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.
If you have not yet seen the Winslow Homer exhibition now at the Met, I'd like to inspire you to go before it closes on July 31. I've always loved his watercolors, and the ease at which he finds the exact colors for the rhythmic weight and interconnected light movements throughout. I've therefore also been disappointed by his oils, because I just couldn't get past what I'd seen as banal images of the Americana past. This exhibition has opened my eyes to those early oil paintings. I highly recommend reading the wall labels. In them, you'll learn exactly how each painting actually is a political statement, and as a consequence you'll experience how Homer so sensitively depicted the racial tensions of his time, showing his great sympathy for the plight of Black Americans. That color I've always loved in his watercolors is in these oils too, perhaps more quietly, but still perfectly tuned.