15 Mar 2011 | 2 Comments

Leo Steinberg and Christ’s Organ

Leo Steinberg died two days ago in New York City at the age of 90. He was an art historian who wrote English clearly and had an unusual eye. His most important contribution was not, as is generally believed, his book Other Criteria in which he c

14 Mar 2011

Bacon and Daumier

A recent entry on one of Daumier’s Don Quixote and Sancho Panza paintings showed that the knight’s lance and shield are really substitutes for the artist’s brush and palette. Even the other way round, when Daumier depicted an ar

13 Mar 2011

Google’s Art Project

The image above is the right eye of Botticelli's Venus, a mere inch or two of canvas. It's taken from the Google Art Project, an amazing site where you can zoom into a hundred or so major masterpieces and see exquisite detail. If you hav

09 Mar 2011

How Museums Rob the Public

Do you know who owns the copyright on the Mona Lisa? No-one, of course, because Leonardo is long dead. Try telling that to the Metropolitan Museum, though. A few years ago they started to claim copyright on the images of everything in their coll

02 Mar 2011

Charlie Sheen Paints Himself

The rant by actor Charlie Sheen now sounds angelic next to the fashion designer John Galliano’s disgusting remarks. You may not know what either said, just that both got into trouble with anti-semitic outbursts the same week. Watching the

01 Mar 2011

A round of cheers for Michael Fried, please!

I have just finished reading Michael Fried’s The Moment of Caravaggio published last year. What a book! A compilation of his A.W. Mellon lectures at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC he applies to Caravaggio the same kind of th

25 Feb 2011

The Spell of Gossaert

The Jan Gossaert (c.1478-1532) exhibition that was on at the Met in New York last year has now moved in truncated form to London’s National Gallery. There are 37 of his 63 extant paintings in London. The Met had 50. Yet there i

21 Feb 2011

As Time Goes By

Irina Werning, an Argentine photographer, takes pictures of friends re-enacting photos from their youth and then depicts them side-by-side. I find them fascinating, in part because we all age in slow-motion, in part because the resemblances betw

15 Feb 2011

Recent Reading

If anyone noticed the reduced activity on the site over the past ten days, forgive me. I was on a beach where, in between downpours, I got the chance to catch up on some reading. Three books in particular are worth recommending:

John Sp

30 Jan 2011

Note on Style

Style, the traditional method of classifying art, is rarely mentioned on this site because it has little effect on interpretation. Mark Roskill, the late art historian, wrote in his book The Interpretation of Pictures:

‘Discussion[s]

28 Jan 2011

Reality, History and Minor Masters

If you want to learn about the history and culture of a period, you’d be better off studying minor painters like the one above. They generally copy reality faithfully like an art student painting a landscape. Great masters, however, design

27 Jan 2011

Larry Rivers and Reincarnation

There is a common idea among major artists that they are part of a continuum of artists with whom they feel at one. So much so, that they can easily take on each other’s identity in a painting: Manet as Rubens, Matisse as Rembrandt etc. Ar

24 Jan 2011

My I-Touch Gallery

Here’s a tip for anyone collecting images of art on their computer and who would like to consult them while visiting a museum? Download images of paintings, drawings, sculpture and prints onto an I-Touch or I-Phone. They can be very useful

21 Jan 2011

What Graphic Designers Know

Artists put meaning in their work by using methods that most viewers never see. Indeed that's what this website's about. Graphic illustrators put meaning in their work too. What few know though, perhaps even themselves, is that they

21 Jan 2011

One of the 50 Best!

Here's a pat on our own back! We are four months old now and have just been listed on Master Degree's List of the 50 Best Art History Blogs. You might want to visit it yourself. It's a useful resource.

And, by the way, pleas

17 Jan 2011

Manet’s Errors

Edouard Manet would have been amused by his critics, then and now. In the 1950’s Clement Greenberg placed Manet at the center of his theory that modern painting had no meaning beyond emphasizing its own essential character. Thus the “flatnes

14 Jan 2011

What do Contemporary Artists Know?

Why do so many contemporary artists place themselves at the center of their work? Think about it. Yasamusa Morimura paints himself into his copies after old masterpieces; he’s not the only one to do so either. Cindy Sherman has photographe

13 Jan 2011

How Swords Become Paintbrushes

Even though artists across the ages have morphed swords into paintbrushes and spears into etching needles, few have ever been recognized. Indeed the use of weapons as visual metaphors for the tools of an artist is so widespread in art generally

08 Jan 2011

Picasso and Paul McCartney’s Two Fingers

Alberti’s Window, an art history blog, has an intriguing video of Paul McCartney discussing the origin of his song Two Fingers. McCartney was in the waiting-room of a hospital staring at a poster of Picasso’s painting, The

03 Jan 2011 | 1 Comments

Why painters paint themselves

I spend so much time demonstrating that conventional perception of art is mistaken that I seldom explain why every painter paints himself is such a profound idea. It is, in essence, the basis of consciousness. Every time we recount a childhood s

29 Dec 2010

Me! Me! Me! and the Identity Museum

“Me! Me! Me! That is the cry, now often heard, as history is retold. Tell my story, in my way!” That’s how The New York Times begins an account of a new phenomenon, the “identity museum”.1 An “identity museum&

26 Dec 2010

Happy New Year!

Happy New Year, One and All! I know it's a little early but I won't be adding much between now and New Year's Eve. Too much other stuff to do...back-up work to keep the site going.

However, if you happen to know anybody who