Rothko’s touch Mark Rothko (1903 – 1970)  is noted  for his rich and moody color fields, but color is only part of what makes them so effective. It’s his touch that keeps the eye engaged. He didn’t just mark off rectangles and hog them in; they are veils, sometimes heavy, sometimes light, so that one…

Burning a Heretic I think of the work of Stefano di Giovanni di Consolo, known as il Sassetta (1392 – 1450) as quiet and contemplative but full of layers, as in this image of St. Thomas Acquinas. The main event is right up front, but then the eye begins to wander this way and that and…

Distance                           The pose used in each of the three pieces here, with the subject leaning back from the viewer, creates a contemplative distance, a separation. Colette is nearest of the three. Her distance is a conversational one as if across the tea table,…

A favorite: Barbari’s plan of Venice Jacopo de’ Barbari’s woodcut, “Plan of Venice, 1500”, falls into the engaging category of artful representation–fact-based, but full of life. It’s huge–about four by six feet. Barbari was obviously no slave to literal description, especially in matters of perspective and scale. This isn’t surprising, if only because he never saw…

Derain’s experiments Last week we looked at the clues in Claude Monet’s early work that show how he crafted the visual information in front of him into strong art. In a similar quest, here we look at two pieces by Andre Derain (1880-1954).  The first, The Seine at Chatou, seems to have been painted in one session…

Monet’s strong beginning (Claude Monet, 1840-1926) The show at the Legion of Honor in San Francisco, “Monet: the Early Years”, is full of surprises.  The first surprise isn’t how wonderful the wonderful stuff is, but how many middling pieces there are–things you wouldn’t pay much attention to if the artist’s fame hadn’t made you think you’d better admire…

Bliss and/or Ensor: The current cover of The New Yorker features a witty Harry Bliss image of Manhattan’s Flatiron building, with laundry.     The credits don’t mention “The Cathedral” of 1886 by James Ensor, which certainly looks like the basis for the  joke. If it is, they should have.        

Jack Ziegler, a long-time New Yorker cartoonist, died recently. His work was funny, his drawing bright and economical. I like this piece especially, for obvious reasons.    

Two faces: I don’t normally put the work of Johannes Vermeer (1632 – 1675) and Chuck Close (1940 – ) in the same box, but there is a similarity to their process, however different their results. Both pursue the multitudinous variations of tone and shape in their subjects. Vermeer pulls adjacent tones together, as in the face…

Love Them Waterlilies A baleful side effect of being required to read those thick, interminable classics in high school is that we absorb the notion that high culture can only be equated with what is most dreary and difficult, and that we must discount what is accessible and pleasurable. Claude Monet (1840-1926) suffers especially from this…