Posted in Art, Art History, Art Writing, Culture Cues, Things to Read on Mar 1st, 2011
ShareROGER SCRUTON’S HANDBOOK OF ESSAYS, Beauty (2009), is more appealing in its parts than in the overarching thrust of his argument. His insistence that beauty—the quest for and recognition of it—is a function of the rational mind rings off key. Few of us are unfamiliar with the experience of being overwhelmed by beauty of some [...]
Posted in Art, Art History, Art Writing, Artistic Pretension, Sacred Art on Feb 20th, 2011
ShareHOW TO BEGIN? Objects of Devotion and Desire: Medieval Relic to Contemporary Art does not make it easy. I could take the high road and start this way: “Memory of the sacred lingers even among secular moderns who proclaim themselves celebrants of a totally profane world.” Or I could be up front about the unbearable [...]
Posted in Art, Art Writing, Collage, Painting on Jan 21st, 2011
ShareTHE WEEKS BETWEEN MID-DECEMBER AND EARLY JANUARY are a slow news time in the galleries. That makes it a very good time to introduce artists whom galleries are interested in taking aboard or ones they simply like but cannot accommodate on the roster. Denise Bibro’s Winter Salon is a lively sampler of 21 artists, six [...]
Posted in Art, Art History, Art Writing, Culture Cues, Painting, Things to Read on Jan 5th, 2011
ShareDOES MICHAEL FRIED LIKE ART? Anyone who has dragged themselves through his Absorption and Theatricality has to wonder. It is tempting to push the question a bit further and ask just what it is that he sees when he looks at art. Too often, it seems as though he sees only himself and his own position [...]
Posted in Art, Art Education, Art History, Art Writing, Things to Read on Dec 3rd, 2010
ShareA PAINTER ON FACULTY SOMEWHERE emailed me to regret that Gombrich had become:
. . . a voice that is little heard at the schools in which I’ve taught. . . . “The Visual Image: Its Place in Communication” is particularly good in throwing students for a loop; “On Art and Artists” is nice, too. There’s [...]
Posted in Art, Art Education, Art History, Art Writing, Drawing, Things to Read on Dec 2nd, 2010
ShareIS THERE AN ARTIST ANYWHERE who does not have Ernst Gombrich on the shelf? Art and Illusion, Meditations on a Hobby Horse, or—my favorite—The Sense of Order are perennial staples in the studio. If there is room for only one book, The Essential Gombrich fills the bill. His The Story of Art is a stock [...]
Posted in Art, Art Writing, Painting, Things to Read on Oct 1st, 2010
ShareMan with a Blue Scarf
On Sitting for a Portrait by Lucian Freud
by Martin Gayford
Thames & Hudson, 256 pp., $40
Art critics have been sitting for their portraits since Diderot, grandaddy of modern criticism, modeled for Fragonard. Under 18th-century Prussian rigor, aesthetics hardened into a discipline. Critics arose as arbiters and exegetes. The benefits [...]
Posted in Art Writing, Things to Read on Sep 15th, 2010
ShareTonight, Wednesday the 15th, Anthony Haden-Guest is giving a reading at HP Garcia, a newish gallery in New York’s garment district. Haden-Guest is variously described as a reporter, cartoonist, art critic, poet and socialite. Something tells me that socialite might be the most significant, given the gossipy, insider stuff he has written about the art [...]