Ce qui est remarquable dans la traduction anglaise du Serment [du Jeu de Paume] c'est que l'organe physique, la paume, disparaît en anglais au profit du geste, du mouvement à venir, de la balle qu'il va falloir attraper, peu après que l'on s'entend dire « tenetz ! » [voir tennis]. J'ai envie de lire dans cette traduction le passage à une poétique du geste dans le livre de John Ashbery : il ne s'agit pas de garder la balle, mais de faire le bon mouvement pour l'attraper et la renvoyer.

What emerges when we look beyond the often self-assured cosmopolitan circulation of Americans abroad such as Mary Cassatt, John Singer Sargent, and James McNeill Whistler, is a larger identity construction that frequently performed cultural innocence. American artists, writers, and travelers sought to turn the liability of lacking a culture and tradition into the asset of allowing for unencumbered experience and being unaffected by the weight of history. In turn, notions of cultural innocence and belatedness that appear in late nineteenth and early twentieth century Franco-American exchange have resonances into the twentieth century, and even into the contemporary moment.

When I was in New York most recently, I had the opportunity to go on a color walk guided by a painter friend of mine, Munro Galloway. I couldn't actually go on the walk that afternoon; I was relegated to handbag-watching and acting (happily) as companion to a friend and her new baby.

Prudence Whittlesey is doing a series of paintings of philosophers and I sat for her before the show began. Her paintings of Jane Bennett and Graham Harman were incredible. She caught how Jane looks like she is on fire, and how there is vision coming out of Graham's eyes. Whittlesey is slated to do Badiou some time this week (I think).

This winter break, I had the opportunity to do a studio visit with Halsey Rodman, whose piece The Wolves from Three Angles is up in a three-person show “A Room in Three Movements,” currently at Sue Scott Gallery (http://www.suescottgallery.com/).