Connecting Artists

Artists report on nocturnal inspirations and frustrations I once described Louise Bourgeois as having “a direct pipeline to her unconscious,” and that still seems a fitting description for an artist who came of age in Paris at a time when the Surrealists were the...

Rare photos from the 1870s give a glimpse into an ancient civilization on the brink of change Her face framed by an ornate tasseled headdress, the bride looks eager and expectant and maybe a little scared. Her groom seems more confident, certainly more relaxed. You...

The very model of a modern-day generous, informative, and informed community More than two decades ago, when Barbara Ellmann was a young mother in the Tribeca neighborhood in New York, she began to experience those feelings of isolation that can afflict stay-at-home...

In the world of museum exhibitions and gallery shows, the curator seems like the Wizard of Oz, the behind-the-scenes magician who pulls it all together and leads us Munchkins down a yellow brick road toward some kind of enlightenment…

I first encountered a couple of John Outterbridge’s trippy, sexy, irresistible sculptures on a press trip to Los Angeles in 2011 for the first iteration of Pacific Standard Time, the sprawling series of exhibitions devoted to art in southern California. It was love at...

A few weeks ago my neighbor and Vasari21 member TJ Mabrey asked me why I didn’t suggest some books for the warm-weather season, when supposedly we all head for the country or the beach armed with a Kindle or a stack of paperbacks. Since I am always reading biographies...

Why set oneself the task of watching all the movies about Vincent van Gogh available for streaming during this period of lockdown and self-isolation? I believe the initial suggestion came from Amazon Prime, way back in February, when the site proposed Robert Altman’s...

The last few years have witnessed a surge of interest in the women of Abstract Expressionism, a loosely affiliated group of artists who came of age in the shadow of the male titans of the movement—Willem de Kooning, Jackson Pollock, Robert Motherwell, Mark Rothko, et...

Laura Vranes’ interests as a future collector were established early. “As a child, I went to a museum in New York,” she says. “I wish I could recall which it was, but I remember how much I loved the Andy Warhol Brillo Box in the collection. I wanted to sit on it so...

The life of the beautiful, clever, and prodigiously gifted Elisabeth Louise Vigée Le Brun (1755-1842) is one of those rags-to-riches sagas irresistible to storytellers of any era. She was born in Paris to a minor portraitist and a hairdresser…