ARTES MAGAZINE

The history of Paris porcelain (known familiarly in France as vieux Paris) began around 1770 and refers not to a single manufacturer, but to more than thirty porcelain sources, based within the City of Paris between the mid-1700s and the end of the Second Empire in 1870. The term was not actually used until the [...]

This is a tale of two historic homes in a beautiful seaside, New England town, and of how visionary zeal and coincidence braided history, friendship and a passion for things beautiful together in a most unusual way… On May 1, 1915 Alfred Vanderbilt boarded the Lusitania bound for Liverpool as a first class passenger. It [...]

The museums of Washington, DC are renowned for their exhibitions of eminent artists. Only infrequently however–in that city of policy and politics–do three exhibits appear in tandem, showcasing the work of artists who contributed to altering the definition of art in the twentieth century. This spring and summer, viewers are offered an opportunity to observe [...]

In the early 1800s, the natural splendor and proximity of the upper Hudson River Valley served as an ideal tourist’s retreat for the new middle-class population of a burgeoning New York City, just a few miles to the south. By newly-invented steamboat (also a Hudson River first) and train, they came in search of the [...]

“Every portrait is, in some sense, a self portrait that reflects the viewer. Because ‘the eye is not satisfied with seeing,’ we bring to a portrait our perceptions and our experiences. In the alchemy of the creative act, every portrait is a mirror.” In his opening paragraph of the chapter entitled, The Image as Reflection”, [...]

 In less sure hands, New York City’s Museum of Arts and Design’s Dead or Alive, an exhibit of thirty-seven international artists’ work composed of feathers, bones, egg shells, insects, fur, antlers, dried and rotting plants– with a few stuffed birds and animals thrown in– would be a creepy, crawly experience, conceivably sending people packing for [...]

 The Exquisite Corpse has lived many lives!  But first, a brief explanation is required…  The early 20th century was an era of experimentation in the visual arts, music, literature, design and architecture—particularly in Europe. The world was swept up in scientific and industrial innovations of the period. Many believed that civilization stood poised on the [...]

In this, the third in a four-part series on the history of the Hudson River and its role in shaping the American identity, we explore the place that an emerging community of writers had in defining the traits and personalities of what the world would later view as, ‘typically American’. This story is a complex [...]

      If ever there were a middle-of-the-road exhibition, this year’s Whitney Biennial is it. In the spirit of an Obama promise for ‘Change’ and to ostensibly try to please everyone—traditional nattering nabob art critics included—guest curator Francesco Bonami and Whitney senior curatorial assistant Gary Carrion-Murayari transformed, with a few standout exceptions, what is usually a [...]

By the mid-17th century, English claims in the New World were well-established for those colonies along the New England coastline. The hard-scrabble existence and high mortality which had so characterized the early years of settlement had given way to communal permanence and relative prosperity. Still, the relationship of these growing settlements, with the surrounding forest [...]