Just Seeing: Vija Celmins

Vija Celmins repeating ocean surfaces

Vija Celmins, Untitled (Big Sea), 1969, via Museum of Modern Art

Dear Friends,

Not long ago I finished a manuscript and have passed it on to a few readers. To keep myself sane while I wait to hear back from them, this week I joined thousands of others in the insane hyper-speed quest to write a novel during the month of November. It’s a lark, a boot-camp, and some comic relief all at once.

In all this, my life has become an ocean of words—words, words, words to the vast horizon. This has me longing to just look, just see.

— Sal

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Vija Celmins — Ocean Surfaces

Vija Celmins drew, etched, and painted the ocean surface again and again from 1969 through 2016, and maybe she’s not done with it. All of these images are a kind of still life—a depiction of a photograph taken off the Santa Monica Pier in 1969.

Vija Celmins, Untitled (Big Sea #2), 1969, via Art Review and Matthew Marks

Vija Celmins, Untitled [Waves], 1970, Smith College Museum of Art

Vija Celmins, Untitled (Ocean), 1973, via The Paris Review and Matthew Marks

Vija Celmins, Untitled (Ocean), 1975, SFMOMA

Vija Celmins, Untitled (Ocean), 1977, SFMOMA

Vija Celmins, Ocean Surface, 2006, Smithsonian Museum of American Art

Vija Celmins, Untitled (Ocean), 2016, Art Institute of Chicago.

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If you are craving some words on Vija Celmins, I wrote about her in the spring of 2024.

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Matthew Marks

You can see more of Vija Celmins ocean surfaces via Matthew Marks 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