Chinese Paintings at LACMA
Of all the marvelous Chinese Paintings from Japanese Collections currently visiting LACMA, courtesy of curator Stephen Little, three ink works from perhaps the 13th century not only caught my attention, they rewarded revisits and made me think I could look at them for days on end. That, I suppose, is one goal of a Zen […]
New York, May ’14
On successive days I saw similarly provocative shows, at the Guggenheim and the Museum of the City of New York. Neither contained great art; both raised questions about the role of art in society. Futurism was the kind of exhaustive, indeed definitive, survey in which the Guggenheim excels. Full of loans from Italy, it showed […]
Loot
An appearance by the estimable Sharon Waxman at an SBMA Director’s Dialogue prompted a return to my thoughts on the issue of repatriation of stolen art. It also prompted me to read her 2012 book, Loot . There was nothing in the book that added to my previous understanding of the subject, formed by reading, […]
The Gloomy Gardner
The Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston has a lot in common with the Barnes, now in Philadelphia. Both are private, idiosyncratic collections amassed early in the 20th century by a single individual, and both are, or have been, severely constricted by the founder’s deed of gift. The collections, of course, differ: Barnes was into […]
Balthus at the Met
Once again I was so annoyed by the wall labels of a Met show that I had trouble appreciating the art. This time the show, apparently conceived and titled for marketing purposes, was called “Balthus Cats and Girls” – thus, appealing to the Met’s two main audiences: men and women. The first shortcoming of the […]