Articles
Vigée the Victorious
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…
Lorrie Fredette
Lorrie Fredette“I used to be a secret reader of the New York Times Tuesday ‘Science’ section,” says Lorrie Fredette. “I don’t always understand what I’m reading, so my way into understanding is to go make something, to give it three-dimensional form.” Since Fredette’s...
Not-So-Still Life with Children
Without my four sons, I would be a different artist. They were born one right after the other—the oldest was four when the fourth was born—simplifying as many complications as were created. I dearly wanted a family, and knew…
Three Great Novels About Art, Artists, and the Art World
It used to be that the favored genre for fiction about art and artists was the pseudo-biography, like Irving Stone’s Lust for Life and The Agony and the Ecstasy. Or if you were in search of lighter fare, you turned to a glamorous art-world setting…
The Fate of the Art at the Four Seasons
Photo credits: bottom of pageOver the holidays, I learned from a friend that the venerable Four Seasons Restaurant in the landmark Seagram Building on Park Avenue would be closing this summer. I was a little late to that news, and it is not technically about to be...
Joan Linder on Miriam Dym
History aside, when I think of an artist whose work I admire and who has had immeasurable impact on my work, I think of Miriam Dym. We met in graduate school nearly two decades ago. She has a particular, and idiosyncratic, vision that engages…
10 Smart Tips (and Reasons) for Using Social Media
When I was writing regularly for ARTnews and the Wall Street Journal, I checked into Facebook only sporadically, usually when I was in the middle of transcribing a dull interview or blocked in writing a story. It was a mildly engaging way…
Barbara Rachko
Barbara Rachko’s first career was about as far from the world of art as you can get. The daughter of working-class parents in suburban New Jersey, she earned her private pilot’s license at the age of 25 and then spent seven years….
Mark Sheinkman
Mark SheinkmanWhen I first met Mark Sheinkman nearly 20 years ago, he was making drawings with limited means—graphite, charcoal, erasers, and paper—and that choice of the most basic of tools has not changed much in two decades. His works are still predominantly black...
Afterthoughts on the 2015 Venice Biennale
Photo credits: bottom of pageMost reviews of the 2015 Venice Biennale came down hard on the curator’s “didactic,” “glum,” “joyless,” and un-spectacular show of conceptual, socially oriented works. It also disappointed those addicted to grandiose art spectacles, the...
Scams and Shams Part 2
About a decade ago, in the wake of yet another failed romance, I decided to visit the Florence Biennale, an art extravaganza that has been in the works since 1997. A fellow art journalist was going, meeting up with a curator friend from Texas…
On the Shoulders of Giants
I feel somewhat this way about being a painter after having first been an art historian. Sometimes it is a deterrent to contemplate the achievements of others, but sometimes their work serves as inspiration. Though I’ve had…
Artist and Critics: Part 4
There was a time, not so long ago, when physical assaults were almost a routine art-world ritual, between artists and critics, artists and artists, and occasionally even critics and critics. The titanic 20th-century art czar…
The States of Art
As many of you are aware from postings on Facebook and elsewhere, I spent nearly two weeks in New York over the holidays, visiting the studios of as many Vasari21 members as I could fit into a crammed schedule. Most will be the subjects of forthcoming…
How To Explain Pictures to a Difficult Date
I live in a tiny town in northern New Mexico, one where the chances of meeting an available man of a certain age are, shall we say, extremely limited. So when you do encounter one who owns a car, has a college degree, and doesn’t chew tobacco, your hopes can get sort of…
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