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.
The Faith Ringgold exhibition at The New Museum (through June 5) is certainly worth a visit. I'd never thought about Ringgold's work as a whole, and so was pleased at how this show explores her artistic development. I began to divide her work into four categories: strong designs of positive/negative shapes, including her early overtly political and very graphic images; doll-like sculpture of tremendous emotional power; quilts or tapestries which for me created the clearest message when she relied on her strong graphic skills, rather than the overly busy collection of figures and objects; and then her touching illustrated children's books. I hadn't known about her many quilts that reference influential white painters like Matisse and Picasso. Apparently Ringgold was trying to show that black artists are equally important, but I felt the way she replaced white nude models with black ones actually was condescending. I recommend viewing the show from the lower to upper floors so as to see the chronological development of Ringgold's art.