Harry Van Der Weyden: An American Tomalist Abroad
The first question most art-minded people ask about Harry Van der Weyden (1868-1952) is whether he was descended from the great Flemish painter Rogier Van der Weyden (c. 1399-1464). Art historians...
View ArticleBacchus In Autumn
What a melancholy sight Bacchus and his four little satyrs make on a cold November day. You can see ice crystals on the grapes so it must be early morning. Imagine the temperature of the lead...
View ArticleFly-Over Season
In the world of aerial photography the flyover season is about to begin. Thanks to the unusually warm winter temperatures in the Northeastern United States, snow on the ground is already patchy or the...
View ArticleLe monde de la douceur
It's not exactly what you may be thinking about today. However, there is a phenomenon the French call le monde de la douceur, meaning a world of gentleness and sweetness, a phenomenon they associate...
View ArticleLinda Nochlin Looks At Art. Art Looks Back At Her.
Kathleen Gilje's Linda Nochlin in Manet's Bar at the Olympia is a tribute to a great historian that is as layered as Manet's original; a young woman stands in the public eye, meeting the gaze of all...
View ArticleBacchus In Autumn
What a melancholy sight Bacchus and his four sleepy little satyrs make on a cold November day. The enigmatic smile on his face resembles no one so much as the Mona Lisa. The party's over and even...
View ArticleA Sapphire Blue Sea
“The most beautiful country in the universe inhabited by the most idiotic species.” – Marquis de Sade from Voyage d’Italie, 1775-76.`The Marquis wrote these words from exile while under threat of...
View ArticleStagedoom
"El si pronuncian y la mano alargan/Al primero que llega.""They swear to be faithful yet marry the first man who proposes."Sometimes the way in to a picture begins with an emotional frisson. Aesthetic...
View ArticleThreads Of Feeling
A swatch of fabric attached to an official form can be a window to another world. Arlette Farge, author of The Allure of the Archives, is aFrench historian of the 18th century, who has used just such...
View ArticleMary Hiester Reid: Can A Working Girl Ever Win?
What is it about accomplished women that makes them disappear like the Cheshire Cat, leaving behind their works to be sure, but barely a trace of a shadow?Consider the case of Mary Hiester Reid...
View ArticleRain Blossoms: The Waters Of March
Drops of water pearled on pale blue flowers ... rain blossoms. In March all flowers drip with rain but capturing the phenomenon in photographs requires a deft touch. The Viennese photographer Ernst...
View ArticleCecilia de Madrazzo: Portrait Of The Artist's Wife
This charming portrait of the artist's wife, like the better known portrait of their two children, was painted just a few month's before Mariano Fortuny's untimely death at age thirty-six. Although...
View ArticleMary Hiester Reid: Can A Working Girl Ever Win?
What is it about accomplished women that makes them disappear like the Cheshire Cat, leaving behind their works to be sure, but barely a trace of a shadow?Consider the case of Mary Hiester Reid...
View ArticleA Day Of Rain
"I am not in front of nature, I am inside it."("Je ne suis pas devant la nature, je suis dedans.")- Pierre Tal-Coat, (translation JL)Rain trickling down an invisible window in white rivulets...
View ArticleLuminance
"No matter what Vermeer may suggest or summarize of the outer world or invite the spectator to imagine, wisdom begins and ends in the room, conceived as a cube of shining space in which the figures...
View ArticleA Thousand And One Nights - More Or Less
THE SWALLOWSin refreshing capes of black satinthey're typing out the new aubadedaybreak just dictated WHAT FUNto see how the gasping trainclimbs the ladder of frail...
View ArticleDisturbing The Universe: Guido Gozzano
I.With its unkempt garden, its vast rooms, its fineseventeenth-century balconies decked with greenery,the villa seems cribbed from certain verses of mine,a...
View ArticleRead Like An Irish Woman
It begins again. Or it never ended. Take your pick. The recently released Cambridge Companion To Irish Poets covers four plus centuries of Irish poetry but finds room to include only four women...
View ArticleLa maison de Biala
There is no better time to revel in gorgeous color than in the middle of winter."I always had the feeling that I belong where my easel is." - Janice Biala.Biala (1903-2000) was born in Biala Podlaska...
View ArticleJoan Murray: Poet From New York
We old dudes. We White shoes. We Golf ball. We Eat mall. We Soak teeth. We Palm Beach. We Vote red. We Soon dead. - "We Old Dudes" by Joan Murray, Poetry Magazine, July 2006Joan Murray (b.1945) is an...
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