20 Mar 2013 | 2 Comments
How Degas drew a top hat…
Art is so pregnant that even in a "simple" sketch like Degas' Edouard Manet at the Races (c. 1865) there is always something more. I thought I had drained the drawing when I finished writing about it yesterday (see entry). And, then, this m
16 Jan 2013 | 2 Comments
Sotheby’s Head Turner
Two years ago, shortly after I began this website, Christie's sold one of the most important Old Master paintings to come on the market for years: Poussin's Ordination from the collection of the Duke of Rutland. The auction house helped by Pouss
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-
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
14 Jun 2012
“Sir, rejoice with me, I have become God.”
The Inner Tradition in Christianity, the idea that Scripture and Christ’s teachings are allegorical in nature, is so little known that its impact on art has not been properly addressed. Those following the tradition know that God, as described
31 May 2012
Francis Bacon on Portraits and Crosses
I’ve just been reading a series of essays on Francis Bacon and have come across two quotes that I must pass on. A young doctoral student had some long conversations with Bacon in 1975 in which Bacon was saying that when he looks at a great pai
28 May 2012
Coins, tablets and Dürer
Coins draw groans. Walk into a roomful of coins in a museum and even the most ardent art lovers hurry through in the hope of finding some painting or sculpture on the other side. Nevertheless the designs on coins are one of the glories of Greek
24 May 2012
Durer: “For Christ’s sake, can’t you see that….
An article featured on the Home page of The Art Newspaper's website announces the opening of an important exhibition on Dürer. It reports, however, that Dürer’s Munich Self-portrait (above): “continues
18 May 2012
Joseph Leo Koerner and the Artist as Christ
Occasionally I see an image that turns on a light and helps illuminate an artist's way of seeing quite concisely. Fittingly, an illumination is one of them. The best book ever written on self-portraiture is probably Joseph Leo Koerner’s The Mo
21 Apr 2012 | 2 Comments
Rembrandt and His Crucifixion (1631)
I can be very blind. Some time ago I added an analysis of Rembrandt’s Crucifixion in which I showed that Rembrandt had portrayed himself as Christ not out of delusions of grandeur but based on Christianity’s most fundamental principles
01 Apr 2012
Eureka! My Last Judgement on Michelangelo’s
Eureka!
For years I have struggled with the meaning of Michelangelo’s Last Judgment. The essay “Michelangelo’s Art Through Michelangelo’s Eyes” explains my overall understanding of the Sistine ceiling and the altar wall on whi
11 Sep 2011
The Kimbell Gets a Surprise
Nicolas Poussin’s Sacrament of the Ordination (1640's) is one of the masterpieces of Western art. I wrote about it last year when it failed to sell at auction. Now the Kimbell Art Museum in Fort Worth, Texas has acquired it for $24 m
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