Essays

Vintage Magazine Quarterly – Visual Essay

I’m very proud to be part of the 4th issue of Vintage Magazine, the brainchild of Ivy Baer Sherman, and the most glorious, beautiful and amazing magazine (so much more than that; think, ART), modeled after the brilliant and short-lived Flair Magazine of the early 1950s. But Vintage is like nothing else, entirely unique and has to be seen to be believed. The fact that anyone would take on such an ambitious magazine project in the digital age is incredible, but Sherman pulls it off in spades. I’m not kidding when I say every issue is a collector’s item and not to be missed.  

Erotic Novels & Stories: Does Sex (Still) Sell?

Consider 50 Shades of Grey, the most recent entry and phenomenon in the sex book wars. I read a couple of pages at the checkout counter of a local bookstore and that was enough for me. My daughter says that she and a group of girlfriends read scenes aloud and howled. So what’s to be made of the trilogy’s 65 million in sales? Do women really crave bondage? Or is it simply that every generation needs a sex novel? When I was a boy it was Peyton Place. I was just a kid when it came out so it must have been a few years before I read it though I remember the sex scenes as if it were yesterday, bad girl Betty Anderson and rich boy Rodney Harrington on the beach, illegitimacy, incest and more. Then there was Fanny Hill, a bit flowery for my taste but it did the trick, and of course … Read more

City Mouse Versus Country Mouse

I have always been a city mouse. Well, not always, but mostly. I was born on East 57th Street in Manhattan though my parents deserted the city for Queens and then LI when I was a preteen, but I couldn’t wait to get back. And I did. But then, like so many diehard New Yorkers I longed for escape, which I did on occasion and liked that too but always came back. I think mostly it was a quest for quiet, a rarity in NYC, and something I found when I bought a little house in upstate NY about eight years ago. An impulse buy. I swear. It was just after New Years and we were visiting old friends, the realist painter Catherine Murphy and her sculptor husband, Harry Roseman. I’ve known Cathy since we met at the art colony, Skowhegan, when I was 19. (Cathy says I looked like John Sebastian of the Lovin’ … Read more

To Assisi and back, real life and not so real world…

My Assisi visit has already come and gone. I taught drawing for the 2nd year in a row at the amazing Art Workshop International with its headquarters at Assisi’s Hotel Giotto, a short walk from the basilica and those beautiful Giotto frescoes that never fail to break my heart. This year it was the cathedral’s Cimabue that captured me. I always recognized it was a great painting but this year I was struck by the pathos in the Madonna’s face and the equally emotive faces of the attending angels, not to mention sweet St. Francis standing by looking appropriately simple.             The art workshop is always great, attracting the best students in visual art and writing and this year seemed better than ever – and that goes for the Hotel Giotto’s food too: though I every night I swore to skip at least 1 of the 4 courses I ate every … Read more