You can count the number of New York museums still committed to the cause of high art on the fingers of one hand. Perhaps the most enduring of those fingers is the Morgan Library. The Morgan has always been a gem, of course; New York’s cultural heritage would be poorer without it. Yet now, at Read More
What would you wear if you were having your portrait painted? It’s your eternal document; would you look for something extraordinary from the Paris couture shows, a week’s worth of presentations that wraps in the fashion capital on July 21? Or would you chose something anti-fashion? The seriously serious you.
Maybe you had better read Read More
There are times when it is the curious fate of an artist to achieve his greatest work as a consequence of being denied his fondest aspirations. That was the paradoxical destiny of the 19th-century French painter Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres (1780-1867), whose work is currently the subject of a sensationally beautiful exhibition at the National Gallery of Read More
Going through the wonderful exhibition of The Private Collection of Edgar Degas at the Metropolitan Museum the other day, I thought of the passage in Paul Valéry’s Degas Dance Drawing , in which the writer, who knew Degas in his later years, offers his reflections on the scrupulousness of the artist’s judgments.
“All he could Read More
