I don’t know much about art. I especially don’t ‘get’ abstract art. This has caused me to avoid it and to shy away from the people who love and consume it. Where modern art-lovers gather, you won’t find me.
I know I should try harder. Many friends have tried to help open my eyes. Some say art is not about getting an emotional reaction, the way you do with music or books. It’s about making you think of what the artist is saying about the world.
I think a lot of us are fluent in one art form and ignorant or fearful of other forms.
Back in the 70s, I attended a performance of the National Ballet of Canada. I was seated with a bunch of friends, including Helen Epstein, who had moved to Toronto in order to write her book Children of the Holocaust. She also wrote dance criticism for The New York Times. At intermission, she asked if I liked the performance. I stammered out something like “They’re very good.” Sensing my absolute ignorance of what I was watching, she said: “You’re a writer, right?”
“Yes, I am.”
“So just use the same standards you do in judging a novel as you do what’s on stage tonight. Is the style flawless and efficient? If not, where is it flawed? Do the major characters work with the minor ones? Are there ragged, loose ends? Do you feel the story the choreographer is trying to tell?”
Hmmmm…once I started asking those kinds of questions, my confidence in dance-viewing and dance-critiquing grew. Epstein’s point, of course, was that we can use what we know in one field to open a beachhead in a similar field where we have no knowledge and less confidence. We all have expertise and long-practised taste in something, from watching Hamlet, to hunting truffles, to riding Harleys.
All this said, my fear of art withers in the face of narrative art, that is, art that tells a story, which may be why I’m such a fanboy of Norman Rockwell.
I also grew up watching David Blackwood teach my high school classmates how to draw and paint and sculpt. I was hopeless at all that, but I was drawn to Blackwood because his prints told stories of his growing up in a way no one else to this day has done – about a world of risk and loss and death in the tiny fishing villages of coastal Newfoundland in the 1940s and 50s.
For over half a century before his death in 2022, Blackwood was marginalized by many in the art establishment for being “just a narrative artist” and “an illustrator.” His work was loved but not respected. Thousands of Canadians owned a Blackwood print the way thousands owned a Robert Bateman print, though their technique and work are worlds apart.
But times have changed. Whether it’s our desire for authenticity or what Blackwood’s fellow Newfoundlander, Zita Cobb, calls “sticking close to home“, or the new power of small places, or the enduring power of Blackwood’s unforgettable images, his work is enjoying a rebirth.
The Art Gallery of Ontario sensed this and have opened a big show of his life and work .
Whether you know nothing about art or you’re the art critic for The New York Times, I urge you to see it because there are few sights more joyous than narrative art practiced at this deeply emotional level.
Meanwhile…
1. How many?…animals in the world? How many elephants? How many fruit flies? Not too many to count. And how many sporting-world records are falling like rain? Lots. And why? Oddly, climate change.
And what are the causes of death compared to their media coverage? And who are the world’s most educated people (the annual surprise)? And how do you divide Canada into four equal population zones? And what does Doug Ford’s $75 million anti-tariff ad look like? Finally, the Louvre jewelry heist? There was one robber. Just one.
2. Brits doing America. The cast of Slow Horses reads things only Americans would say. And Damian Lewis shills for The British Museum. Plus Bill Nighy’s podcast series titled Ill-Advised, for people who don’t get out much and can’t handle it when they do. Try the latest episode, “You’re Not A Weirdo”. And if you’re into Hugh Grant retro-tourism, try this.
Speaking of which, here’s what English sounds like to non-English-speakers.
3. Two new reports. The CBC has released its new 5-year plan which sadly could be its last. I love the CBC (mainly radio), but every plan seems to be overtaken by reality. Here’s hoping.
The McKinsey Health Institute also released its latest report on the terrible costs of inequality that women endure in their health care. But look at it from a different angle and the gap in women’s health equity becomes a $37 billion opportunity to improve our lives, communities, and economy.
One sidebar on this is why men-led research gets more media attention than women-led research.
Another sidebar: a radically different view of the feminization of Western culture.
4. Hunter S. Thompson isn’t who we thought. True, he was as crazy as the inventor ofGonzo journalism could be. But the author of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, who alsoinfiltrated the Hell’s Angels, was a deeply disciplined writer…“and this alter ego was…ruthlessly organized—a veritable Clark Kent of the journalism trade, hidden behind a more flamboyant Gonzo Superman.”
Also hidden behind many writers are their wives who often do their husband’s job, including their Nobel Prize-winning husband’s job.
5. When history rhymes. What a tiny book published in 1955 by John Kenneth Galbraith teaches us about our AI bubble today. Plus, Andrew Ross Sorkin has just written a book called 1929 about that crash. Here he is interviewed by the BBC’s Katy Kay and profiled on 60 Minutes.
6. Lead a fuller life and death. First, unboring questions to ask someone you meet. And don’t go to the pub after you play the game (viewed 8.3 million times). And why spreading your loved one’s ashes isn’t so simple (because they’re not ashes anymore). Plus, why tiny markings generate big feelings.
7. What does it mean to be a man? Stephen Graham, star of Adolescence, replies. And on that subject, should we forgive our parents?
8. Big new breakthroughs. The BBC reports that a simple blood test will soon detect over 50 cancers much sooner than now. “Crucially, three-quarters of cancers detected were those which have no screening programme such as ovarian, liver, stomach, bladder and pancreatic cancer.” Break out the champagne? As with anything to do with cancer, no. Do more testing? Yes.
Meanwhile, on the mean streets of New York, you know the democratic socialist candidate Zohran Mamdani who’s the front-runner for the city’s mayor. Well, he’s proposed that the city take back the streets and sidewalks and 3 million free on-street parking spaces. It’s radical; it’s driving car-owners nuts, and it’s something Toronto should look at. Indeed, it seems we are.
9. Take 2 on “The Letter to You.” Last week we launched our writing contest. The assignment was to write a letter to your 25-year-old self. No more than 100 words, which is 6 or 7 sentences. Points for originality and that old standby, authenticity. The deadline is next Saturday, November 1, 2025 at 11:59:59 p.m. Eastern Time. Please use this link to submit your entry.
Entries are streaming in, not flooding in, but not dribbling in either. Streaming. So please join the flow. It won’t hurt a bit. We’ll select the Bronze, Silver and Gold medal winners, and publish them in a future OG blog. Prizes include the quiet pride in a job well done. But as has been true for centuries and for billions of people around the world, your real reward will be in…heaven. I look forward to reading what you see when you look back.
10. How do bees find new food sources? There are more pressing questions. But few more beautiful answers. It seems they dance, as this video shows. It’s like “how does the man who drives the snowplow drive to the snowplow”?
11. What I’m liking. Liking doesn’t quite cover my feelings for Season 3 of The Diplomat on Netflix, starring Keri Russell and Rufus Sewell. The writing alone beats any other streaming series. And the acting is seductive in the extreme. Even better, you don’t have to wait a week for each episode. All 8 of them are yours at once. Who cares if dinner tonight is cornflakes in your jammies? This is binge-viewing of Olympian calibre.