Though Paula Modersohn-Becker’s name rarely appears alongside famous men in the annals of art history, she deserves her own biography, and Marie Darrieussecq has written it.
Rainer Maria Rilke
Posted inBooks
How Rodin Shaped Rilke as a Young Poet
Who knew that Rodin in his 60s met, inspired, and shaped Rilke in his 20s?
Posted inArt
Paula Modersohn-Becker’s Simplified Forms and Complicated Life
“For somewhere an old enmity exists between our life and that great work we do,” wrote Rainer Maria Rilke in “Requiem for a Friend,” a eulogy for painter Paula Modersohn-Becker, who died following childbirth at age 31.
Posted inArt
Balthus’s Androgynous Dreams
When we talk about Balthus what we talk about are perversities: a grown man painting erotically charged portraits of Lolita-like young girls with their skirts flapped up like flowers.
Posted inArt
A Man Without a Camera
Marco Breuer is best known for the photographs that he makes without using a camera. (He does other sorts of photography, but this body of work is largely what we know about his endeavors). Rather than pointing at a moment that is gone, and wresting fixity from flux, as photographs are said to do, Breuer acknowledges the triumph of instability, with its attendant manifestations of destruction and demise.