01 Nov 2010
Basquiat as Boone as Warhol
I just finished writing an entry on Jean-Michel Basquiat's strange portrait of Mary Boone when I realized I had missed something. It's an example of, no matter how much you see in truly poetic art, there is always something more. In this case, I
31 Oct 2010
Analyzing Freud and the Queen
Britain's press went nuts when Lucian Freud gave the Queen a tiny portrait of herself, just 9" x 6", and notably ugly at that. She had spent hours posing for him over 19 months. She could not have been amused. Now we reveal on the site, for
30 Oct 2010
The Frick’s Fiction
The Frick Collection's Portrait of Philip IV by Velazquez is described as one of the best portraits he ever painted. It is indeed magnificent and has just opened as a one-painting exhibition, accompanied by new explanations of what
27 Oct 2010 | 2 Comments
Van Gogh’s Nose
Noses are important in art history. Ovid's middle name was Nose, or naso in Italian, and his Metamorphoses were for centuries artistic fodder for painters and sculptors alike. Maybe that's why Michelangelo was so interested in his own nose, tell
27 Oct 2010 | 2 Comments
Van Gogh’s Eyes
Cruising along the Lungotevere on a Vespa I had time to admire the vast self-portrait of Vincent on the back of a Roman tour bus. The poster, promoting yet another one-man show of his work, had a glorious reproduction of the artist in which ever
09 Oct 2010
Rembrandt’s “Weakness”
Using short entries to explain art, we do not get much chance to quote the opinions of others striking the same chord. Hence this new segment called Quotations. Much of the time the quotes will point out a great master's "weakness", the type
05 Oct 2010
Painting Himself
I'm always on the look-out for contemporary artists who fit the mold and many do. Cindy Sherman, for instance, has made a career out of photographing herself as other people. Then along comes Liu Bolin. As you can see from the image above, h
30 Sep 2010
Mona Lisa’s Bad Hair Day
After breakfast this morning I read an article on Tudor coinage – God knows why –but what a lucky break! Who would ever have thought that England’s Bloody Mary and the Mona Lisa would have anything in common? But, first, some backgro
29 Sep 2010
Rubens’ Commander is Rubens
A Rubens was recently sold at Christies described as Portrait of a Commander, three-quarter-length, being dressed for battle though any keen user of this site would recognize the image as Portrait of Rubens as a Commander being painted by two of
26 Sep 2010
Face It! Anthea is Parmigianino
Fifteen years ago a computer scientist named Lillian Schwartz published her discovery that the proportions of the Mona Lisa’s face matched those of Leonardo in his famous Self-Portrait almost exactly, too exactly to be coincidence.1 Art hi
15 Sep 2010
Sense and Nonsense about Caravaggio
Every writer from Caravaggio's day to our own has spoken of the artist's astonishing realism. One critic wrote a century after his birth that Caravaggio:
"recognized no other master than the model, without selecting [as artists
12 Sep 2010
Putin’s Portraits
Recent news from Russia suggests that Vladimir Putin is not a regular user of this website. According to The Art Newspaper he has approved plans to create the first National Portrait Gallery. “Society has a huge interest in our national hi
07 Sep 2010
Fusion Confusion at The Wallace Collection
The Wallace Collection in London, an august institution, has a painting by Van Dyck of Paris, the mythological judge of beauty, posing by himself. A detail of his face is illustrated above (left). Whatever else one has to say about this pa
06 Sep 2010
Mauro Molinari
I turned up on the last day of an exhibition of Mauro Molinari’s work at the Carlo Bilotti Museum in Rome, a small but fascinating show by an artist I did not know. There was only one visitor present, a short, happy Italian man in hi
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