Art in Time
In these twenty lyric essays, Cole Swensen addresses a range of artists, from Agnes Varda to Robert Smithson to David Hockney, whose works recognize nature, not as the “other,” not as something out there, but as an intimate and active engagement.
Essay, Poetry, eBooks
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Historically, landscape art has reinforced a sense of human power over nature, but in these twenty lyric essays Cole Swensen addresses a range of artists, from Agnes Varda to Robert Smithson to David Hockney, whose works recognize nature, not as the “other,” not as something out there, but as an intimate and active engagement, encouraging an increased sense of participation in, and reciprocal relationship with, the earth.
Praise
In this book, Cole Swensen challenges the tension between land and landscape and the relative relationship of each to “reality”—and her instinct is infallible. She’s a guide, a mentor, a blessing, an event. She explores the thinking behind the works of numerous artists who elevate contemporary culture to our highest expectations.
-Etel Adnan
I cannot think of another writer who writes as precisely and insightfully as Cole Swensen about humans contemplating a landscape, and the perceptions and associations implied by the use of such terms as “vastness” and “timeless.” In the 20 poem-essays (or are they encyclopedia entries?) that make up Art in Time, Swensen writes about a wide range of singular figures: Robert Smithson, Agnes Varda, Henry Ossawa Tanner, Rosa Bonheur, Chaïm Soutine, Joan Jonas, Irving Petlin, and Renee Gladman. Brimming with fresh and precise readings, full of little known details and revelations, Art in Time is that rare book. You will want to bring it with you when walking in the woods, visiting a National Park, driving in the desert, or going to a museum. In these pages, you will discover insights into artists that you thought you knew and ones that you have never heard of before. You will begin thinking about landscapes differently.
-John Yau
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Details
ISBN: 9781643620374
Paperback, 156 pages, 8.25 x 7 in
Publication Date: May 4, 2021
Reviews
Such artists of earlier eras suggested, intentionally or not, that we might enlarge our viewpoint beyond the personal, maybe even beyond the human. But it fell to twentieth-century art movements—abstraction, Cubism, postmodernism—to consciously undo the Enlightenment paradigm. As a contemporary poet, Swensen wields a language capable of channeling this history.
Art in Time is a book that resists the idea of it ever becoming a “timeless work of art.” For poet,
translator, and academic Cole Swensen, the very notion of a “timeless work of art” not only implies a
refusal to engage with the present moment, but also exposes a fundamental problem in our viewership:
our tendency of looking at rather than from within.
Art In Time is made up of twenty sequences of lyric prose composed as essay-poems, each of which examines a particular artist’s work… Her essay-poems exist as a blend of research, commentary and critique around a field or fields of movement by her chosen artist, and on their chosen work or works… As Swensen describes through her introduction, the pieces in Art In Time exist as an extended essay on depictions of and approaches toward landscape through visual art, layered through individual “chapters” around individual artists.
In the past, landscape art was often used to install and consolidate power over nature. According to Swensen, the artists in Art in Time, on the other hand, call for a mutual relationship and understanding between man and nature and a better awareness of possible participation and interaction.
Click here to read a poem from the book in Poetry Daily!
Featured in Entropy’s Small Press Release List!
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