A legendary rivalry existed between the two megastars of nineteenth-century French painting: the arch-Romantic Eugène Delacroix (1798-1863)—the subject of an exhibition now at the Metropolitan Museum, through November 12—and the inveterate classicist Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres (1780-1867).1 But on one thing they agreed: Drawing is the essential foundation of art. As Ingres famously declared, “Drawing is the probity […]
Damien Hirst, Delacroix, drawing, Ingres, Metropolitan Museum, Raphael, RubensWhat’s wrong with today’s “protest art”—which occupies so much of our public space? Mainly this: it’s long on protest and virtually devoid of art. That sad fact has been vividly demonstrated of late by two New York exhibitions: Art and China after 1989: Theater of the World (closed January 7 at the Guggenheim) and An […]
Ai Weiwei, animal cruelty in "art", conceptual art, Dread Scott, Elizabeth Catlett, Guggenheim Museum, Henry Flynt, Liu Xiaodong, Marcel Duchamp, Martha Rosier, Melvin Edwards, Paul Cadmus, protest art, School of the Art Institute of Chicago, Wang Xingwei, Whitney MuseumTwo exhibitions this spring have powerfully belied the artworld pretense that all contemporary art is in an anti-traditional “cutting-edge” vein. And unlike the contemporary work that fills today’s leading museums and galleries, they offer art lovers something to rejoice in. The smaller of the two shows is Self-Portrait (April 20 – June 20)—at the Eleventh Street […]
art education, Art Renewal Center, Classical Realism, contemporary art, self-portraitsThe phenomenon of fake news is on everyone’s lips in the realm of politics these days, but the equivalent of fake art in the contemporary artworld has yet to be adequately reckoned with. Google the term and you’ll find ample news of forgeries—work imitating that by famous artists and passed off as actually by them. […]
anti-art, Combines, Erased de Kooning Drawing, fake art, fake news, Leah Dickerman, MoMA, Monogram, RauschenbergValentin who? Valentin de Boulogne (1591–1632), that’s who! But I must confess that I had never heard of this masterly painter before the landmark exhibition now at the Met, though I’ve been studying art history for more than half a century.1 Valentin achieved no small fame in his lifetime, however. Ranked high among the followers […]
17th-century painting, Annick Lemoine, Beyond Caravaggio, Caravaggio, Counter Reformation art, Keith Christiansen, Louvre, Metropolitan Museum, Valentin de BoulogneRefreshing relief from the artworld’s standard offerings of “modern” and “contemporary” art has been provided by two of this year’s exhibitions in New York: Thomas Hart Benton’s America Today Mural Rediscovered, which just closed at the Metropolitan Museum; and Hebrew Illumination for Our Time: The Art of Barbara Wolff, at the Morgan Library & Museum […]
