Jacqueline Humphries

Aspen Museum of Art

Standing Logs TSLA, 2025, pigmented aqua resin; Untitled, 2015, oil and enamel on linen. Courtesy: Aspen Art Museum; photo: Dan Bradica

Writers from Marcel Mauss and Georges Bataille to Lewis Hyde have contributed to the notion of art as a veiled gift, with strings attached. Generosity and withholding are not antitheses; many of the best artworks are both withholding—in their minimalism, obscurantism, or elusiveness—and, despite their outward reserve, unexpectedly generous.

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