The title Entropvisions is in homage to my mother, the poet and art critic, Harriet Zinnes. In 1990 New Directions published a collection of her poems titled Entropisms, a word she made-up combining entropy - the tendency toward disorder - and tropism - the growth towards or away from a stimulus. Similarly, my short reviews combine entropy and tropism by suggesting growth towards a vision of art from the chaos of the art world. Through the back door, my title also pays homage to my physicist father, Irving Zinnes, whose long discussions with my mom got her thinking about entropy and tropism in the first place.

Larry Rivers at Tibor de Nagy
2021.11.23
After seeing the insightful William Eckhardt Kohler, Kyle Staver and Catherine White exhibitions last Friday (see my last two posts) I headed over to the Larry Rivers works on paper show at Tibor de Nagy for another enlightening experience. Rivers is not an artist I generally think much about, and when I do, it's usually for his crazy life, but at Tibor I was struck by what an intense, serious, dedicated and varied artist he was. While reading Ninth Street Women I've realized he probably also was a friend of my mother's, the poet Harriet Zinnes, which of course added a personal angle to my recent experience with his work. Thank you Andrew Arnot for hosting this thoughtful show.

This is a portrait of Rivers' father

Poem by Frank O'Hara

This drawing made me think of Cezanne

Poem by Frank O'Hara

I was surprised to see Rivers

had the patience and even interest

to copy other artists as a means of study

Entropvisions (Blog)

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