BonusEp. 07 - Tamar Avishai interviews Adam Gopnik, Critic, The New Yorker

There isn’t a single subject that Adam Gopnik’s prose can’t bring
to life. As staff writer at the New Yorker since 1986, he has
written about almost everything, including, just in the last year,
Proust, gun control, the Beatles, and the Marquis de Lafayette. But
it’s when he starts writing about art that things get particularly
delectable: “the runny, the spilled…the
lipstick-traces-left-on-the-kleenex” life and style of Helen
Frankenthaler; “the paint, laid on with a palette knife, that
deliciously resembles cake frosting” technique of Florine
Stettheimer; “the monumental and mock-monumental that tango in the
imagination” of Claes Oldenburg. And perhaps the reason why Gopnik,
who has a graduate degree in art history from NYU’s Institute of
Fine Art, is able to write about art with such lucidness and
latitude is that he isn’t just knowledgeable about art; he adores
it. The charge, the perfume, the misty spray of the orange peel
that is evoked when you stand in the Arena Chapel - everything
that, if you’re not careful, becoming a professional in your
creative field will neutralize. We talked about being docents in
large museums, how to hook your audience, how to write a poem about
art, Vladimir Tatlin, Steve Martin, Stephen Sondheim, the
incompatible forces that create beauty, and the noble truths of art
creating and art writing: eye to hand, and I to you. Episode
webpage: https://bit.ly/3COhnOp Music used: The Blue Dot Sessions,
“Balti” Mandy Patinkin, “Finishing the Hat” from Sunday in the Park
with George Support the show: www.patreon.com/lonelypalette