Connecting Artists

How Critics and Curators Respond to Memorable Works of Art In a recent issue of The New Yorker, actress Allison Janney reported of her first encounter with Wassily Kandinsky’s Black Lines (1913) in the Guggenheim Museum: “I felt an energy go through my chest." I could...

My father asked me this question during the last months of his life. As a young man he had made the decision to not pursue a life as a concert pianist, choosing a career that was both more stable and also protected the privacy of his passion…

For nearly two weeks now I’ve been staring on and off at a photo of comedian Amy Schumer on the front page of the New York Times Sunday “Arts & Leisure” section. She is hugely, triumphantly pregnant, cradling her baby bump in one meaty hand. Her wavy hair streams...

Located in the Chiang Mai province of northern Thailand, ComPeung offers residencies from two weeks to three months on spectacular grounds comprising 2.8 acres of fishing lakes, forests, and mountains as part of what the website calls the country’s “first...

Slowing down, filtering out the noise, and allowing the mind to empty out can offer a tremendous boon to the creative process. Meditation has for years enjoyed a reputation for its restorative powers and its abilities to sharpen the senses (as well as provide deep...

By Jane Barthes  Maggi Hambling’s paintings and sculpture are not entirely new to me, but many outside the U.K. probably have little knowledge of this quintessentially British artist. I discovered Hambling’s work in the early 1990s, five years before I left London,...

In Shakespeare’s Hamlet, the character Polonius offers the following life advice to his son Laertes: “This above all: to thine own self be true, And it must follow…

Artists Share Moments of Discovery A few weeks ago, before making the great trans-Taos trek from Cottam Road to Camino del Monte, I asked Vasari21 members if they had ever experienced what I call the “aha!” moment—a sudden realization that a material, a way of...

A Major Abstract Artist of the 20th Century Begins To Get Her Due I first stumbled upon the paintings of Dorothy Hood about five years ago, in the home of collector and artist Dora Dillistone. It’s not too much of a stretch to say that I was completely blown away....

Talk about “Surrealism” in conversation with artists and art lovers you are most likely to think of works by Dalí, Magritte, Tanguy, Ernst, or possibly Paul Delvaux. Mention “American Surrealism,” and the terrain gets tricky. Didn’t Adolph Gottlieb, Mark Rothko, and...