Werner Herzog’s “The Cave of Forgotten Dreams”

When the movie came out last year, I thought it would enjoy a long run.  It didn’t and I missed it.  But it does well on Netflix, too. The Chauvet Cave in southern France was discovered in 1994.  It contains the oldest paintings ever found anywhere, more than twice as old as any other. The [...]

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John Singer Sargent’s Hands

John Singer Sargent (1856 -1925) was an American painter who lived much of his productive life in Europe.  He has lately fallen out of favor with the art scene, probably because his clients were the super-rich and the crème de la crème of the Belle Epoche art world.   On a deeper level, however, our dismissal [...]

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Leonardo da Vinci Goofs Off

Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519) could draw, no doubt about it.  He knew anatomy, for example, and made anatomical studies from human cadavers.  This must have been very unpleasant, given the absence of phermaldehyde at that time. It was also against the law, forbidden by the all-powerful Catholic Church which taught that the body housed the [...]

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Hokusai: It Gets Better

Japanese artist Hokusai Katsushika (1760–1849):   “Since the age of six I have had the habit of sketching forms of objects. Although from about fifty I have often published my pictorial works, before the seventieth year none is worthy.” He started his famous 46 woodblock prints of views of Mount Fuji in1826 when he was sixty-six [...]

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John Marin at the Art Institute of Chicago

John Marin (1870-1954) painted his courageous watercolors in New York and Maine.  I always think of the moders as courageous because they were born into the staid, cluttered, dusty, repressed mores and fearful aesthetics of Victorianism and managed to break the bars of that cage.  They thumbed their noses at stiff conventions and instead duked [...]

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Could Leonardo da Vinci draw, really?

You know at first glance that this is a fine drawing.  There are three possible reasons why you might come to that conclusion:  1) you’re seeing it in a museum, at Buckingham Palace, or reproduced in a book on Leonardo da Vinci and, therefore, you assume this must be worth looking at; 2) you’ve looked [...]

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