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.
Edgar Degas
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Abusing the Marquis de Sade
PARIS — Georges Bataille, in The Accursed Share, said that if the Marquis de Sade had not existed, he would have had to been invented.
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Fooling Around With Art History, on Lunch Break
When most people are bored at work, they surf Facebook. Not so with Francesco Fragomeni and Chris Limbrick, two employees at the website creation startup Squarespace who funneled their creative energy into photographic homages to the art historical canon.
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Drawing Across Five Centuries
CHICAGO — In a 2004 address to London’s Royal Academy, critic Robert Hughes said that drawing “satisfies the desire for an active, investigative, manually vivid relation with the things we see and yearn to know about.” An exhibition of drawings currently on view at the Art Institute of Chicago exemplifies Hughes’s statement.
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The Tombs of Artists: A Last Statement From the Grave
As a last final statement, artists’ tombstones don’t disappoint. From the wildly eccentric to those that incorporate their own creations, the graves of artists are a fascinating reflection of their work.
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Sportswear in Art
With the Hunger Games, The Fashion World of Jean Paul Gaultier and Halloween garment construction on my mind, all I could think about this weekend was athletic wear, so I thought I’d pull you into my crazy and share some references to athletic wear in art and visual culture.
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I Think You May Have the Wrong Impression
Perhaps the most frustrating thing about being an art historian is being asked, “Who is your favorite artist?” or “What is your favorite kind of art?” These questions are always difficult for me to answer honestly in less than few sentences. Perhaps because I am a talker, or because on any given day or even hour, my answer may be different. My frustration heightens with the questioner’s following claim, “Impressionism is my favorite.” Honestly, this statement just pisses me off more than anything else about being an art historian.