09 Nov 2012
Creation Theology
The painting above by an artist little known outside of Italy, Benedetto Bonfigli, is often titled The Annunciation of the Notaries and is dated to the middle of the fifteenth century. St. Luke who can be seen writing his gospel between the Virg
07 Nov 2012
Jacques Lipchitz as a Jewish Christ
Jacques Lipchitz (1891-1973) was mostly a follower of his period's more innovative artists but that does not mean that he lacked the visual perception to make sense of art. He had that in spades. The bronze, above left, of a Pierrot, a well-
04 Nov 2012
Art and the Human Mind
Rumi was a mystical poet born in what is now Afghanistan in 1207 and died in 1273. The world has learnt little since about being human that Rumi did not already know and his ancestors long before him. Technology and science may be new and
29 Oct 2012
Leonardo’s Hurricane Sandy
With Hurricane Sandy bearing down on the East Coast of the United States tonight, I thought I should take the opportunity to tell our users there that we are thinking of them and wish them well. We're in it too. If you have a second to take
29 Oct 2012 | 1 Comments
Andy Warhol: The Only Way Out is In!
Here for those familiar with the site is a late print by Andy Warhol. It provides the quotation of the week: "The only way out is in!"
25 Oct 2012
Jackson Pollock’s Poetry of the Self
“Painting is a state-of-being….Painting is self-discovery. Every good artist paints what he is.” Jackson Pollock (1912-56)1
Like hundreds of artists since the early Renaissance, and probably from even before then, the true m
22 Oct 2012
Tiepolo’s Magic Well
I, a complete novice, was in an art class the other day copying as a watercolor a drawing done in ink by Giambattista Tiepolo. The copy is illustrated above (lower image). While working on the shadows, though, in the lower left corner where the
18 Oct 2012
The Power of an Artist’s Imagination
Remember when you look at art that artists can do almost anything. They are not like you and I (apologies to any artists out there). Their imaginations are all-powerful. Take, for instance, this 1776 etching of the Colisseum in Rome by Giambatti
16 Oct 2012
Picasso was Rembrandt
Under the theme 'Artist as Other Artist' I show how many painters and sculptors over the centuries have, in one way or another, adopted the persona of an earlier artist. The mask they then inhabit helps disguise their own role within the
10 Oct 2012 | 1 Comments
Art, Generalization and Sight
One of the keys to understanding art is generalization because many of the most creative artists donate their ideas not to contemporaries or to those in the generation afterwards, who might not even understand, but to other great artists centuri
07 Oct 2012 | 7 Comments
Michelangelo’s Skull
In the three-part article on Michelangelo's Art Through Michelangelo's Eyes (2005) I argue that Michelangelo's Last Judgment is a scene inside the artist's mind with many of the figures formed into a giant view of his poetic hero, Dante Alighier
06 Oct 2012 | 1 Comments
How Shakespeare Became a King
I demonstrated several years ago that many of the most iconic portraits of Europe's rulers, including those of many British kings and at least four of her queens, so closely resemble the artist's self-portrait that they are not portraits as we t
21 Sep 2012
Impressionism and Fashion
Impressionism and Fashion is the title of a new exhibition opening at Paris' Musée d’Orsay this coming Monday. The key image on the catalogue’s cover and the Museum’s website is Manet’s Young Lady of 1866
20 Sep 2012
Mondrian’s Esoteric Interests
The spiritual and esoteric knowledge passed down in Western art from one generation to the next seems to remain constant regardless of which spiritual path the artist is interested in. There are dozens of possibilities, some more likely in one a
18 Sep 2012
For we are God
It's always thrilling to discover that yet another artist thinks alike. In 1927 the great German painter Max Beckmann published an article on the contemporary artist that covers many of the same ideas expressed here: the artist's vision
11 Sep 2012
Wisdom in Illustration
Academic art history is not the only place to turn to when seeking help understanding art. There is another group who understand art equally well: illustrators. The best graphic illustration done today is a step-by-step guide to the methods of t
30 Aug 2012
Manet’s Modern Methods
I was crossing the road when a delivery truck owned by a prominent online grocery in the New York area stopped at a light. It displayed a poster of their managers holding a blow-up of the product each specializes in (right). One of the meat mana
28 Aug 2012
Microbes & Man: The Essence of Art
Who we are, or rather who each artist was, is crucial to our understanding of art in ways that the literature on art rarely, if ever, addresses. Yet once the concept every painter paints himself is seen as central to understanding the artist&rsq
04 Aug 2012
Beauty is Truth, Truth Beauty
I've been reading the Bhagavad Gita, India's gift to the world, and discovering how the themes and principles of good living that Krishna teaches are remarkably similar to those that both Christ and Buddha taught centuries later. No-one
30 Jul 2012
Have I Made Up Art’s Metaphors?
"Female stars have been rushing to publish photos of themselves without makeup" notes the New York Times. Rihanna, Lady Gaga, Jennifer Love Hewitt and others have started a trend whereby even women known for their makeup want their fans to see t
25 Jul 2012
Manet’s Little Cavaliers
Major artists are often inspired by earlier masterpieces yet when the young Edouard Manet entered the Louvre to copy whatever he wanted he chose an insignificant little painting. Yes, it was then attributed to Velazquez but Manet, with an in-dep
22 Jul 2012
Anthropomorphic Landscapes
Visual metamorphosis. It's my term to describe a compositional method long used by major artists but virtually unknown to the art world except in a few rare cases. The only major exceptions I can immediately think of are Martin Schöngau
19 Jul 2012
Susan Sidlauskas and the Many Faces of Hortense Cézanne
In a relatively recent book on Paul Cézanne's portraits of his wife, Hortense, Susan Sidlauskas examines the nearly 30 images he made of her over a fourteen-year period in greater detail than has ever been done before. It is an import
18 Jul 2012
Errors! Errors! Errors!
This is a piece of advice that I need to keep giving in case some newbies on the site have missed it. Even I sometimes forget it but Its importance cannot be overstated and is regularly overlooked in conventional art history. Look for the passag
12 Jul 2012
Ink Flies in a Mind
If anyone doubts that St. Sebastian holds a special place in the creative mind as a symbol of the artist’s self and the idea that every painter paints himself, then take a look at Jaff Seijas’ self-portrait above. It is not proof but it is t
11 Jul 2012
Bless you! It’s Art
Keep your eye open for a handkerchief or white cloth. They can be highly significant. My own experience suggests that those who are not painters themselves are relatively unaware that a cloth is almost as important to the craft of painting as a
05 Jul 2012
Higgs boson and the Arts
The Higgs boson may have been found. The news today is circling the globe faster than the speed of light, attracting elementary fascination. Everyone has their own twist on its significance to them even those, like me, whose knowledge of science
04 Jul 2012
How a user of this site discovered a visual illusion
A few weeks ago Maaike Putman, a regular user of this site and an accomplished artist herself, sent me an extraordinary photo of a small wooden crucifix she had found hanging in a side chapel of the Santa Trinità church in Florence (above
29 Jun 2012
Should we look for Originality or Similarity?
Some of the interpretations revealed here are so self-evident that you might wonder why art scholars never saw them before. I think there are many reasons but one is key. While we look for what art has in common with earlier art, academics tend
23 Jun 2012
Cindy Sherman: Inside and Out
Cindy Sherman stands in an odd position in my pantheon of art. Her portraits, critics repeatedly tell us, are self-portraits but at the same time are not about her. That is my dilemma. The very characteristic that would make Sherman’s work
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