Reading choices: Artists and birds

Two recent released books are worth checking out if you’re looking for something to read.

One of our most insightful art critics, Dave Hickey, has just published “25 Women: Essays on Their Art” (University of Chicago Press).

The volume collects a series of essays on women artists written over the last twenty-odd years. Hickey focuses on their work with what has become his trademark off-kilter, yet spot on, prose. In discussing Marcia Tucker, founder of the New Museum in New York, he notes that Marcia “thought that art was about holding back the night,” while he was of the notion that it was really about “holding back the professors.”

In that sprightly spirit, Hickey has some choice observations on each artist including this observation about Joan Mitchell (1925-1992), “in the last ten years, nothing has gotten better but mobile phones and Joan Mitchell’s paintings.”

In addition to Mitchell, the artists included are Alexis Smith, Lynda Benglis, Vija Celmins, Pia Fries, Fiona Banner, Sarah Charlesworth, Mary Heilmann, Jennifer Steinkamp, Michelle Fierro, Bridget Riley, Elizabeth Murray, Karen Carson, Ann Hamilton, Vanessa Beecroft, Roni Horn, Fiona Rae, Barbara Bloom, Sharon Ellis, Hung Liu, Teresita Fernandez, Nancy Rubins and Elizabeth Peyton.

Much more about art than politics, it makes for an interesting assessment of some very talented folks.

“The Genius of Birds” (Penguin Press) by Jennifer Ackerman is a compelling evocation of all things avian.

These are dispatches from the evolving frontier of bird research from the Barbados to bowerbird habitats in Australia to the post-Hurricane Sandy ravaged wetlands of the U.S.

She considers how fallacious the notion of “birdbrains” might be given that mockingbirds can store up to 2,000 songs in their miniature cerebrums and nutcrackers can hide 30,000 seeds in various locales and remember months later where it put them.

She also considers birds as artists of the architectural environment, as composers and performers of a dazzling array of vocalizations, through a thoughtful blending of scientific observation, travelogue and more than a few personal anecdotes.

The book is an entertaining read, filled with fascinating factoids about the various social interactions of these feathered spirits

Kirk Robertson covers the arts and may be reached at news@lahontanvalleynews.com