Posts Tagged ‘Fogg Art Museum’

John Singer Sargent

Tuesday, June 29th, 1999

He was the pre­em­i­nent por­trait painter of his day, and he gave it all up to paint land­scapes. His pri­vate life is a mys­tery. His brush­work is still daz­zling. JOHN SINGER SARGENT seems to have walked out of the pages of a nov­el by Hen­ry James, who wrote of him: “Yes, I have always thought of Sar­gent as a great painter. He would be greater still if he had done one or two lit­tle things he hasn’t—but he will do.”

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The Future of Art

Friday, March 1st, 1991

It is art that acknowl­edges the strug­gle of its own mak­ing, and con­veys a sense of life as com­posed of frag­ments, where not every­thing is leg­i­ble, and some things are irrev­o­ca­bly ruined or lost. The past haunts and enrich­es the present. Mem­o­ry and imag­i­na­tion are inter­twined. It is a mir­ror of the soul.

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My Day Without Art

Monday, December 4th, 1989

Stand­ing at the cen­ter of the spi­ral, I see the backs of all the chairs fac­ing away from me, and feel a tremen­dous shock of lone­li­ness and loss. Look­ing down from the bal­cony, I see that the chairs are the begin­ning of a spi­ral that could go on forever.

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The Drawings of Palladio

Saturday, May 1st, 1982

“There is some­thing divine about his tal­ent, some­thing com­pa­ra­ble to the pow­er of a great poet who, out of the worlds of truth and false­hood, cre­ates a third whose bor­rowed exis­tence enchants us.”

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Ingres 1780–1980

Monday, December 1st, 1980

For a twen­ti­eth-cen­tu­ry audi­ence brought up on abstrac­tion, INGRES’s great­ness, his fas­ci­na­tion, lies in the abstract qual­i­ties of his line, its rest­less, obses­sive move­ment across the page. Ingres’ line has pow­er, grace, life; it’s bril­liant, dra­mat­ic, neu­rot­ic, even per­verse. He told his stu­dents, “Draw­ing is every­thing; it is all of Art.” 

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