The Art Museum and its Origins
Tags/ Posted by Tony ThomasSince I was young, I've been the youngest and worshipped Venus in the sacred and fragrant colonnades of even her humblest serving maidscontinue reading this poem
One of the oldest displays of art is in the caves at Lascaux, which contain around 2,000 painted figures, including over 900 identified as animals, dated at around 16,000 BC. There are similar caves at Altamira in Spain, and some aboriginal rock art in Australia may be at least 40,000 years old.
Russian and Soviet Art: Levitan and Pimenov
Tags/ Posted by Stephen PainKeys rattle on the way down to join the coffee grounds, guts and trash for the haruspex.continue reading this poem
Like the term “erotic fatigue,” there is probably a term for looking at too many Russian landscape paintings, i.e. “landscape fatigue.” One starts with good intentions, but after twenty or so paintings–they all tend to merge into one Ur-landscape of the nineteenth century. A lot of it has to do with the problem of foreground and field. If you’re looking at the usual stock of trees, skies and a few buildings, nothing stands out. But if you are arrested by a detail or a sharp contrast in the style, then you can make out something significant.
Pierre Bonnard: the Intimiste
Tags/ Posted by Tony Thomasevery day Sarah gave thanks for the embalmed words of her childhoodcontinue reading this poem
Pierre Bonnard was born on 3 October 1867 at Fontenay-aux-Roses, a village outside Paris, into a comfortable bourgeois family. He studied at various Lycées, receiving a law degree in 1888. He began his artistic studies first at the Ecole des Arts Décoratifs in Paris and then at the Académie Julian, where he met his lifetime friends and collaborators, including Maurice Denis, Ker-Xavier Roussel, Edouard Vuillard and Paul Sérusier.
Figuring Out the Abstract: Gender, Politics, and Art
Tags/ Posted by Stephen PainFlunking a breast exam one week after womb removal I get the call that something’s showed up and I go back to be prodded, probed and sonographed.continue reading this poem
To view, or “perform” art as Rosie Goldberg argues, is a challenge. We are often at a disadvantage even before we open our eyes to what is in front of us. Still in the 21st century, even after the art sociologist John Berger’s brilliant TV series “Ways of Seeing,” men look with sex in their eyes.
