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Looking at art leads to thinking about life
Walking through the Late Renoir exhibition at the Philadelphia Museum of Art recently, I couldn’t help but be struck by the power of Pierre-Auguste Renoir’s paintings of his three sons—Pierre, Jean, and Claude. Renoir didn’t begin having children until he reached his fifties, but he doted on them ...
“I think I’m beginning to know something about painting,” Pierre-Auguste Renoir said on the day he died as he turned away from a still life he’d been working on and handed his brushes to his assistant. Although wracked by the ravages of rheumatoid arthritis, Renoir painted prolifically to the end ...
This past week, Thomas Kinkade, famed “Painter of Light,” found himself behind bars after an arrest based on suspicion of drunken driving (mugshot shown). That sad episode came on the heels of Kinkade’s company recently declaring bankruptcy to elude paying millions of dollars to parties defrauded ...
When Sigmar Polke’s family crossed over to the freedom of West Berlin from the oppression of East Berlin on the subway in 1953, 12-year-old Sigmar feigned sleep to add to the picture of normalcy for his fugitive family. Polke (pronounced “polka,” like the dance), who passed away last Thursday ...
Leave it to an Italian art publisher to do an American artist right. Skira’s Edward Hopper , distributed in the United States by Rizzoli, may be the finest single volume visually and critically on the elusive yet irresistible 20th century artist. The familiar paintings are all there, but ...
The established poet William Carlos Williams wrote in 1956 of newcomer poet (and friend) Allen Ginsberg that he “sees with the eyes of the angels.” Williams most likely referred to the visual aspects of Ginsberg’s poetry, especially the groundbreaking poem Howl , the epic poem that helped define the ...
When the Arno River overflowed in 1966 and flooded Florence, Italy, an art apocalypse nearly took place in that grand Renaissance city. Countless works, including Lorenzo Ghiberti’s Doors of Paradise, Donatello’s Magdalene, and a crucifix by Giovanni Cimabue, sustained serious damage from water and ...
“A woman has no peace as an artist until she proves over and over that she won’t be eliminated,” Louise Bourgeois once said. On Monday, this plane of existence eliminated Bourgeois at the still-creative age of 98, but she will continue to exist as an influential artist setting a standard for ...
While researching the Botticelli’s Venus and Mars (shown) at the National Gallery, London, David Bellingham, a program director at Sotheby’s Institute of Art, made an interesting discovery. The fruit held by a satyr lurking in the bottom right corner of the painting bore a resemblance to the fruit ...
In a recent article in The Australian , Matthew Westwood writes about Canadian social scientist Sarah Thornton, whose book Seven Days in the Art World (cover above) “explores the dynamics of creativity, taste, judgment, status, money, and the search for beauty in life.” In other words, this social ...
For many people, even those most enlightened when it comes to art and culture, Africa remains “the dark continent” out of which little emerges that sparks interest. The Museum for African Art, set to open in 2011 in New York City, hopes to shine new light on the ancient art of Africa and establish ...
A recent Washington Post article by Jacqueline Trescott and Dan Zak made the bold, but hard to argue with statement that United States museums foil thieves much better than their European counterparts do, for a vast number of reasons, some of which are beyond the control of museum administrators ...
“The camera is a weapon. The camera can be a machine gun. It can be a psychoanalytical couch. It can be a warm kiss,” opines Henri Cartier-Bresson in The Decisive Moment: Photographs and Words by Henri Cartier-Bresson , the 1973 film production recently re-released by Microcinema to coincide with ...
“How could you conceivably cut yourself off from other men and from the life they bring you in such abundance? In the name of what uncaring, ivory-tower kind of attitude?” Pablo Picasso said in a 1944 interview discussing the political nature of much of his painting. “No; painting is not there ...
In an exhibition currently at the Park Avenue Armory in New York City, a crane reaches into a mountain of clothes and pulls out at random a selection of shirts, pants, etc., only to release them to flutter back to their brethren. “No Man’s Land,” Christian Boltanski’s latest art installation, moves ...