Just Seeing: Etel Adnan

Fill your eyes with Etel Adnan's color and light

Etel Adnan, Untitled, 2014, via White Cube

Dear Friends,

As bombs have been falling across the Middle East, I’ve been re-reading Etel Adnan, Lebanese-American poet and painter, especially her book The Arab Apocalypse. It was written in response to the early years of the Lebanese civil war, where she witnessed an unfolding disaster which continues into the present.

At the same time I have returned to her paintings, which I first encountered at Documenta 13 in 2012. These paintings are small, yet they offer expanses of color and light that fill the eye and lift the spirit.

I thought you might like to see them too.

— Sal

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Etel Adnan — Untitled Landscapes

Etel Adnan, Untitled, 2014, via White Cube

Etel Adnan, Untitled, 2014, via White Cube

Etel Adnan, Untitled, 2015, via White Cube

Etel Adnan, Untitled, 2015, via White Cube

Etel Adnan, Untitled, 2015, via White Cube

Etel Adnan, Untitled, 2016, via White Cube

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Etel Adnan - Color as Language

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I wrote about Etel Adnan’s continual return to the shape of Mount Tamalpais here:

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Etel Adnan

Many of Etel Adnan’s exhibitions can be seen in the Contemporary Art Library.

Her work has also been regularly shown at Beirut’s Sfeir-Semler Gallery.

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Dear Reader, as always, this letter is a letter to you. Write back! Are you feeling for words these days, or just seeing?

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Further adventures and new ways of seeing can be found in my book, The Uses of Art.

Artist Sal Randolph’s THE USES OF ART is a memoir of transformative encounters with works of art, inviting readers into new methods of looking that are both liberating and emboldening.

Dazzlingly original, ferociously intelligent.
— Michael Cunningham

A joyful, dazzling treasure-box of a book.
— Bonnie Friedman

Here’s a guide, to waking up, over and over again.
— Roshi Pat Enkyo O’Hara