To the places that, over the course of time, have come to be associated with the work of certain American painters-think of John Marin’s Maine, Georgia O’ Keeffe’s Sante Fe, Jackson Pollock’s studio in Springs and Morris Graves’ in the Pacific Northwest-we may now add Jane Wilson’s Long Island. Or perhaps we should say the Read More
Status Anxiety, by Alain de Botton. Pantheon, 306 pages, $24.
Alain de Botton approaches every subject like it’s virgin territory. At first this, can be disorienting: Am I reading a book, or grading the essay portion of the SAT? After a while, though, it gets a little
sad, like watching Vasco da Gama Read More
It comes as something of a surprise to learn that the exhibition devoted to the English painter J.M.W. Turner (1775-1851) at the Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute in Williamstown, Mass.- Turner: The Late Seascapes -is the first to be entirely focused on its subject. Late Turner is, after all, almost as highly esteemed in Read More
Le Zie’s Family Expands:
Sister Sets Up Shop on Avenue A
Le Zoccole is a Venetian osteria that opened just over a month ago on Avenue A and Sixth Street, a block from Tompkins Square Park. It’s a spin-off of Le Zie (“The Aunts”), a popular artists’ hangout in Chelsea, which is also owned Read More
Before it deservedly recedes into the mists of forgotten academic history, it may be worth bidding a not-very-fond farewell to what I have come to regard as the silliest, most expensive and least necessary “research” folly ever devoted to the art scene in this country. I refer to a mind-numbing, poll-driven, statistical compilation of unenlightening Read More
John Ruskin (1819-1900), whose life and work are currently the subject of a superb documentary exhibition at the Morgan Library, is often said to have been the most influential English critic of his time. Yet even this high estimate fails to give us a sufficient sense of the exalted place that Ruskin’s voluminous writings on Read More
There is a passage in Volume I of John Ruskin’s Modern Painters , which was published in 1843 when its precocious author was a mere 24, that ought to be required reading for everyone attempting to understand the art of painting a landscape directly from nature. Ruskin was not offering his readers instruction in how Read More
