The Swiss artist Nicolas Party is both the subject and curator of Pastel, an extraordinary exhibition examining the under-appreciated, fugitive medium and its history.
Edgar Degas
Posted inArt
The Trouble with Renoir’s Nudes
Renoir: The Body, The Senses makes some attempts, vain in my opinion, to present Renoir as a politically progressive artist, even a closet feminist.
Posted inIn Brief
X-Rays of Degas Sculptures Illuminate His Unconventional Process
Conservation scientists at the Fitzwilliam Museum shed some light on the everyday objects forming the armatures of three surviving beeswax sculptures.
Posted inBooks
The Blindness of Edgar Degas
His virulent belief system, which led him to cut off his Jewish friends in the wake of the Dreyfus Affair, is unredeemed by his art.
Posted inArt
Degas and His Fascination with 19th-Century Hat Culture
The exhibit at the Legion of Honor Museum includes paintings by Impressionists, along with period hats and bonnets embellished with silk flowers, ribbons, plumes, and feathers.
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The Pursuit of Art, 2016
The first painting I saw in 2016 was “Cockman Always Rises Orange” (2015): we can’t say we weren’t warned.
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Best of 2016: Our Top 20 NYC Art Shows
This list barely scratches the surface of the city’s artistic offerings this year, from overdue retrospectives to surprising sides of artists we know well.
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Smeary Smeary Edgar Degas
The first picture that caught me up short was “Factory Smoke” (1877–79), hanging alone on a freestanding wall in the middle of the gallery.
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How Artists Portrayed Prostitution in 19th-Century Paris
PARIS — Perhaps out of a kindred permissive, libertine spirit, prostitution — both chic demi-mondaine and lascivious, pierreuse street-walker style — played a central role in the nascent development of modern painting.
Posted inNews
Crimes of the Art
On this week’s art crime blotter: refugees reject Banksy’s gesture, Hobby Lobby family investigated for Iraqi loot acquisition, and art that looks like trash gets tossed.
Posted inArt
Rare 1915 Films Show Rodin, Monet, Renoir, and Degas in Their Twilight Years
In 1915, with the newly innovated film camera, a young Russian-born, French actor named Sacha Guitry captured some of France’s greatest artists and authors.
Posted inArt
Staring Back: 400 Years of Portraits at the Morgan
Life Lines: Portrait Drawings from Dürer to Picasso at the Morgan Library & Museum may not venture very far beyond canonical European artists, but it uncovers richness and diversity within a circumscribed field, especially in the work of its two anchors, Albrecht Dürer and Pablo Picasso.