The exhibitions that rippled through our cultural fabric over the past year, at least those occurring in and around New York, have registered the predictable number of highs and lows, though 2014 did manage to plumb one nadir unlikely to be matched for a good long time.
Théodore Rousseau
Posted inArt
“Tormented by Several Devils”: Théodore Rousseau’s Wild Styles
Consider “Study for The Forest in Winter at Sunset,” a work in oil and charcoal on brown paper by Théodore Rousseau, the 19th-century French painter now under scrutiny at the Morgan Library & Museum. Although it was done between 1845 and 1850, it feels like something Anselm Kiefer might come up with for a 12-foot-wide canvas: a controlled chaos of bare, twisting tree limbs in slashes of paint as dark and smoldering as charred bitumen.
Posted inArt
In Search of Intimacy: Fall Museum Shows in New York
Skimming through various museum sites for their fall schedules, the first thing that caught my eye was a notice for The Art of the Chinese Album at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.