Nickolas Calabrese is an artist, writer, and educator based in Queens. Email: nickolascalabrese [at] gmail.com
by Nickolas Calabrese I don’t know anything about music. I make art, and like many artists I listen to music while working. Nearly every kind of music, but mostly metal for those time-to-get-serious moments. Atmospheric black metal with little discernible speech tends to work best, because it provides a setting such that one can become…
by Nickolas Calabrese Tony Conrad’s retrospective of objects produced for galleries or institutions, titled Introducing Tony Conrad, is currently on view at the ICA Philadelphia. “Introducing” because so many people are still unfamiliar with his work. His works were predicated on both the amount of time they took to make and the patience that they…
by Nickolas Calabrese When one makes an artwork, something flows from artist to audience. The thing flowing is actually several: concepts, ideas, aesthetic experiences, duration itself, beliefs, attitudes, and probably much more. Artworks work in a similar way to language, although it would be foolish to believe that artworks are language. Their similarities to language…
by Nickolas Calabrese 1. “…And I, who timidly hate life, fascinatedly fear death.” Fernando Pessoa, The Book of Disquiet. 2. I didn’t ask to be born, yet I’ve been condemned to death. Early on in Plato’s Phaedra, Socrates declares that it’s the job of the philosopher to prepare for death. Addressing Simmias and Cebes he…
by Nickolas Calabrese Robert Morris died last month on November 28th at the ripe old age of 87. Very ripe indeed. If he was a fig he’d have been all jammy inside, dribbling the honeyed sugars of maturation. But he’s dead, and I’m glad he’s dead. Let me step back before explaining why – this…
by Nickolas Calabrese A few months back my boss and I had lunch with the person who, wearing a t-shirt that read “black death spectacle”, stood in protest in front of a painting of Emmett Till by Dana Schutz called Open Casket at the last Whitney Biennial. Shortly after his gesture another artist penned an…
by Nickolas Calabrese Is art “a right or a privilege”? This question was addressed by a who’s who of artworld elites in a New York Times feature earlier this year with regards to the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s revised policy to charge out-of-towners the full $25.00 admission fee rather than their standard pay-what-you-wish policy. Predictably,…
by Nickolas Calabrese Recently the person whom I had been in a serious cohabiting relationship with for the past few years disappeared. Not in the Unsolved Mysteries kind of way, but in the “I just ghosted you because I can’t deal with breaking up with you in person” kind of way. She was spending a…
by Nickolas Calabrese The subject of digital art is unclear. Work that was new five years ago can look ancient now because of the constant changes in technologies. The term “digital art” itself is an umbrella term that applies to a variety of names for art that is produced with the aid of a computer…
by Nickolas Calabrese There are two dogmatic justifications (or really non-justifications) that are provided time and time again when discussing the production of abstract art. First is ‘material exploration’, and second is ‘freedom’. If you have ever contemplated certain abstract artworks with skepticism, rest assured that your incredulity is not crazy. Even if the work…