‘Ralph Hamilton’
(From ‘Fourteen People: After a Portrait Series by Ralph Hamilton’)
It’s all in the eyes. The broad, smudged,
helpless body shivers and dissolves, washing out
its thin, coloring-book outlines; arms hang
stiff at the sides; vest (popped?) open; broad
white tie tight under a shovel of red beard;
feet apart, planted — barely — in Japanese sandals.
(An “aesthetic” touch? or homey, summery —
countering the long-sleeved Windsor formality?)
But the eyes: coal-blue, white-hot, sapphire coals,
shifting behind the flat front of flesh —
untouchable; unshakable . . .
The disappearing artist
keeping close behind the flimsy painted cardboard
with holes poked-out only for the eyes.
- Lloyd Schwartz
Related:
Ralph Hamilton, Harvard Square, Ralph Hamilton - side, More 
- Ralph Hamilton
My lovable, impossible friend of more than 30 years, the artist Ralph Hamilton, died on February 19, of complications from diabetes. He was only 59. It’s a very sad loss. He was one of Boston’s most original and searching painters and had been doing some of his most ambitious and moving work.
- Harvard Square
Harvard Square was very different 40 years ago.
- Ralph Hamilton - side
- Puccini goes punk
Perched on the lid of a lace-draped baby grand, a bobblehead quivers along with Christine Teeters's vibrato as she powers through a Tuesday-night voice lesson in the Steinway Piano Building on Boylston Street.
- What's new
The timely highlight of Gil Rose’s latest BMOP (Boston Modern Orchestra Project) concert, “Strings Attached,” was a new/old piece (2004, revised 2009) for two string orchestras by Scott Wheeler now called Crazy Weather — the new title taken from a John Ashbery poem that begins, “It’s this crazy weather we’ve been having.”
- Midnight ramblers
In rock ’n’ roll, it was possible to live in Harvard Square, be a musician — a local musician — and be able to pay your rent and find restaurants where you could eat and buy food and survive, and feel that there was a sense of . . . future, with hope and opportunity.
- Lloyd Schwartz: the beat goes on
Classical-music critic Lloyd Schwartz recently marked his 30th year as a Phoenix contributor.
- Ye gods!
Much beautiful music turns up in the 18th-century operatic form that’s probably most alien to a modern audience.
- The naked truth
I would like to register my protest against your “Naked Boston” issue’s needlessly titillating cover image of a nude, beheaded woman.
- Bishop, after all
To enter a Bishop poem with the mind and senses wide open is to be scrubbed back to first principles.
- Happy endings
The end is nigh! And I’m not talking about the mortgage market.
- Less
Topics:
Museum And Gallery
, Ralph Hamilton
