Month: January 2017

Abstract and Not All art begins with a design for the purpose of setting up some narrative. In abstract art the narrative is inferential rather than explicit, but it’s still there. In some pieces the dividing line is blurry. The abstract Kline and narrative Turner below sit very comfortably together. In the Turner, the artist’s delight is clearly…

THIS TIME, PARMIGIANINO  On November 5th I discussed a fake Frans Hals which cried fake to me, even without the testing that revealed that it included pigments that were not invented until the 20th Century. Just the look of the thing was wrong—too cool, too modern. Then last week this image of St. Jerome, supposedly…

AGAIN We don’t do politics on this blog—but we came across these Calvin and Hobbes cartoons from January 4 and 19, 1995. The more things change, the more they stay the same, etc. from The Complete Calvin and Hobbes, Book Three. 2005    

Titian’s Odd Edges I don’t quibble lightly with the great Titian, but I’m puzzled by his propensity for jamming the focus of a piece way over to the side. In his fabulous “Bacchus and Ariadne,” a great torrent of life tumbles out of the right side toward Ariadne on the left—and almost pushes her out of…

PERFECT ART Art has so many variables, and so many elements that are necessarily judged on the basis of style and personal taste, that perfection is perhaps a dubious concept. But sometimes everything coheres, ends and means conjoin, nothing strains, nothing is wasted. This Roman mosaic, for example. It’s not profound in any philosophical sense,…