BETTER, DEFINITELY BETTER The collapse of The New Yorker as cartoon mecca is a sad tale. There have been bright spots–Roz Chast, for example–but in general, year after year the work has gotten weaker and weaker, smaller and smaller. Lately, however, there are hopeful glimmers. Stronger artists, braver, more original stuff. An unhappy proportion of New Yorker cartoons…

    This piece by Antonello da Messina never fails to engage me. I suppose it’s because I would love it if my own studio were as rich and cerebral as this. The elevated carrel is perhaps a little cute, and there aren’t nearly enough books, but the view from the windows is delightful, the…

SATURN, ONE WAY OR OTHER Some subjects are congenial for a particular artist, while others are not. Consider–just to seize on a random example–Saturn devouring his children, and compare the approaches of Peter Paul Rubens (1577 – 1640) and Francisco Goya (1746 – 1828). Rubens is notable in his mainstream work for the literalness of his plump…

BACON, EISENSTEIN, & TONKS Similar concepts have different effects depending on their expressive purpose. Francis Bacon mentions the woman in the famous Odessa Steps sequence in Eisenstein’s film “Battleship Potempkin” as having influenced his portraits.  Judging by appearances, he was more influenced by the war work of Henry Tonks. But you’d never mistake a Tonks…

    CATS   An engaging portrait, but it’s the cat that really makes it sing. The earl, suavely executed, and the cat, almost naive in pose and expression, look as if they were painted by different hands. This is perfectly possible; successful artists often used students or assistants to fill in peripheral details. Landscape…

SEURAT THINKS TOO MUCH In an earlier post (March 17, 2012) I lamented Georges Seurat’s self-defeating application of pointillism to large compositions. But his big, striving showpieces got mired in another, equally counter-productive weakness: his notions about emotional response to compositional devices. For example, he thought that a bouncy, upward-sweeping shape evoked joy. In “La Chahut,” which is…

A FAVORITE: “Man and Woman at a casement” c. 1440 by Fra Lippo Lippi (1406 – 1469) in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. At first glance, this odd work seems to depict a tete-a-tete. Their heads are the same size, as if they are the same distance from the viewer. But he’s…

THE MORE THINGS CHANGE . . . The great cartoonist Herblock (Herbert Lawrence Block, 1909 – 2001) put his visual finger vividly on the sins of his time. Alas, so little has changed. We have only to adjust some of the names and faces to apply his pieces to the present day.   blah    …

                                  SIMONETTA Here we have two supposed images of Simonetta Vespucci, the great beauty of Florence in the 1470s. The one is by Sandro Botticelli, the other by Piero di Cosimo. They are not really portraits, because both were…