Art
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Just weeks before Pope Francis, in his inaugural homily, explicitly urged listeners to protect the environment, two art exhibitions opened in New York City, both of which explore the environmental theme through extraordinary renderings of birds. Surely Pope Francis, whose namesake is the patron saint of ecology and a world-renowned lover of birds, would be pleased. The two exhibits, one by an American artist, the other by Japanese artists, are mutually enhancing. They illustrate the vital,...
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May 6, 2013
No other Western artist is quite like Piero della Francesca, the Quattrocento Italian painter who disappeared from public awareness for centuries after his death in 1492 and was then dramatically rediscovered in the late 19th century. It’s not that he is the greatest of painters—although Aldous Huxley famously called his “Resurrection” “the best picture in the world,” and any museum holding one of his rare works will certainly rank it among its treasures.
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You’ve probably noticed that in many paintings of the Adoration of the Magi, the youngest of the three kings is a black man. You may know that this convention began in the last quarter of the 15th century, and also that “Balthazar,” as he came to be named, represented Africa, while the eldest king stood for Europe and the middle-aged king for the East. But did you ever wonder who stood as the models of “Balthazar” for artists from Hans Memling to Romare Bearden?
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March 25, 2013
"Crucifixion,” a wall-sized oil painting created by Renato Guttuso (1911-87), one of Italy’s finest modern painters, is widely recognized as a 20th-century masterpiece today. But a year after the painting was unveiled in Rome in 1941, during World War II, it sparked controversy. Guttuso, who had made an international debut by winning first prize at the prestigious Premio Bergamo in 1938, was in the process of establishing an international reputation...
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March 18, 2013
Pablo Picasso spent the summer of 1910 in Cadaqués, Spain. Among the paintings he did there were several that took his cubism to an almost entirely abstract extreme. In “Woman With a Mandolin,” for example, both the figure and the instrument are scarcely legible. His dealer found the work “unfinished,” and Picasso never again flirted so daringly with abstraction. “There is no abstract art,” he later said. “You always have to begin with something.
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February 18, 2013
While writers are never expected to produce a book, a play or even a single poem without prior drafts and rewrites, artists are sometimes held to a different standard: the spontaneous masterpiece. This is especially true of modern artists whose work involves distillation or the capturing of a feeling or the conveying of energy—or all these at once.
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November 26, 2012
When Fyodor Dostoevsky and his wife visited the Kunstmuseum in Basel, Switzerland, and discovered Hans Holbein the Younger’s “Christ in the Tomb” of 1521, the great novelist was so appalled that he fell into an epileptic fit. Years later, in “The Idiot,” he brought Prince Myshkin before the same painting. “A man’s faith might be ruined by looking at that picture,” says Myshkin—and himself suffers an epileptic fit.
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November 12, 2012
Opinion is divided among artists, critics and fans alike as to whether Andy Warhol was the greatest artist of the second half of the 20th century. But there is greater agreement that few, if any, rivaled his influence—much like Marcel Duchamp in the first half of the century. The discussion, perhaps foolish to begin with, is nevertheless complex.
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November 5, 2012
Since its purchase in 1956 by the National Gallery of Art in Washington, The Sacrament of the Last Supper, an oil painting by Salvador Dalí (1904-89), has replaced Pierre-Auguste Renoir’s “Girl With a Watering Can” as the museum’s most popular work (pushing her “into the mud” as Time magazine quipped). The popularity of Dalí’s image has persisted despite critical hostility toward the painting and the gallery’s own ambivalence. It hangs in a corner by the elevators.
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October 22, 2012
Hildegard of Bingen (1098-1179), one of the most accomplished persons of the entire Middle Ages, finally has been officially declared a saint and is to be named a doctor of the church this month. She was a polymath with many roles, including those of scholar, scientist, botanist, ecologist, healer, preacher, writer, visionary, church leader and Benedictine spiritual guide. She sprinkled justice and compassion for the poor throughout her writings and composed chants with meditative melodies....