Boston's Museum of Fine Art is showing an exquisite collection of Titians, along with the work of two other fine Venetian painters, on view through August 16, 2009 — Titian, Tintoretto, Veronese: Rivals in Renaissance Venice. Included is Titian's Supper at Emmaus from the Louvre. A confrontation plays out between a dog and cat beneath the table cloth. The dog is familiar. It is the same type of … [Read more...]
Master Still-life Copies
Last week I saw the Giorgio Morandi show in New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art (closing Dec 14, 2008). Of the many branches in the family tree that can be traced between painters, Morandi leads, among others, directly to Paul Cezanne. In a New Yorker article by Malcolm Gladwell (Late Bloomers, Oct 20, 2008), he quotes a letter to Cezanne's from his friend Zola to the then young, undeveloped … [Read more...]
La Cena
The recent show in Boston of exquisite work by Spanish artist Antonio Lopez Garcia included a painting called "La Cena" ("The Dinner"), 1971-80. The subject of the dinner table has a long history in painting going back to Pompeii and probably Greece. Seeing Lopez Garcia’s painting of the family meal made me want to re-examine three of my favorite paintings of this subject: one by Monet and two by … [Read more...]
Pictorial Art
While jostling to view a show of 19th century French paintings last week, I thought about how the popularity of Impressionism can sometimes obscure its genius. Monet’s inscrutable touch, temperament and crystalline vision, conjuring appealing sights, can mask his stunning originality. Throughout his long life he expended enormous physical and emotional effort to create his paintings. As I looked … [Read more...]
Titian and the War
On a cold day in January 1991, I was at the National Gallery in Washington, D.C. to see a large exhibition of paintings by Titian. A week earlier, President Bush announced the first Gulf War in response to Saddam Hussein’s invasion of Kuwait. Two days before the start date 25,000 people were on the mall to protest. This weekend saw 250,000. They carried signs that read “Support Our Troops” and “No … [Read more...]
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