Quodlibetica originated from the desire to write about art and visual culture in ways not confined by academic conventions or journalistic hype. Part journal, part blog, Quodlibetica fosters critical conversations about visual arts in a forum that is accessible, engaging, and committed to quality writing. Based on the Latin quodlibet, which has entered the English language as (1) a statement proposed for disputation, (2) the actual discussion, and (3) the whimsical combination of familiar elements, Quodlibetica is a space to argue eloquently and whimsically about art, find out what’s happening in the Twin Cities art scene, and engage with writers, artists, and critics, who like to think. Contact us if you want to get involved.
Outsides
In our most eclectic constellation to date, we begin the new year with an exploration of art’s outsides: the ambivalent relationship the art world continues to have with outsiders, art’s life outside the white cube, and the various exclusions upon which our culture’s definition of art depends.
Investigating the idea of outsides when art is concerned might seem like a futile endeavor at best, a hare-brained waste of time at worst. But that initial insight should not stop us from entering this particular fray: the cycle of outsides becoming part of what happens on the perceived inside, the push and pull between [...]
Published 2.1.2011
“It’s hard to be an artist. It’s very personal what we do.”
–Wing Young Huie
Much debate has risen over the Minnesota climate. Not in the meteorological sense. As Adam Levy of the folk-rock group Honeydogs succinctly reported at Minnesota’s Identity and the Arts panel at Intermedia Arts last fall, it’s “fucking cold.” But the artistic climate [...]
Published 2.1.2011
Absence shapes each of us indelibly. Americans find this truth particularly hard to accept: We as a people believe fervently in the power of representation. Marginalized peoples’ struggles to determine their own political realities are dismissively generalized as “visibility politics,” and civic discourse is increasingly ceded to those who assert their presence the loudest and [...]
Published 2.1.2011
First generation Hmong-American artist Song Thao self-consciously works a gray area between Hmong and western traditions. Is the emerging graduate student working out meaningful syntheses, or, in refusing to choose a single idiom, is Thao bound to fall between the cracks?
Full disclosure: Song Thao is a former student of [...]
Published 2.1.2011
The 2010 Midwest Canto al Pueblo project was an innovative restoration of an historic mural in St. Paul, Minnesota. Originally painted in 1979, the mural’s simple yet strong image gained popularity throughout the years, defining its West Side St. Paul neighborhood. The deep and multi-layered significance of the [...]
Published 2.1.2011
What I mean is: Every person is a purveyor of abilities, a self-determined being, the ultimate sovereign in our time. He is an artist, whether he is a garbage collector, nurse practitioner, doctor, engineer or farmer. There, where that person’s abilities evolve, is the artist. I am not saying that painting leads [...]
Published 2.1.2011
Growing up surrounded by a generally pleasant, yet extremely passive-aggressive citizenry is the burden of all children raised in the Midwestern tradition. Expletives are usually found in kitchens, barrooms and back alleys, but in my childhood, the usage of F-bombs and other ‘pirate language’ was reserved exclusively for car rides. As soon as the [...]
Published 2.1.2011