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.
The Traveling Eye
Perhaps writing, art, and travel make natural companions. The essays collected for this constellation seemed to suggest just that: whether art allows us to travel vicariously or whether we travel and seek out encounters with art in new contexts, art, like traveling, has the power to make us see anew. The essays that have found their way into this constellation have all been previously published.
Christina Schmid
Summer and travel. For those of us fortunate enough to be able to afford to get out of the Cities, to the cabin or up north, summer and travel make an unbeatable combination. Of course, camera phones and digital cameras come along for the ride. Looking at the Museum of Russian Art’s current show on [...]
Published 9.19.2009
Listen to Paul Robeson’s 1936 recording of Old Man River: unconcerned with petty human worries—growing food, avoiding pain and dodging prison, dealing with daily toil and racial inequalities—the river just keeps rolling along. While the singer dreams of leaving the river and all it stands for, including his “white man boss,” in favor of the [...]
Published 9.19.2009
Fall 2008 has been a time of transition in more than a seasonal sense. As of November 4, we have a new president elect who, to the unmitigated delight of a great many Americans of mixed ethnic and/or cultural descent, compared himself to a mutt recently. Barack Obama embodies the United States of the 21st [...]
Published 9.19.2009
Do cities count as art? I am not talking about public monuments and architecture, street art and gallery scenes, landscaped parks and sparkly fountains–but the city itself, any city–that often chaotic, messy mosaic of neighborhoods and highways and strip malls that make up an urban space.
Robert Tannen, artist and urban planner, would say yes, unequivocally.
“Stardust: [...]
Published 9.19.2009
Picture Vienna at the turn of the last century: an imperial city, home to the Habsburg court, a city between pomp and decay, caught (as if off guard) between the waning days of a centuries old monarchy and a budding bourgeoisie. Picture a city radiating outward from the Ringstrasse, a then recently constructed wide boulevard [...]
Published 9.19.2009
Duchamp, Warhol, Prince, Levine, Sherman, Peyton—the canon of art history is riddled with the names of those who relied on appropriation and with their statements about the ultimate futility of the exhausted (and exhausting) quest for originality. Appropriation, it seems, has become just one more strategy in today’s creative toolbox: no longer risqué unless troubled [...]
Published 9.19.2009
Last summer, my garage got tagged. I remained oblivious to the fact until the city sent me a notice, kindly providing me with a deadline to remove or cover up the black marks. Eventually, well before the deadline expired, I dug up a can of paint that someone must have abandoned in my basement and [...]
Published 9.19.2009