Spanish Art
Reflections on visiting the Prado and more: Merely by painting The Spinners, Vulcan’s Forge and Las Meninas, Velazquez earned his place at or near the top of Western Europe’s great artists. His royal portraits are honored next, but it’s hard to say how they would have made his reputation today – especially given the unattractive […]
Gallery Shows
Mnuchin, a local gallery that presents museum-quality shows, rounded up works from the ’80s by Sean Scully, one of my favorites for his rough, building-block construction works. In the ’80s, however, he hadn’t yet found his winning formula. He was advancing toward it, and that in itself was interesting to see; but compared to his […]
Valentin de Boulogne
The Met’s second big fall show opened last week, and as usual it is big: something like 40 of the 60 known paintings by Valentin de Boulogne – from the Louvre, above all, plus the Vatican, Indianapolis and several venues in Rome and Florence – have been gathered and, unfortunately, hung together. Unfortunate, because so […]
Jerusalem
A quick but labored walk through the Met’s newest blockbuster exhibition, Jerusalem (1000-1400), made me wonder if I was ‘arted out,’ if I was going to museums out of habit or sense of duty and no longer able to truly enjoy myself. Yes, there were a few things that caught my eye, but for the […]
What Is Art?
The age-old, unanswerable question came to mind as I pondered two equally compelling objects on back-to-back days in San Francisco (8/13-14/16). The first was the “strandbeest” at the Exploratorium in an exhibit titled “The Dream Machines of Theo Jansen.” There were actually several on display, including one that was operational. Contraptions made largely of PVC […]