Dr Mike Tremblay

Brigitte Coulombe is an artist in Northern Ontario, Canada. Her work in this show are semi-abstracted minimalistic interpretations of Lake Nipissing. Floating free on the wall, they are unframed. This show was held in the La Galerie Du Nouvel-Ontario in Sudbury during November, and while there I had an opportunity for a look.  These pieces […]

Art of England has published a short piece of mine looking at the impact on creativity in art from the wider use of (mainly) digital technology and social media. Art of England, issue number 65.

Art of England has published a short piece of mine on older, and late-blooming artists.  Art of England, issue number 64.

The September issue of Frieze art magazine is all about ‘theory’ or what appears to pass for theory in the art world.  The whole issue reads like some undergraduate magazine or papers prepared by graduate students with too much time on their hands; political polemic blends with obscure language, which even core Frankfurt-school-istas would find […]

“Tu m’” by Marcel Duchamp is a good example of how this artist played with our sensibilities.  Karl Gerstner, in his Puzzle Upon Puzzle, which examines Tu m’ in exquisite #161617233 / gettyimages.com detail is an example of an analytical critique that may just miss the point. I read this book through with great interest, […]

Kodak has announed the end of production of Kodachrome film.  Those who still use film will know Kodachrome film for the quality of the colour and indeed I suspect many of us used Kodachrome as our reference film for documenting the world around us. Film tracked the industrial revolution, documenting virtually all of the past […]

Image by nattu via Flickr The inmates have escaped again and flooded the world with another wind egg.  Called ‘altermodernism’, a term as ugly as its definition, we are now to be persuaded that a new improved artistic sentimentality has burst upon the scene.  Some people really do have far too much free time. Coined […]

Image via Wikipedia Should we see art history as linear, with the phases, fads and movements embedded in the moment, or can we continue to learn from them, revisit them over time.  Indeed, can all of art exist simultaneously? There is a bias toward linearity in art history, but it is tiring and probably unhelpful […]

When an artists ‘does art’, what are they thinking?  Are they merely in the moment or are they constructing some sort of story (narrative for the remaining post-modernists out there)?  I continue to have a problem with art that is mute, because it makes me wonder if the artist was also mute, perhaps without thought […]

Image via Wikipedia I am still trying to make sense of Malevich.  His book, commented on in an earlier posting, published in English in 1959, but dating much earlier, still feels fresh and insightful and I continue to be taken by his approach to ‘treating’ realist painters, by prescribing the medicine of Cubism.  Some artist […]

Malevich is almost rediscovered! His book,”Non-objective World” paints a surprising contemporary vision of art.  I like the idea of prescribing a dose of Cubism to died in the wool Cezannista.  I discovered a book by Noah Charney, “The Art Thief” which features Malevich in counterfeit form.  Having worked on the problem of counterfeit drugs, the […]

The Rothko exhibit is a bit of a disappointment.  Perhaps too many pieces, so people trying to figure out which painting will give them the spiritual experience they’re supposed to have. I found the forensic part of the exhibit unpleasant, and to some extent unhelpful.  My reaction is almost, “so what”.  One painting was hung […]