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.

Louise Bourgeois at the Met
2022.7.17
What a revelatory show the Louise Bourgeois painting exhibition at the Met is. Up through August 9, the exhibition features early paintings Bourgeois made between 1938-late 40's, when she first arrived in New York, and before she began sculpting. Bourgeois had had an emotionally difficult young life, from the death of her mother when Louise was 21, to an overbearing father whose long affair with Louise's tutor traumatized all the children, to her emigration from her French home. This exhibition exudes courage, particularly the courage to transform her inner emotional struggles into powerful images of intense color and innovative formal construction. Paintings glow while crying from pain and eternal sadness. They suck you in. Though knowing the biographical context behind each painting is unnecessary for the painting's power, reading the wall labels adds layers of pathos and depth to the art. I've summarized a few of these labels in the painting descriptions. An added plus for me was seeing the show with Cathy Diamond. Thanks Cathy for sharing your wonderful eyes!

Remembering her love for her

mother and unbearable loss of

mother's early death

The family home inhabited by ghosts of

her brothers, herself and childhood symbols

Self portrait