Things that are not actually strange.

"It is strange that the sculptor John Chamberlain and the painter Helen Frankenthaler should have died within a week of each other — he on Dec. 21, and she on Tuesday — considering that they occupy such similar positions within the history of American art."

That's the beginning of an article by Roberta Smith in the NYT. Maybe something here is strange, but it's not strange that 2 elderly individuals died within a few days of each other. If I were to try to articulate what is strange that comes to mind as we are prompted to think about these 2 artists at the same time, I would say it's the way art like this doesn't matter in American culture anymore, and it used to matter so much.

It was a big deal in the late 1950s when Chamberlain made sculptures out of scraps from old cars. It seemed really important and controversial enough to argue about. And then there was Frankenthaler with her "pastels and slithery forms [that] could be read as descending from Georgia O’Keeffe’s flowery colors and labial shapes." Did abstract expressionism make men do one thing and women another?

Some feminist art historians have suggested that Ms. Frankenthaler’s stain technique could perhaps even be likened to menstruation.

That used to matter so much. Imagine the arguments of long ago. We're so post-menopausal now. We can't get excited things like that anymore.