Posted in Art, Art History, Art Writing, Culture Cues on Jan 22nd, 2013
ShareI know many persons who have the purest taste in literature, and yet false taste in art, and it is a phenomenon that puzzles me not a little; but I have never known any one with false taste in books and true taste in pictures.
John Ruskin
John Ruskin was skeptical of the Victorian era’s flourishing publishing [...]
Posted in Art, Art History, Art Writing, Sacred Art, Things to Read on Nov 30th, 2011
ShareART HISTORIANS ARE NOT NECESSARILY the best commentators on art. They are primarily researchers: archival sleuths, inquirers, unearthers of fact. Gumshoes, the best of them. Some can write, many cannot. The discipline draws bookish sorts who are more at home in a library carrel, reading up on the words of some other member of the [...]
Posted in Art, Art History, Art Writing, Sacred Art, Things to Read on Nov 20th, 2011
ShareHASAN NIYAZI, impressario of Three Pipe Problem, had included a list of readings that informed his essay in the previous post, Navigating the Cognitive Philosophy of Michael Fried. I omitted the roster simply to conform more closely to the format of Studio Matters. The audience for this blog are, in the main, other working artists, [...]
Posted in Art, Art History, Art Writing, Painting, Things to Read on Nov 12th, 2011
Shareby Hasan Niyazi
CARAVAGGIO AND HIS FOLLOWERS IN ROME has arrived at the Kimbell Art Museum in Fort Worth, Texas. Those unable to experience the majesty of the Baroque in person are left to ponder the substantial catalogue recently published by Yale University Press.
Featuring essays by exhibition organizers and notable scholars of the Baroque, Michael Fried’s [...]
Posted in Art, Art History, Art Writing, Sacred Art, Things to Read on Oct 25th, 2011
ShareONE PROBLEM WITH ART HISTORIANS-TURNED-JOURNALISTS lies in the requirements of journalism. The art pundit must be interesting; no matter if accuracy suffers. Diversion is the name of the game. Elegant and high-minded, to be sure, but diverting nonetheless. And there really is not time, given the copy deadlines of daily or even weekly publications, to [...]
Posted in Art, Art Writing, Artistic Identity, Artistic Pretension on Jun 18th, 2011
ShareReader Sam has done us all a great favor by emailing the link to Arty Bollocks Generator. The site provides an instant Artist Statement for anyone applying for a grant, preparing for a show or cobbling together a CV. Gallerists, too, will find it useful for composing the kind of press releases vital to so [...]
Posted in Art, Art Writing, Artistic Identity, Things to Read on Jun 4th, 2011
ShareA small gem of a book that artists should have on their shelves is Jacques Maritain’s The Responsibility of the Artist. Together with Jacques Barzun’s The Use and Abuse of Art, it is all anyone needs to think or talk about the artist’s ultimate purpose.
Dover keeps Barzun in print. Sadly, it does not do the [...]
Posted in Art, Art History, Art Writing, Sacred Art, Things to Read on May 9th, 2011
ShareREADER SAM’S REFERENCE, in a comment on the previous post, to the biblical story of Adam naming the animals lends thrust to Tallis’ argument on—for lack of a better term—the metaphysics of pointing.
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The Genesis narrative distills into a simple, vivid anecdote the substanceN of Raymond Tallis’ thesis in Michelangelo’s Finger. The mythical Adam could hardly [...]
Posted in Art, Art History, Art Writing, Things to Read on May 6th, 2011
ShareORDAINED ART APPRECIATORS are, in the main, a predictable tribe. Often enough, the freshest and most intellectually satisfying comments on art from outside the expected punditariat. Michelangelo’s Finger: An Exploration of Everyday Transcendence, by Raymond Tallis, is an engaging, erudite excursion into what it means to be human. Tallis, a professor emeritus of geriatric medicine [...]
Posted in Art, Art History, Art Writing, Painting, Things to Read on Apr 11th, 2011
Share“I WANT A SHORT LIFE BUT A FULL ONE.” Amedeo Modigliani got his wish. In 1920, at age thirty-five, he died, toothless, of tubercular meningitis in a Parisian pauper’s hospital.
It was a sordid end to a confident stride into the trenches of la vie maudit. The romance of heroic nonconformity, vital to the cult of [...]