An exhibition at the Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum demonstrates that though it would seem impossible to replicate El Greco’s gleaming fabrics in real life, Balenciaga manages to do just that.
Francisco Goya
Posted inIn Brief
French Museums Spar Over Goya Paintings
A small museum in southwestern France has just gained a Goya thanks to a new authentication that’s left a different French museum with a mere copy.
Posted inArt
From Goya to Ab-Ex in a Series of Brushstrokes
Dana Saulnier’s ostensibly expressionist canvases at First Street Gallery carry a bravado reminiscent at first glance of mid-century abstraction. Yet they flaunt an obvious distance from their Action painting precursors by the employment of allusive figural references.
Posted inArt
A Nightmarish History of Spanish Drawings
For the first time, the dark manifestations of the Spanish drawings held by the Morgan Library and Museum are seeing the gallery lights. Visions and Nightmares: Four Centuries of Spanish Drawings opened last month as the museum’s inaugural foray into the overlooked history of drawing in Spanish art.
Posted inArt
How Does One Make an Image of Revolution?
LOS ANGELES — What does it mean to be a revolutionary? How does one make an image of revolution? What are the parallels between religion and revolution? And does religion have a place in our current world?
Posted inArt
Making a Heaven in Hell: The Angel of the Odd’s Dark Romanticism
PARIS — With the bloody revolutions of the late 1700s, the mood in Europe was apprehensive and brooding about the future. Perhaps then it’s no surprise that the art from that time has a certain gloominess to it as well. Yet what is unexpected is the strange beauty certain artists began to give their visions of horror, whether it was embracing the devil in the same way Milton did in Paradise Lost as an alluring prince of darkness, or portraying the apocalypse with a light that was inverted to our world, but curiously enticing. It’s this deviant use of beauty that is celebrated in L’Ange du Bizarre (The Angel of the Odd), an exhibition draped over the galleries of the Musée d’Orsay in Paris that beckons with its Dark Romanticism.
Posted inArt
Gender Warfare in Art, 1882 to 2012
LONDON — Who knew Max Klinger’s late 19th-century prints exploring that tempestuous schism dividing man and woman could be so evocative of Francisco Goya’s early 19th-century print series, Disasters of War? It’s gender warfare, as seen through visual art.
Posted inArt
How Leonardo Went Viral and Other Classic Hilarity
A humorous show, Infinite Jest: Caricature and Satire from Leonardo to Levine, chronicling the history of caricature just opened at the Metropolitan Museum. It courageously mounts numerous prints and drawings that are unabashedly ribald, biting and comic.
Posted inArt
Lesser-Known Visions of Hispanic Culture in Manhattan
Masterpieces, hidden treasure, absolutely free. These are just some of the accolades of New York’s Hispanic Society, a museum that unfortunately only gets 25,000 visitors a year. With a roster of artists that includes rock star names like El Greco, Velasquez and Goya it’s hard to swallow that the Society gets so few visitors a year. Why is the collection so underrepresented? What in the name of Goya is going on here?
