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-

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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

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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

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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

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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

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26 Apr 2012

Canvas is Canvas

Most of the visual metaphors for an artist’s implements revealed here are related to their referent in art through their form, their function or some other more abstract link. A rifle or sword is long and thin like a paintbrush. They must be a

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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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