I recently got a note from the artist Mircea Cantor, whose work I mentioned in a blog post written about a year ago.

Cantor and I share an interest in creating empty present forms (see his and mine).

As Cantor pointed out, my post could misconstrued as a snarky lob at a fellow artist, or a claim to precedence. I’d like to clarify that while I wrote that

what matters is not who comes up with an idea first, but who does it best (a cousin to the cynical saying, If you can’t do it better, make it bigger)

I didn’t intend to claim that my work was better, or that Cantor’s work was bigger b/c he couldn’t make it better. I am not that cynical. That’s why I distinguished our works, and discussed how the scale differentiates his work. Examining our conceptual intentions might help a larger audience understand how similarities and contradictions can co-exist in contemporary art. As I ended that previous post with this thought, I’ll do so again:

A lot of artists fear being unoriginal, so they usually wince when they encounter similar work by other artists. Whatever. Here’s a new saying: Similarities happen. It’s not the worst thing in the world. In fact, it can work out for everyone.

No hard feelings.