18 May 2015
Still-lifes by Peale and Core [from the Archives]
Names are important in art. The American master Charles Willson Peale (1741-1827) had three sons who became painters: Rembrandt, Raphaelle [sic] and Titian. His fourth son was Rubens. Raphaelle is thought to be America’s first still-life painter
25 Feb 2014
Picasso-as-Courbet
Many great artists I follow use a feature other than the face to identify themselves in pictures that are not self-portraits. Given that all their figures represent the artist, they need a variety of methods to hide and reveal their self-referen
09 Feb 2014
Artists and the Thumb-hole of a Guitar
I read once that Cézanne prepared his palette with as many as 18 pigments and lined them up in a series like musical scales.1 It’s an apt analogy because painters have long portrayed musicians as an allegory of their own poetic performance in
05 Jan 2014 | 2 Comments
How God became Woman
Art is so pregnant that it can take months for its hidden meaning to emerge in your thought. That’s why we try to enter the artist's mind, not just through social customs and the religious dogma of a period but also through art's own culture w
14 Apr 2011
Beyond Face Fusion
“Face fusion” is not the only way an artist can insert his or her identity into the portrait of someone else. Courbet’s 1846 Portrait of H.J. van Wisselingh (above left) demonstrates another. An art historian, Rae Becker, has s
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
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