New York in March ’23
A short week in Manhattan gave me a chance to catch up on some shows between the fall and spring blockbusters. I was looking forward to “Beyond the Light” at the Met, because I’m a recent fan of the Danish 19th century, the Golden Age of Eckersberg, Kobke, Rorbye and up to Hammershoi. Unfortunately, the […]
ArtNotes Fall ’22
Wolfgang Tillmans MoMA’s “members field guide” compares the emotional impact of a wall of photographs by Wolfgang Tillmans to a “perfect pop song,” which makes me feel not so out of it, as many a “perfect pop song” also leaves me cold. The just-deceased Peter Schjeldahl calls Tillmans a “genius” in his New Yorker review, […]
More Winslow Homer
Winslow Homer painted people, but he was not a portraitist. He painted mountains and rivers, but he was not a landscape artist. He painted activities, but he was not a genre artist. In 19th-century American art, there was no one like him. He stands alone. He was a storyteller, but he rarely told you what […]
American Art at SBMA
The post-van Gogh rehang of the permanent galleries at SBMA features a selection of largely 19th-century American painting (perhaps in fulfillment of the 1958 commitment to Preston Morton in consideration of her gift of 50 paintings). While maybe a third were seen in the 2012 exhibition, “Scenery, Story, Spirit,” most of the others are new […]
NY Art Notes ’22
Two months away from Santa Barbara were never far from art, and although it is excruciatingly difficult to translate visual experiences into words, I can at least record my reactions as I recall them. First, the Metropolitan Museum of Art is my home base away from home, a five-minute walk from our apartment on 79th […]