September 2025#168The thematic subject of this issue, while not dogmatic or narrow, does include a number of dogs and refers broadly to a correction of our estrangement from animals. The best “fixers” for this limiting, damaging gulf—between humans and animals—are artists. “Estrangement” is chosen with deliberation; it wasn’t always so. Let’s believe instead in a Paradisal prehistory and make efforts to return there. So: artist, animals, artist and animals. Artist Rachel Harrison thinks syncretically and the works that result have taken her as maker and us as viewers on a disparate but linked transit from ‘this’ to ‘this,’ and the resulting ‘that’ is spectacular. She also likes dogs. The interview with her is in this issue. In the full and lucid conversation with Photoconceptual nominator, Ian Wallace, the artist gives us what he says is the central issue in his long career as art maker: “how to create a meaningful and lasting picture of this world.” Philosopher and writer Mark Kingwell counsels us against the diminishing consequences of categories. He looks to Susan Sontag’s long-ago statement, “Interpretation is the revenge of the intellect upon art” and has her agreeing, in his essay, with Plato—Kingwell here suggesting we locate the soul as the site of erotics. He gives us his reading of Plato on this topic, “It is the erotic energy of the psyche that responds to beauty, and so ideally turns itself toward the sun of goodness and truth.” Room here, I say, to include animals who have knowledge and wisdom and appreciate the warmth of the sun in a yellow ray on their furred backs but may not be able to turn the pages describing it on their own. Giovanni Aloi has written a number of books on the natural environment and our place in it. The area is rich and endless; our apprehension and engagement with it have not been laudable. In this issue Aloi addresses some of the ways in which artists have used nature as a medium. For some we can cheer; for others shame is the correct response. Ann Craven’s painted birds are airborne works. Neil Farber and Michael Dumontier draw us a Portfolio of pleasure and thought. There is a splendid interview with Landon Mackenzie who knows everything about paint. William Kentridge’s newest printed works are lush, mobile and arresting, eluding—even though inked and pinned in place—any kind of static unitary conclusion. Throughout the issue artists raise caution, concern and alarm about the proliferation and limitations of digital media. You’ll see it interestingly, in two essays on painted works, both by young artists. One by Sophia Lapres, Gif 1; the other, Coursing, by Michael Thompson. And to stop your heart but also lift it the way poetry does: two poems by Lorna Crozier. As to entropy where we sometimes seem bound: Barry Schwabsky’s regular column on photography, this one titled, “The Sex Appeal of Death.” To say this is only a partial list of the contents of this very large issue is only the first understatement I’ll utter today.
