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Becoming an Art Critic

April 13th, 1978

In 1979, an 11th cen­tu­ry Per­sian poem with 50,000 rhyming cou­plets, illu­mi­nat­ed by tiny paint­ings in exquis­ite col­ors made from crushed jew­els and insect­s’ wings, inspired my first sto­ry about art. For the next 20 years, I wrote, pub­lished, and broad­cast hun­dreds of Sto­ries about Art in Boston and beyond. This is how it all began. 

Claude Le Lorrain

April 1st, 1980

CLAUDE LE LORRAIN depicts the moment just before trans­fig­u­ra­tion — the moment just before women turn into god­dess­es, or girls turn into swans, or life turns into art. His light is dusk and twi­light — the dark­ling light that wash­es the phys­i­cal world in unearth­ly beau­ty and fills the heart with an intox­i­cat­ing sense of possibility.

Gabriele Munter: From Munich to Murnau

November 1st, 1980

A woman sits think­ing, rest­ing her head on her hand in a room filled with flow­ers and fruit. The room seems charged with mean­ing, filled with her extra­or­di­nary pres­ence. For GABRIELE MUNTER, art was not about appear­ances, but about real­i­ties lying behind appear­ances. Abstrac­tion was a way of see­ing into the heart of things.

Ingres 1780–1980

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.” 

Frances Hamilton: Books and Painted Stories

February 1st, 1981

FRANCES HAMILTON has refash­ioned much-loved images, mem­o­ries, and dream­strans­form­ing them into a ful­ly re-imag­ined uni­verse. It is this trans­for­ma­tion – the seri­ous, dif­fi­cult task of art – that gives her work its pow­er to enchant.

Work on Paper

February 1st, 1981

Each rec­tan­gle is like a pic­ture of a pic­ture, mov­ing through a series of trans­for­ma­tions. The tremu­lous draw­ings are like jot­tings, hiero­glyph­ics, mes­sages in bot­tles, unread­able post­cards, ideas com­ing into being, the first appear­ances of the not-yet-vis­i­ble, the impal­pa­ble images tak­ing form before our eyes.

The Dial: Arts and Letters in the 1920s

April 1st, 1981

THE DIAL was a lit­er­ary mag­a­zine that pub­lished T.S. Eliot’s The Waste Land, Thomas Mann’s Death in Venice and Vir­ginia Woolf’s Mrs. Dal­loway, as well as repro­duc­tions of art­works col­lect­ed by Schofield Thay­er, a Hen­ry Jame­sian char­ac­ter who went abroad in search of old knowl­edge and new art. 

Flora Natapoff

October 1st, 1981

The sur­face of a FLORA NATAPOFF paint­ing is a place where bat­tles have been fought, cities and tem­ples built up and brought down, and on which there has been a wrestling with angels. The means of expres­sion are abstract – marks on paper and scraps of paper that must always hold their own. But the ener­gy to work comes from look­ing at some­thing that moves her. 

The Sketchbooks of Le Corbusier

December 1st, 1981

LE CORBUSIER cre­at­ed his own myth through the organ­ic gen­er­a­tion of forms. His genius con­stant­ly renewed itself, pulling new phe­nom­e­na into the orbit of his thought and recre­at­ing them in the puri­fied, mon­u­men­tal yet human forms of his architecture.

Kush: Lost Kingdom of the Nile

December 1st, 1981

Red Sea shells and pol­ished stones from the pyra­mid tomb of Queen Khen­sa — “great of charm, great of praise, pos­ses­sor of grace, sweet of love” — and oth­er trea­sures from KUSH, Lost King­dom of the Nile. A med­i­ta­tion on Art, Time, and the ancient river.

Sky Art Conference

January 1st, 1982

Artists and sci­en­tists. work­ing in neon, laser, steam, smoke, video, pyrotech­nics, film, inflat­ed and fly­ing sculp­ture, and oth­er celes­tial nav­i­ga­tions, cel­e­brate the sky as a medi­um of expres­sion, trans­mis­sion, and space.

Otto Piene

May 1st, 1982

As a very young man, OTTO PIENE saw the sky reflect­ed in a sea at long last calm: “The feel­ing of being reborn has nev­er left me.” Out of this rebirth came “a love for the sky, the desire to point at it, to show how beau­ti­ful it is, how it makes us live and feel alive.”

The Drawings of Palladio

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.”

New Wave Painting

June 1st, 1982

False masks of plas­tic beau­ty are among its mov­ing tar­gets. Des­per­ate to sur­vive the glis­san­do of the word proces­sor and the dead­ly lull of ordi­nary life, it rips to pieces the world’s fab­ric and its skin and puts it back togeth­er, obses­sive­ly recre­at­ing from scraps and scrawls and marks and images the objects of its desire and its rage.

Anne Neely/Robert Ferrandini

April 1st, 1983

Yet there is exhil­a­ra­tion in the ter­ror, the ver­tig­i­nous fall. These speedy, vio­lent fan­tasies of destruc­tion and chaos are ten­der­ly, beau­ti­ful­ly described. The draw­ings in graphite and lin­seed oil – the oil used won­der­ful­ly as col­or – and the swirls of paint in eerie sea greens or fiery reds com­pose a bal­anced, painter­ly sur­face. The lan­guage of abstrac­tion pulls us upward, as the images plunge us into the abyss.

Michael Mazur

May 1st, 1983

In MICHAEL MAZUR’s hands, the Mono­type was the per­fect form to con­vey the mul­ti­plic­i­ty of life in the nat­ur­al world. The clear­est, most lucid flow­ers are sur­round­ed by a paler aura of oth­er flow­ers, oth­er sum­mers, oth­er inter­pre­ta­tions — a riot of reeds and flow­ers, organ­ic growth, con­fu­sion, and decay. Revenants of images repeat like ghost­ly, half-remem­bered things.

Henry Hobson Richardson

July 1st, 1983

HENRY HOBSON RICHARDSON used the col­ors of the earth like paint, and han­dled stones and trees with a giant’s strength and a sculptor’s grace. The poet­ry of his archi­tec­ture makes the stones sing. 

More Than Drawing

March 1st, 1984

Draw­ings as a pic­ture mak­ing, sto­ry telling, dream machine. Draw­ings that dance, stretch, yearn, arch, and glide across the page. The plea­sures of look­ing emerge here not from what is observed but from how it is ren­dered; not the image but the artifice. 

Jean-Francois Millet: Seeds of Impressionism

June 1st, 1984

Jean-Fran­cois MILLET saw a time­less beau­ty and sad­ness in life, in evenings dark and filled with col­or. “What I know of hap­pi­ness is the qui­et, the silence, that you can savor so deli­cious­ly, either in the forests, or in the fields,” he wrote.

Renoir: A Lesson in Happiness

December 1st, 1984

“His hands were ter­ri­bly deformed. Rheuma­tism had cracked the joints, bend­ing the thumb toward the palm and the oth­er fin­gers toward the wrist. Vis­i­tors who weren’t used to it couldn’t take their eyes off this muti­la­tion. Their reac­tion, which they didn’t dare express, was: ‘It’s not pos­si­ble. With those hands, he can’t paint these pic­tures. There’s a mystery!’ The mys­tery was Renoir himself.”

Robert Ferrandini

December 1st, 1984

ROBERT FERRANDINI’s ear­ly work fea­tured fly­ing saucers and mon­sters, imagery drawn from a 1950’s child­hood spent watch­ing sci­ence-fic­tion movies like When Worlds Col­lide and The Thing. In his new paint­ings of imag­i­nary land­scapes and seascapes, he has come to some kind of terms with his past and is ready to move on. His space­ship has final­ly land­ed in a world of his own making.

Animal as Metaphor

April 1st, 1985

Artists look at ani­mals: the roman­tic fan­ta­sy ani­mal, the prim­i­tive art ani­mal, the hid­den dri­ves ani­mal, the whim­si­cal ani­mal, the ele­men­tal ani­mal, and oth­er myth­i­cal beasts. As Walt Whit­man wrote,
“I think I could turn and live with ani­mals, they are so placid and self contain’d,
I stand and look at them long and long.”

Radio Days

October 13th, 1985

Some­thing mag­i­cal hap­pened when the micro­phone was turned on: all my doubts dis­ap­peared. I devel­oped the habit of read­ing every­thing out loud, so my writ­ing became more nat­ur­al and tuned into my voice. I had a huge audi­ence. For the first time in my life, peo­ple were lis­ten­ing to what I had to say, and I loved it.

Images of the Mind

May 19th, 1986

Tao Chi was a prince who became a wan­der­ing Bud­dhist monk. His “Melan­choly Thoughts on the Hsiao and Hsiang Rivers,” cap­tures the mood of the end of autumn. A lone­ly fish­ing hut is half-hid­den by a few sparse trees; a flock of wild geese flies over a riv­er. The cal­lig­ra­phy echoes the flight of the birds and the quiver of the leaves. With­out under­stand­ing a word, we can feel the poetry.

John Udvardy

November 2nd, 1987

Sculp­tor JOHN UDVARDY sees the aes­thet­ic pos­si­bil­i­ties in an old whit­tled pad­dle or a forked birch branch, and he knows how to make a curve from a green sapling. But most of all, he brings to his mate­ri­als a feel­ing that every mark mat­ters: every stick, every thread, every shell, every bone.

Frances Hamilton: Pieces of Time

May 22nd, 1988

FRANCES HAMIL­TON’s art does­n’t come from the head; it comes from the hand and the heart. And that’s why a show of her work is always so reward­ing. Her images stay with you, grow­ing rich­er and deep­er, as time goes by. They trig­ger mem­o­ries. Major or minor, they touch a chord.

Contemporary New England Furniture

June 1st, 1988
Judy McKie, Monkey Chair 1994

New Eng­land is now the cen­ter of an extra­or­di­nary flour­ish­ing of tra­di­tion­al crafts, espe­cial­ly fur­ni­ture, because some very tal­ent­ed artists have turned to crafts as a way out of the cyn­i­cal and cere­bral “endgame” that so much con­tem­po­rary art is play­ing today. 

Ritsuko Taho

December 14th, 1988

RITSUKO TAHO’s ever-chang­ing instal­la­tion is a spare but ele­gant invi­ta­tion to par­tic­i­pate in a work of art, both lit­er­al­ly and metaphor­i­cal­ly – by bring­ing more leaves, and by mak­ing a leap of imag­i­na­tion that trans­forms a heap of trash on a vacant lot into a poem in sil­ver and brown.

The Situationists

January 28th, 1989

The Sit­u­a­tion­ists called for an art of excess, delir­i­um, out­rage, and social change. They believed that cap­i­tal­ism had turned con­tem­po­rary life into a soci­ety of “spec­ta­cle” that its inhab­i­tants could only pas­sive­ly watch and con­sume. Sit­u­a­tion­ism would bring art out of the muse­ums and into the streets, and sab­o­tage the soci­ety of spec­ta­cle by cre­at­ing sit­u­a­tions in which peo­ple could turn their own lives into a cre­ative experience.

Jesseca Ferguson: Distant Views and Forgotten Dreams

February 1st, 1989

JESSECA FER­GU­SON’s con­struc­tions often con­tain old post­cards, which seem to have been sent from places that have long since dis­ap­peared. Lost, ruined, or for­got­ten, they have left behind only pale and ghost­ly traces. Enshrined in lit­tle box­es, like the bones of saints in medieval reli­quar­ies, her work cel­e­brates the some­times mirac­u­lous pow­er of mem­o­ry to trans­form the pain and com­plex­i­ty of real life into the stuff of dreams, and art.

Anselm Kiefer

February 1st, 1989

Anselm Kiefer uses the lan­guage of mod­ern art to rewrite the kind of grandiose nine­teenth-cen­tu­ry his­to­ry paint­ing that mod­ern art reject­ed. He paints a rag­ing ele­gy for the fail­ure of rea­son and civ­i­liza­tion to over­come the evil that is part of human nature. Yet for Kiefer, only the mag­ic of art can build some­thing beau­ti­ful out of the wreck of rea­son and the fail­ure of history. 

Simon Schama’s CITIZENS

March 7th, 1989

CITIZENS, Simon Schama’s won­der­ful new book about the French Rev­o­lu­tion, is espe­cial­ly fas­ci­nat­ing to peo­ple who care about Art, because it is in many ways a book about the pow­er of images to trans­form the world. 

Courtly Splendor: Twelve Centuries of Treasures from Japan

March 21st, 1989

The sil­very glow of the moon and the flow of an under­ground riv­er are reflect­ed in sin­u­ous cal­lig­ra­phy that swoons down a page from 12th cen­tu­ry book of poems, strewn with shim­mer­ing sil­ver ros­es: “True, I say nothing/ but the long­ing in my heart/ reach­es out to you,/ secret as the con­stant flow of an under­ground river.”

Roger Kizik

April 19th, 1989

ROGER KIZIK’s loopy, stac­ca­to line describes fish­ing boats with names like Frol­ic or Finast Kind, hous­es on the beach, the book he is read­ing or the tool he is using for fix­ing up his house or boat. The things in his draw­ings press in on him; they clus­ter around him, rich with hid­den cor­re­spon­dences and secret mes­sages, com­pos­ing his life.

Earth Day

May 7th, 1989

“It’s all com­ing from mem­o­ry,” says ROBERT FERRANDINI. “From fairy tales, from child­hood — from imag­in­ing. The way I see it, it’s the land­scape of the mind. Lots of land­scapes came to me from the movies. Fort Apache. Red Riv­er. Cheyenne Autumn. The Searchers. The idea of the search — which is what I do as a painter. I go into it. I search.”

American Photography: 1839–1900

June 2nd, 1989

The peo­ple in the por­traits present anx­ious faces to the cam­era; hav­ing your pic­ture tak­en was a seri­ous busi­ness. The cam­era was enor­mous, bulky, and expen­sive; the process was time-con­sum­ing and mys­te­ri­ous. Sil­very and almost trans­par­ent, their del­i­cate faces float on the shim­mer­ing sil­ver plates like ghosts.

Adolph von Menzel

July 11th, 1989

MEN­ZEL’s draw­ings often show peo­ple and things as if they were turn­ing into shad­ow, turn­ing into smoke, dis­solv­ing into a cloud; just about to dis­ap­pear. He said, “I ear­ly cul­ti­vat­ed the habit of draw­ing things as though I were nev­er to see them again.”

Mary Cassatt

July 14th, 1989

In many of the prints, a wom­an’s face is par­tial­ly obscured, either because of the way she has turned her head, or because she is hold­ing some­thing in front of her face ‑‑ a hand, a let­ter, a child. This con­veys a sense of mys­tery, a feel­ing that there are secret mean­ings and moments of tragedy and what Vir­ginia Woolf called “ecsta­sy” — hid­den in the tex­ture of a wom­an’s dai­ly life.

Imperial Taste

July 24th, 1989

In the 12th cen­tu­ry, the Emper­or Quian­long, who was a also a poet, said, “I want col­or”. He got col­or: exquis­ite pale blues and greens that seem to float on the sur­face of the bowls’ smooth sur­faces like clouds; pur­ple splash­es called “the sky at dusk”; and a pale cobalt blue that seems dis­tilled from a serene and cloud­less sum­mer sky.

Ed Ruscha

September 8th, 1989

From the win­dow of the stu­dio ED RUSCHA had in the 1960’s, he could see a sign read­ing HOLLYWOOD. The big white let­ters are as flat an fake as an old, aban­doned movie set, crum­pled and peel­ing, with some of the let­ters falling down. But Ruscha’s many images of that sign make it a real sign, lumi­nous and charged with light. 

American Screenprints

September 26th, 1989

Many of the most mem­o­rable images of the six­ties were silkscreen prints: Andy Warhol’s soup­cans, Mar­i­lyns, and Jack­ies, Roy Licht­en­stein­s’s day-glo brush­strokes on Ben-Day dots, Sis­ter Cori­ta’s Flower Pow­er mes­sages, Robert Indi­ana’s LOVE, and Ed Ruscha’s daz­zling 1966 Stan­dard Sta­tion, radi­ant and gleam­ing in the Cal­i­for­nia light.

My Day Without Art

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.

Ruins at the Rose

December 8th, 1989

The 80’s began with big, shiny, self-con­fi­dent paint­ings, but they are end­ing with of shreds and tat­ters, and anx­ious pre­mo­ni­tions of a ruined world. They remind­ed me of the end­ing of William Gib­son’s sci­ence fic­tion nov­el Count Zero, when a bril­liant com­put­er dis­tills the few remain­ing frag­ments of a ruined civ­i­liza­tion into exquis­ite lit­tle con­struc­tions. Or these lines from a Shake­speare son­net; “bare, ruined choirs, where late the sweet bird sang”.

Minor White

December 18th, 1989

MINOR WHITE’s pho­tographs con­vey a sense that behind the vis­i­ble world is anoth­er world — a world filled with mean­ing and mag­ic. He was fas­ci­nat­ed by pho­tog­ra­phy’s abil­i­ty to show what he called “things for what else they are.” He liked to quote the thir­teenth-cen­tu­ry Ger­man mys­tic Meis­ter Eck­hart: “The eye with which I see God is the same eye with which God sees me.”

Yoko Ono

January 7th, 1990

Every view­er who choos­es to par­tic­i­pate will have a dif­fer­ent expe­ri­ence. For me, it was a mov­ing med­i­ta­tion on loss, change, and get­ting a sec­ond chance. As one of the char­ac­ters in William Faulkn­er’s nov­el The Wild Palms says, “Between grief and noth­ing, I will take grief.”

Robert Whitman

January 14th, 1990

The can­vas curled back like a white wave. The light turned red. Sil­hou­ettes of dancers moved through the white space like brush­strokes mov­ing across a pic­ture plane. The light turned white. The ceil­ing rip­pled and bil­lowed. Silence. White light. I was tak­ing notes, and the only sound I could hear was the sound of my own writ­ing. It was over.

Weston’s Weston: Portraits and Nudes

January 21st, 1990

WEST­ON’s por­traits of friends and lovers are so intense that their souls seem to flick­er through their sen­si­tive faces and expres­sive hands. But West­on’s Nudes are seen in name­less frag­ments, as cool and smooth as mar­ble. You see their bod­ies, but their faces are turned away. 

Sophie Calle

January 24th, 1990

SOPHIE CALLE bor­rows ele­ments from detec­tive nov­els, philo­soph­i­cal inves­ti­ga­tions, the film noir, the nou­veau roman, doc­u­men­tary pho­tog­ra­phy, love let­ters, art movies, B‑movies, John Cage’s the­o­ries of ran­dom­ness, and Joseph Beuys’s actions. She com­bines them in star­tling ways, as med­i­ta­tions on the mys­te­ri­ous spaces between self and other.

The Cone Collection

January 28th, 1990

The CONE sis­ters col­lect­ed art because they loved it and want­ed to live with it. Their art col­lec­tion became an emblem of their secret selves — a vision of the rich­ness of their inner lives. Many of the images here show women the same expres­sion on their face — a look of con­tent­ment, com­plete­ness, and self-fulfillment.

The Grand Tour

January 28th, 1990

Light as a whis­per, these ele­gant images, in the del­i­cate style known as ROCOCO, con­vey the “sweet­ness of life” before the Rev­o­lu­tion. Some­thing of the warmth of the artist’s hand still lingers in all the lit­tle jabs and touch­es of chalk or ink that make up these deli­cious lit­tle 18th cen­tu­ry draw­ings and prints.

Textile Masterpieces

February 8th, 1990

Rugs and blan­kets, shrouds and shawls: tex­tiles touched the lives of the peo­ple who lived with them. Slum­ber­ing in store­rooms, rolled up and pro­tect­ed from light, these tex­tile mas­ter­pieces have kept their vibrant col­ors and some­thing of their human warmth. Now, unfurled, they look like mag­ic car­pets, poised to rise.

The Starn Twins

February 18th, 1990

“It can be fright­en­ing, but that’s life,” said Doug. “Art is part of life,” said Mike. “It’s a real part — it’s the essence of life,” said Doug. “There’s no rea­son to make it per­fect,” says Doug. “We want to show the phys­i­cal nature,” said Mike. “The phys­i­cal nature,” said Doug. “Of every­thing, but in par­tic­u­lar, Art,” said Mike.

Gyorgy Kepes

March 10th, 1990

GYORGY KEPES paints with a mix­ture of oil paint and sand, which gives his work a rough, earthy tex­ture. He likes to tell the sto­ry of Antaeus, a hero who was the son of Moth­er Earth and could nev­er be defeat­ed as long as he touched the earth. Paint­ing with sand is Kepes’s way of touch­ing the earth.

Lou Jones: Sojourner’s Daughters

March 23rd, 1990

LOU JONES’s por­trait of a musi­cian shows a beau­ti­ful old woman with strong hands and a clear, untrou­bled face. You can feel that she’s lis­ten­ing to music; there’s a vision­ary gleam in her eyes. Her por­trait is jux­ta­posed with a fad­ed daguer­rotype of a 19th cen­tu­ry singer known as the Black Swan.

Farewell Concert

March 29th, 1990

I loved THE CONCERT, the beau­ti­ful lit­tle paint­ing by VERMEER. Each time I looked at it, I saw some­thing new. Now it’s gone. I try to remem­ber every line, every shad­ow, every gleam of light, every sweet cadence of its silent music, but I can already feel it fad­ing. As time goes by, it will dark­en and grow dim. 

David Salle/Imitation of Life

March 29th, 1990

One of DAVID SALLE’s favorite movies is Dou­glas Sirk’s IMITATION OF LIFE. In one scene, all the char­ac­ters are jammed into a taxi, watch­ing a funer­al through the win­dows. In Salle’s paint­ings, too, many dif­fer­ent things are hap­pen­ing at once, every­thing is crammed togeth­er, noth­ing seems fin­ished, every­thing is seen in reflec­tion or jux­ta­po­si­tion or through a fil­ter or a pane of glass, and all of the con­tra­dic­tions are left unresolved.

Gene Kelly

April 24th, 1990

GENE KELLY was a great dancer because his danc­ing seemed to be an over­flow of his superb vital­i­ty — a nat­ur­al exten­sion of his per­son­al­i­ty. In all his movies, the tran­si­tions to dance are incred­i­bly smooth, because even when he’s not danc­ing he’s think­ing about dancing–his ath­let­ic body is flexed and lim­ber– and he’s ready to roll, even on an emp­ty set with 500,000 kilo­watts of elec­tric light mim­ic­k­ing star­dust and a giant fan cre­at­ing the sen­sa­tion of a moon­light breeze.

Monet in the ’90’s: The Series Paintings

April 30th, 1990

In paint­ing after paint­ing, the earth moves and the water swoons and the sky tum­bles and all the blues and pinks and pur­ples and reds and oranges dis­solve into one. Earth and water come togeth­er, again and again, and explode in a sym­pho­ny of light and col­or and air.

Shaker Spirit Drawings

May 1st, 1990

In the nine­teenth cen­tu­ry, women in Shak­er com­mu­ni­ties record­ed their visions of heav­en­ly gar­dens in “spir­it” or “gift” draw­ings — sim­ple gifts that speak to the heart. The words, writ­ten in tiny, spi­dery hand­writ­ing, are fad­ed and almost illeg­i­ble, but the lit­tle birds and hearts and flow­ers make the feel­ings clear. 

A California Dream

May 15th, 1990

“The places we have known do not belong only to the world of space on which we map them for our own con­ve­nience. None of them was ever more than a thin slice, held between the con­tigu­ous impres­sions that com­posed our life at the time; the mem­o­ry of a par­tic­u­lar image is but regret for a par­tic­u­lar moment; and hous­es, roads, avenues are as fugi­tive, alas, as the years.”

Robert Rauschenberg

May 22nd, 1990

Great art cheats death of its vic­to­ry by trans­form­ing mem­o­ry’s frag­ile frag­ments into some­thing last­ing, pre­cious, and incor­rupt­ible. The ghost­ly white porch is a win­dow to a world beyond flesh and paint — a world with­out sor­row or sub­stance, col­or or weight. It is cool, pale, and white as a bone.

Jean Arthur

May 30th, 1990

On film, JEAN ARTHUR is impul­sive, but truth­ful ‑‑ true to the moment, while the moment lasts. She is chaste, but not prud­ish; she tru­ly inhab­its her small, ath­let­ic body, and she moves like a dancer with an easy nat­ur­al volup­tuous­ness. Her soft, grav­el­ly voice is aston­ish­ly expres­sive. And some of her great­est lines aren’t words at all, but an aston­ish­ing reper­toire of whim­pers, sighs, sobs, gig­gles, and moans.

Madame de Pompadour

June 1st, 1990

Madame de Pom­padour always man­aged to look grace­ful, even in the most con­strict­ing clothes — corsets, bus­tles, and stays. Like Madon­na, she cre­at­ed a Look that was supreme­ly arti­fi­cial — the pow­dered hair, the heav­i­ly applied make-up, the elab­o­rate gowns. Like Madon­na in her John-Paul Gaulti­er bustiers, La Pom­padour in her negligée proud­ly dis­played her sex­u­al­i­ty as the source of her power. 

Censorship and the Arts

June 9th, 1990

It takes a lot of courage to be an artist. All kinds of things get in the way, but the thing that gets in the way the most is fear. That’s why the threat of cen­sor­ship is so dan­ger­ous to Art. Art helps us to see the beau­ti­ful — and also to face the ugli­ness in life. Artists need to be free to show us the world as they see it — to tell it like it is.

Judy Kensley McKie and Todd McKie

June 15th, 1990

In 1969, TODD and JUDY MCKIE paint­ed ban­ners with the signs of the Zodi­ac for Wood­stock, which peo­ple pulled down to use as tents and blan­kets in the rain. Judy began mak­ing fur­ni­ture in the ear­ly 70s to fur­nish their apart­ment. One day she impul­sive­ly carved two crouch­ing fig­ures into the arms of a butcherblock couch. 

Louis Cartier

June 22nd, 1990

LOUIS CARTIER used pre­cious met­als and jew­els in a high­ly pol­ished, sparkling, and yet almost casu­al way way — the way Fred Astaire and Gin­ger Rogers danced. The shim­mer of dozens of tiny dia­monds on a cool plat­inum sur­face is the essence of sophis­ti­ca­tion –- like a Cole Porter song. 

Matt Mullican

July 6th, 1990

Being inside MATT MUL­LI­CAN’s instal­la­tion is like being inside Matt Mul­li­can’s mind — a dizzy­ing expe­ri­ence. He’s con­stant­ly clas­si­fy­ing and re-order­ing every­thing. “It’s the first time I’ve arranged my mean­ing as objects in space depict­ing my mean­ing,” he says. 

Martin Puryear

July 9th, 1990

His fal­cons are ele­gant objects, yet they are also birds of prey. They are chained to a perch, dream­ing of flight; per­fect­ly at rest, yet poised to spread their wings and reach for the sky. His art con­veys a sense of scrap­ing away and dis­card­ing every­thing that is not essen­tial — of trav­el­ling light, like a nomad, and soar­ing high, like a bird.

Pierre Bonnard: Prints

September 1st, 1990

BON­NARD’s art is an art of nuance and sug­ges­tion. His friend, the Sym­bol­ist poet Paul Ver­laine, wrote:
“You must have music first of all,
and for that a rhythm uneven is best,
vague in the air and soluble
with noth­ing heavy and noth­ing at rest.”

Barbizon

October 1st, 1990

Bar­bi­zon was a place and a style — and also a feeling—a mood—a time of day — dusk, when the forms of things soft­en and the edges blur, and a kind of hush falls over the world. The earth is solemn, soft, and ten­der, like a bed—and some­times like a grave. 

Chuck Holtzman

November 7th, 1990

His sculp­ture is like a very sophis­ti­cat­ed game of musi­cal chairs, where all the pieces come togeth­er for a moment of per­fect, pre­car­i­ous bal­ance. In his draw­ings, the char­coal keeps on danc­ing, long after the music stops.

Linda Connor

November 7th, 1990

In LINDA CON­NOR’s cam­er­a’s mys­ti­cal eye, the world is filled with ancient sacred things. The same images repeat and recur in her body of work — spi­rals, veils, beams of light shin­ing into a dark place, open doors, closed eyes, hands — but each time you see them, they mean some­thing dif­fer­ent. Each time you see them, they mean some­thing more.

A Tribute to Kojiro Tomita

November 8th, 1990

It is said that CHU TA nev­er spoke — but he laughed, cried, waved his hands, and drank rice wine most expres­sive­ly while he paint­ed. Every sin­gle touch of Chu Ta’s brush means some­thing. Every mark still mat­ters. Hun­dreds of years lat­er, you can still almost feel the move­ment of his hand — the bold drunk­en touch of his brush.

The Unique Print

December 9th, 1990

In mono­type, there is no fixed image on the print­ing sur­face. The artist paints or draws on a print­ing plate, makes changes, and prints again; the final proof is an accu­mu­la­tion of all the changes that have been made. Pale, fad­ed images of past impres­sions often cling to mono­types like shad­ows; they are called “ghosts.”

Love and Death

December 14th, 1990

The prayers were long, thin strips of paper or can­vas, newsprint, pho­tographs, or tin­sel, embell­ished with draw­ings, paint, cut‑outs, dried ros­es, gold leaf, but­tons, beads. Some were abstract; some had words; oth­ers had musi­cal nota­tions writ­ten on them. One prayer was made from a piece of old, paint‑splattered blue jeans, with a peace sym­bol and love beads. 

Ilya Kabakov/Soviet Conceptual Art

January 6th, 1991

When you look up, all those frag­ments con­vey a ver­tig­i­nous sense of dis­in­te­gra­tion, and decay. But when you look down, every­thing is com­pressed onto a sin­gle shiny sur­face, and it’s beau­ti­ful. All that debris — all that waste and pain — is trans­formed into art.

Robert Wilson’s Vision

January 17th, 1991

ROBERT WILSON’S VISION is struc­tured like a jour­ney — a jour­ney that moves from morn­ing to night — from white to black — from the past to the future — from birth to death. A jour­ney that has no begin­ning and no end, but all takes place in a time­less, end­less present.

The Sound Artist: Hans Peter Kuhn

February 18th, 1991

“Sound art is more open and much clos­er to life than music. Music is a fil­tered expe­ri­ence. I’m not a com­pos­er. I don’t want the emo­tion­al view bound or direct­ed in any one direc­tion. I want to keep it open. I’m always try­ing things out. I hear some­thing and I can pick it up and react in min­utes. I’m inter­est­ed in every­thing that makes a noise.”

When We Dead Awaken

February 21st, 1991

A neon blue riv­er of light cross­es the stage on a diag­o­nal. A black moun­tain looms beyond, pierced by a stark white water­fall. The sculp­tor sits brood­ing on a rocky throne; an egg-shaped stone is pierced with a spear. Two Irenes enter, and lie on the ground, like stones. “You have killed my soul,” they cry. “I am an artist!” cries the sculp­tor. One Irene sits on the rock, like a stat­ue. “I was a human being too.”

The Future of Art

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.

Guercino

March 14th, 1991

GUERCINO drew like an angel—his gor­geous line curls across the page; his brush forms shad­ows that sug­gest a sense of the round­ness and full­ness of life. His best draw­ings are more than drawings—they are bless­ings, exquis­ite expres­sions of those moments when Art and Faith are one.

Photography at the Boston Athenaeum

March 28th, 1991

The Boston Athenaeum, a Library with gra­cious high-ceilinged rooms adorned with columns and all kinds of Grae­co-Roman archi­tec­tur­al details, and filled with books and pic­tures, was built by 19th cen­tu­ry Bosto­ni­ans as a mod­ern tem­ple to Athena, God­dess of Wisdom. 

12th Annual Boston Drawing Show

April 13th, 1991

GERRY BERG­STEIN’s draw­ings show scrib­bles, scrawls, cross­ings-out, angry re-work­ings, mark­ings of strug­gle and doubt. From this chaos of marks on paper emerge lumi­nous lit­tle still lives, marked by the process of decay: visions of a world in flux, where every­thing is chang­ing, grow­ing, liv­ing, dying, and being reborn. 

Rosemarie Trockel

May 25th, 1991

“All these images are oblit­er­at­ed, defaced, lost. It’s about those mar­gin­al, mun­dane expe­ri­ences that are for some rea­son sig­nif­i­cant to her. There are cer­tain things about her work that are mys­te­ri­ous. They remain mys­te­ri­ous. And she trea­sures that mysteriousness.”

Fragments of Antiquity

June 21st, 1991

All that we know of Greece has come to us in ruins–armless, head­less, fad­ed, fall­en, bro­ken, bat­tered, lost in trans­la­tion. What we have are frag­ments, frag­ments that have lost almost everything–except their poet­ry. But, gen­er­a­tion after gen­er­a­tion, that poet­ry has nev­er lost its thrilling, vision­ary gleam.

Dream Lovers

July 12th, 1991

When Berthe Morisot met Édouard Manet at the Lou­vre in 1867, he was 36 years old and mar­ried; she was ten years younger and still liv­ing with her par­ents at home. She was live­ly, intel­li­gent, charm­ing, tal­ent­ed. He was bril­liant, dif­fi­cult, fick­le, famous, fas­ci­nat­ing. She had long admired him from a dis­tance; he imme­di­ate­ly want­ed to paint her portrait.

Elizabeth Vigee-Lebrun

July 19th, 1991
Elizabeth Vigee-Lebrun

Madame Vigee-Lebrun rev­o­lu­tion­ized the por­trait. She despised the pow­der and stiff clothes that women wore; she let their hair down, and draped them in soft, flow­ing shawls and paint­ed them look­ing soft, dreamy, nat­ur­al, alive. Her paint­ings helped to cre­ate a new look, a new style, a new atti­tude to life in pre-rev­o­lu­tion­ary Paris.

John Singer Sargent’s EL JALEO

August 28th, 1991

In a dark, smoky room, a soli­tary dancer rais­es up her arm in a tense, ecsta­t­ic move­ment of inspi­ra­tion; her oth­er hand clutch­es the skirt of her dress — a flash of white light gleam­ing in the dark. You can almost hear the rhyth­mic weep­ing of the gui­tars; you can almost feel beat­ing of the dancer’s tumul­tuous heart.

Pleasures of Paris

September 6th, 1991

in a moment, the door will swing back shut, and the cafe will dis­ap­pear, and then the street singer will van­ish, into the street, into the night, nev­er to be seen again. Only here, in this paint­ing, where she is for­ev­er caught in the gold­en net of the Paris night at the moment when she stepped out through the swing­ing door, onto the street, and into our dreams.

Busch-Reisinger Museum

September 14th, 1991

A crowd­ed stage, and all the play­ers on it. A king, wear­ing a crown, stabs him­self in the heart. A woman looks at her reflec­tion in a mir­ror, next to a stat­ue of a Greek god. Mod­ern men and women read the news­pa­per, talk, flirt, and fight with real knives. MAX BECK­MAN­N’s The Actors aims to encom­pass all of Art and Life in thick, sure slash­es of paint.

Lazlo Moholy-Nagy’s Light-Space Modulator

October 4th, 1991

“When the “light prop” was set in motion for the first time in a small mechan­ics shop in 1930, I felt like the sor­cer­er’s appren­tice. The mobile was so star­tling in its coor­di­nat­ed motions and space artic­u­la­tions of light and shad­ow sequences that I almost believed in magic.”

El Corazon Sangrante/The Bleeding Heart

November 1st, 1991

FRIDA KAHLO’s Self-Por­trait with Thorn Neck­lace and Hum­ming­bird shows her in a jun­gle with but­ter­flies in her hair and a hum­ming­bird dan­gling from a thorn neck­lace that pierces her neck, draw­ing small red drops of blood. “I nev­er paint­ed dreams,” she said. “I paint­ed my own reality.”

Paper Prayers/In the Spirit

December 19th, 1991

Many of the artists here are of a gen­er­a­tion who reject­ed the con­ven­tion­al com­forts of orga­nized reli­gion — and now they find them­selves fac­ing the inevitable mys­tery of death alone. They are re-invent­ing rit­u­als that feel authen­tic to them and find­ing new ways to sat­is­fy their spir­i­tu­al needs. Paper Prayers has become one such con­tem­po­rary heal­ing rit­u­al — a small con­gre­ga­tion of artists gath­ered togeth­er In the Spirit.

Bernd and Hilla Becher

December 21st, 1991

Bernd and Hilla Bech­er pho­tographed blast fur­naces, water tow­ers, pow­er sta­tions, and oth­er indus­tri­al struc­tures, which they called “anony­mous sculp­ture.” I thought of this show again when I first read W.G. Sebald’s books — mys­te­ri­ous, elu­sive, and strange­ly moving.

Camille Paglia

May 4th, 1992

“Moment by moment, night flick­ers in the imag­i­na­tion, in eroti­cism, sub­vert­ing our striv­ings for virtue and order, giv­ing an uncan­ny aura to objects and per­sons, revealed to us by artists.” “The sea, Dionysian liq­uid nature, is the mas­ter image in Shake­speare’s plays. It is the wave-motion with­in Shake­speare­an speech which trans­fix­es the audi­ence even when we don’t under­stand a word of it.”

Working Proof: Experimental Etching Studio

November 21st, 1992

Ten years ago, I spent a very hap­py sum­mer work­ing at Exper­i­men­tal Etch­ing Stu­dio, so I was delight­ed when the Boston Pub­lic Library invit­ed me to help shape a con­ver­sa­tion among a group of artists from this extra­or­di­nary print­mak­ing cooperative. 

Goddesses, Empresses, and Femmes Fatales

October 31st, 1993

For the ancient Greeks, the­ater was a Dionysian rit­u­al, and in the amphithe­ater of Perg­a­mon, you can still feel that myth­i­cal inten­si­ty. The steep incline of the stone seats cre­ates a tremen­dous focus of ener­gy on the stage. When I stood at the cen­ter and sang, I felt my voice ampli­fied, sound waves vibrat­ing in the air.

The Inferno of Dante

January 1st, 1995

Dan­te’s vision of Hell is filled with ter­ri­fy­ing images of trans­for­ma­tion, yet its ulti­mate hor­ror is its change­less­ness — the unre­pen­tant sin­ners whose pun­ish­ment is to embody, for­ev­er, their sins. Cen­turies after its obscure Flo­ren­tine vil­lains have been for­got­ten, the poem still rings true as a dra­ma of the inner life, because the heart of the poem is the hope that we can still be changed.

Dialogue: John Wilson/ Joseph Norman

September 1st, 1995

JOHN WILSON is a clas­si­cal­ly trained artist whose life’s work has been a search for endur­ing, spir­i­tu­al­ly charged images of African-Amer­i­cans. JOSEPH NORMAN weaves togeth­er all kinds of imagery into elab­o­rate com­po­si­tions that are ele­gant, yet full of feel­ing. “For both of these artists, art remains an impor­tant way to think about what it means to be human and to have an inner life.”

Judy Kensley McKie

December 2nd, 1995

Work­ing in bronze, that most ancient and endur­ing of mate­ri­als, JUDY MCK­IE’s work reveals the pow­er of art to con­sole and heal. Her Bird Foun­tain has the silent, soar­ing pres­ence of great mourn­ing mon­u­ments. “The water makes you feel calm and peaceful,” she says. “It’s nour­ish­ing. A life force.”

Emma

January 1st, 1996

Hol­ly­wood has fall­en in love with JANE AUSTEN. Her scripts fea­ture snap­py dia­logue; her plots fol­low the clas­sic for­mu­la of girl meets boy; girl los­es boy; girl gets boy; her sto­ry lines move deli­cious­ly from chaos and con­fu­sion to har­mo­ny and delight. The lat­est is EMMA, played to per­fec­tion by GWYNETH PALTROW in Wedg­wood col­ors, Empire dress­es and pearl-drop earrings. 

Basquiat

January 2nd, 1996

BASQUIAT cap­tures the artist’s yearn­ing and anguish, moments of bliss and the sheer phys­i­cal plea­sure of mak­ing art. His lat­er descent into drugs, lone­li­ness, con­fu­sion and despair is tru­ly trag­ic — you feel him pur­sued by the Furies of greed, racism, and dis­ease, track­ing him inex­orably down.

Julian Schnabel

January 10th, 1996

“The scene when BASQUIAT is paint­ing — the Char­lie Park­er and Max Roach riff is from his record col­lec­tion. It’s very heady at that moment…Success is when you’re mak­ing the work of art. The moment of per­fect sonorous bliss.”

Richard Linklater

February 1st, 1996

“It’s unful­filled long­ing. It’s being young. Meet me at 20. I don’t know what I want to do. I kind of want to write. You want to be a artist, to express what’s going on in your life. It’s a way to lose your­self in your dis­con­tent. Oth­er­wise you’d just go out and shoot and van­dal­ize. Art is more internal.” 

Stephen McCauley

February 2nd, 1996

“I sup­pose I read so many biogra­phies because I was try­ing to under­stand how peo­ple stum­bled through their days and their fail­ures and spun their mis­eries and despair into great art or path­break­ing sci­ence or pro­found enlightenment.”

Winslow Homer

March 2nd, 1996

WINSLOW HOMER spent most of his life fish­ing and paint­ing, reel­ing in the deep, unfath­omable mys­tery of the sea. His pic­tures often show some­body gaz­ing out to sea, con­cen­trat­ing on some­thing no one else can see. Maybe it’s the light on the water, or the wind in the sails, or a boat com­ing home to shore, or just the flick­er of a dream.

Herman Melville

April 1st, 1996

“Give me a condor’s quill! Give me Vesu­vius’ crater for an ink­stand! Friends, hold my arms! For in the mere act of pen­ning my thoughts of this Leviathan, they weary me, and make me faint with their out-reach­ing com­pre­hen­sive­ness of sweep, as if to include the whole cir­cle of the sci­ences, and all the gen­er­a­tions of whales, and men, and mastodons, past, present, and to come, with all the revolv­ing panora­mas of empire on earth, and through­out the whole universe.”

Mark Morris/Orfeo

April 11th, 1996

“It begins with a fune­re­al cho­rus in the antique style, with cor­net­to and trom­bones. And then Orpheus comes in, lament­ing his lost love, and sings one sin­gle word. Eury­dice. He sings it three times. He does­n’t say much, but he says every­thing he needs to say, and the third time he sings it, it sends chills up your spine.””

Beth Soll / Richard Cornell

April 29th, 1996

Dancer Beth Soll and Com­pos­er Richard Cor­nell are work­ing togeth­er on a dance inspired by a book by West African poet Amadou Ham­pate Ba. “It’s a long tale, an ini­tia­to­ry alle­go­ry, a tri­umph of knowl­edge over for­tune and pow­er,” says Cor­nell. “A quest for God and wis­dom,” says Soll. 

The Fire of Hephaistos

May 1st, 1996

These ancient bronzes, which have long since lost their gold­en gleam, are still numi­nous frag­ments of a van­ished world. One stat­ue of young man was recent­ly pulled out of a riv­er; his pale sea-green body is scratched and scarred; but he is still a love­ly appari­tion, remind­ing me of some lines from Shakespeare’s “The Tempest”:
“Nothing of him that doth fade
But doth suf­fer a sea change
Into some­thing rich and strange.”

Object as Insight: Japanese Buddhist Art and Ritual

June 1st, 1996

Bod­hisattvas with serene, all-embrac­ing smiles; gold­en flower bas­kets for car­ry­ing lotus petals to puri­fy a sacred space; rit­u­al bronze chimes adorned with pea­cocks. “Each arti­cle is incred­i­bly beau­ti­ful, but it’s only when all the arti­cles come togeth­er, evok­ing the pres­ence of the Bud­dha, that you can under­stand Bud­dhist art.”

Florence Ladd

June 13th, 1996

“The sea is a metaphor for trans­for­ma­tion, the pos­si­bil­i­ty of cross­ing over, for becom­ing some­one else, for change,” says FLORENCE LADD. “Every time Sarah cross­es the sea, it changes her. I believe in the uncon­scious and the way the uncon­scious enrich­es our inter­pre­ta­tions of life.”

Larissa Ponomarenko

July 1st, 1996

Bal­let is all arti­fice; but she makes even the Snow Queen’s daz­zling, del­i­cate swirls seem easy and nat­ur­al. From a dis­tance, she seems frag­ile, ethe­re­al. But up close, you can see the mus­cles in her limbs, her grace­ful neck, her flex­i­ble spine. The years of ded­i­ca­tion and dis­ci­pline are sculpt­ed onto her slen­der frame.

Brain Opera

July 2nd, 1996

The beau­ti­ful, beloved voice of LORRAINE HUNT began to rise and spread out through the room, in sweet, sad lay­ers of sound, accom­pa­nied by a visu­al cho­rus of flash­ing col­ored lights, mag­i­cal­ly trans­form­ing the emp­ty, mechan­i­cal space into a few moments of unearth­ly beauty.

Aretha Franklin/ Diana Ross

August 2nd, 1996

When I was young, ARETHA FRANKLIN and DIANA ROSS rep­re­sent­ed the two poles of women’s expe­ri­ence. Diana’s sweet, lyri­cal voice cel­e­brat­ed a woman’s capac­i­ty to aban­don her­self com­plete­ly to love. Aretha’s “Respect” was the ulti­mate expres­sion of a woman’s right­eous anger and self-respect. Now I see them both as present-day embod­i­ments of ancient God­dess­es, pro­ject­ing daz­zling images of beau­ty, pow­er, glam­our, self-pos­ses­sion, and grace. 

A Midsummer Night’s Dream

September 12th, 1996

Shake­speare’s A Mid­sum­mer Night’s Dream is about a roy­al wed­ding, lovers lost in an enchant­ed for­est, mag­ic spells, and fairy sprites. But most­ly it is about imag­i­na­tion. In the course of the play, as the char­ac­ters move in and out of the world of dreams, cer­tain words repeat over and over again: Fan­cy. Imag­i­na­tion. Dream. Vision. Trans­port­ed. Trans­fig­ured. Transformed.

The Eliminator

November 1st, 1996

THE ELIMINATOR begins as a cop thriller, then turns into a spy movie, then a hor­ror movie with flesh-eat­ing zom­bies, then a myth­i­cal epic, and final­ly achieves tran­scen­dence with an iron­ic evo­ca­tion of William But­ler Yeats’ great line of poet­ry, “A ter­ri­ble beau­ty is born.” 

Christopher Hogwood

December 1st, 1996

CHRISTOPHER HOGWOOD has stopped con­duct­ing in the tra­di­tion­al “stuffed shirt” tails and white tie; he now wears a black silk shirt. It gives him the air of an artist — or a monk. The Mae­stro’s new clothes are a metaphor for his approach to music: not a dusty, life­less tra­di­tion, but some­thing authen­tic, full of mean­ing, and alive. 

Helen Pond and Herbert Senn

December 1st, 1996

Boston Ballet’s new Nut­crack­er sets are the work of a design­ing cou­ple, Helen Pond and Her­bert Senn, who live in a Goth­ic house in Yarmouth­port which they have ful­ly restored with Goth­ic carv­ing, paint­ed ceil­ings and “lots and lots of quadrifoils,” says Her­bert. “We designed the house and the Nut­crack­er at the same time. Nut­crack­er is my life.”

Boston Baroque: Abduction from the Seraglio

May 21st, 1998

Mozart’s ear­ly opera, ABDUCTION FROM THE SERAGLIO starts out light and com­ic, grad­u­al­ly grows deep­er, more melod­ic, and more pro­found, and ends in per­fect har­mo­ny. He wrote in 1781, at the age of 25, bring­ing togeth­er ele­ments of high art and melo­dra­ma into a new form that tran­scends them both. “It was a break­though for Mozart,” says Mar­tin Pearl­man, con­duc­tor and direc­tor of the Boston Baroque. 

Paula Josa-Jones

August 1st, 1998

“It’s as if they were tak­ing a jour­ney through a land­scape and their eyes were caught by some­thing — a mem­o­ry, or the frag­ment of a mem­o­ry, or the mem­o­ry of a past life — and that pulls them into the move­ment,” says PAULA JOSA-JONES of her new dance, GHOSTDANCE. 

John Singer Sargent

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.”

Vanity Fair

May 18th, 2004

Thack­er­ay endows Rebec­ca Sharp — “that art­ful lit­tle minx — with all the qual­i­ties which make his own writ­ing so delight­ful. He por­trays Rebec­ca as an artist — the lost, bril­liant child of a singer and a painter, singing and danc­ing, schem­ing and dream­ing her way though life.

Tony Harrison/Fram

September 30th, 2008

Fram does rise up from the frozen world, uncrushed. The ship, the play, the “craft,” which is both the ship and poet­ry, sails on, for­ward, into the sacred space, where inspi­ra­tion and despair—the song and the scream—can come togeth­er, and embrace.

Hans Wegner/ The Bear Chair

October 20th, 2008

Hans Weg­n­er, the leg­endary Dan­ish fur­ni­ture-mak­er, always worked with nat­ur­al mate­ri­als like wood and wool, and his fur­ni­ture reflects both the nat­ur­al world and abstract art; you can see traces of Bran­cusi and Picas­so in it, as well as ani­mals and trees. He designed more than five hun­dred chairs dur­ing his long and illus­tri­ous career. One of them belongs to me.

Meryl at the Rose

April 28th, 2009

Hun­dreds of peo­ple came to MERYL BRATER’s Memo­r­i­al Exhi­bi­tion at the Rose Art Muse­um. We all believed that Meryl would live on at the Rose, and that many gen­er­a­tions to come would have the chance to know her through her art. To close the muse­um now would be a ter­ri­ble blow to every­one who loved her – to every­one who trust­ed their trea­sure to the Rose.

Postscript

May 15th, 2011

Thanks to all the Artists and Friends who inspired me along the Way.