It was a cold Saturday morning in Northern Virginia and we cautiously opened an unmarked door leading into the basement of the Carlyle House, a historic house in Old Town, Alexandria. A…
The favorite artist of everyone who has never studied art, I tend to overlook Monet as his huge popularity has made him kitsch. In an attempt to conquer this and…
Happy birthday to you, Mr. Van Gogh! Congratulations, you’ve made it from obscurity all the way to kitsch!
The ever charming and insulting Roger Scruton in the hour long BBC documentary “Why Beauty Matters” makes his case against the cult of ugliness.
Continued from “Living Reincarnation” For creation of later art objects, ORLAN has saved large trash bags filled with the bloody gauze, bandages, used rubber gloves, scrubs and masks from her…
French performance artist ORLAN has gone under the knife nine times for art. Her seventh surgery, a 1993 piece entitled “Omnipresence,” performed in New York was broadcast live to her…
While not the first to use oil paints, Jan van Eyck made use of its advantages more than anyone before him. Combined with his masterful draftsmanship, the details and accuracy…
In museum heaven, we come and go as we please, and pull up a little chair and sit in front of one painting. For twenty minutes, for an hour. We…
The Futurists rejected the style and painting conventions of the past, saying, “to admire an old picture is to pour our sentiment into a funeral urn instead of hurling it…
On an average day in Prague, one visitor was overwhelmed by massive allegories, portraits, and mythical interpretations by Peter Paul Rubens and enjoying the luxury of a nearly empty Baroque…
Because it fills me with joy. Because my heart bursts with happiness. Because I am overwhelmed, in awe, astounded. Because I cannot help but respond. Because it humbles me, yet…
I will see this da Vinci in Krakow at the Czartoryski Museum next week. I cannot contain my joy! Art lifts the spirit and delights the soul.
Last week I went to the city art museum in Baden-Baden, Germany. The Staatliche Kunsthalle presented “Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis” (2012) by Jan De Cock, a young Belgian artist. Visually, I…
Frida Kahlo’s artwork does not fit neatly into any box. Her work is highly biographical – out of 143 paintings, 55 are self-portraits. Her paintings often depict the physical pain…
To AmyGrace and Joseph.
Austa Densmore Sturdevant, a little known American artist, lived from 1855 – 1936. Internet searches reveal only one of Sturdevant’s portraits of her father, so I am pleased to bring…
On May 2nd, the last privately owned of Edvard Munch’s four versions of The Scream will go up for auction. The head of Sotheby’s Impressionist & Modern Art department, Simon…
“The nude, in our tradition, is not naked but unclothed: it is a body marked by the shapes and materials of its normal covering.” Roger Scruton, in his excellent book Beauty,…
Traditionally, artists began as apprentices. They drew for endless hours and copied the work of the Masters. Tedious, but, as revealed by looking down the long line of master painters,…
The clean grace of marble was not enjoyed by ancient Greeks as we enjoy it now. We ooh and aah over the interplay of light and shadow on perfectly chiseled…
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