, Emma Hamilton, Oscar Wilde, Jeff Wall, Sam Taylor-Johnson, Andy Warhol, Richard Serra. But rather than a set of objects, slow art names a dynamic relationship that transpires between objects and observers. Slow art enacts tacit contracts between works that have designs on us and beholders who invest in them. Slow art emerged in the 18th century, when cultural acceleration created the need to cushion the pace of social life. Simultaneously, however, secularization closed off traditional means to do so. Slow art offers secular viewers pleasures and consolations that engaging sacred images did in ages of faith. Slow art offers objects their due attention, and offers observers meaningful encounters. Such experiences are available to everybody by practicing the pleasures of lingering. Because such opportunities are not given, Slow Art proposes strategies for artists, artworks, and beholders"--Provided by publisher.

Arden Reed

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