Anne Sherwood Pundyk: Introspective Shout Out: 2009

Notable moments in my interior life from the past year. A list. Not a complete nor comprehensive list. And, not listed in any special order --more a way to lasso a few impressions from a herd of unruly ideas.

Re-reading Critique of Judgment about Beauty and the Sublime: Kant reinforces the identify-defining role of the individual in making judgments.
Experiencing Linda Norden's game-changing programming of art exhibitions at CUNY Graduate Center’s The James Gallery.
Attending Diana S. Pitt's memorial service.
Working with Susan Eley Fine Art.
Realizing that having cancer is like getting fired: you are now "the other."
Seeing, reading and writing about paintings by Amy Sillman, Cecily Brown, Alice Neel, Joan Mitchell, Louise Fishman, Josephine Halvorson, and Angela Dufresne.
Working with Theodore Hamm, Thomas Micchelli (from The Brooklyn Rail) and Jeff Pundyk, to edit my ideas in writing.
Catching the “Beg, Borrow, Steal” show from the Rubell Family Collection in Miami with Karen Yama (reminding me of our good old days.)
Seeing Evan’s performance in School Lite.
Sitting on the floor of Borders bookstore with Rita Halbright talking about good books on feminism: my current favorite being “Women Who Run With the Wolves,” by Clarissa Pinkola Estes.
Refreshing my conception of photography with Walter Benjamin, Tacita Dean, and Andrew Bush,
Remembering Charles Daugherty, my art professor from Pomona College, who, of all my teachers from college through graduate school, attuned his responses to my expansiveness, not his own agenda.
Going to see Alice Neal’s work at David Zwirner with Mary Hanlon.
Being tipped off by Jeff about movie director, Kathryn Bigelow's interest in Jaques Lacan and how it's embodied in her film, "Hurt Locker."
Savoring Peter Scheldahl's art reviews, and those of Roberta Smith, Holland Cotter and Michael Kimmelman, and Barry Schwabsky.
Being reminded by Phoebe Pundyk about early Modernist art manifestos; and then thumbing through Herbert Read’s “A Concise History of Modern Painting,” pausing to read about Kandinsky and Cezanne while waiting for my radiation treatments.
Learning about post-Freudian ideas on psychotherapy, such as inter-subjectivity, following the recommendations of Beth Mehan and Barbara Faden
Having multi-directional conversations -- spun out from aspects of my work -- during visits in my studio with, among others, Orren Alperstein, Josephine Halvorson, Mike Quinn, Peter Scott, Wynn Kramarksy, and Linda Norden.
Touring "Younger Than Jesus" at the New Museum with Julie Saul and learning from her about Laszlo Moholy-Nagy.
Digging into Jacques Lecan's ideas, especially about the gaze, as explained by Zizek in "A Pervert's Guide to Cinema."
Seeing Francis Bacon's exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art -- noting the annex showing his source photographs -- after reading Gilles Deleuze’s “Logic of Sensation” (one of many readings suggested by Timothy Quigley.)
Appreciating the aesthetic qualities of the French while reading “Camera Lucida” by Roland Barthes. (More thanks to TQ)
Wondering why seeing Marlene Dumas's exhibition at MoMA was both upsetting and gratifying.
Talking to Lenny Cassuto about the theme of captivity and at his suggestion reading Sigmund Freud’s “Civilization and Its Discontents.” Seeing, later that Andre Agassis's autobiography "Open" was pried from him using some of Freud’s thinking about the death instinct as applied to Agassi’s self-destructiveness.
Swimming lanquidly through essays by Maurice Merleau-Ponty: “Cezanne’s Doubt” and “Eye and Mind.”
Running to see Monet’s Waterlillies at MoMA particularly after reading about their first installation in the 1950’s in Achim Hochdorfer's "A Hidden Reserve" in Artforum
While recuperating, watching on DVD all 8 seasons of "The Gilmore Girls" which blends effortlessly lessons from the Myth of Persephone with “What Not to Wear” (Thank you Phoebe and Tala Ginsberg)