ARTES MAGAZINE

He has a murderer’s face, which is to say that he looks like any one of us. A workman, obedient without pleasure, his hand in a paralyzed clutch of the hair on the decapitated head. left: Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio, Salome Receives the Head of Saint John the Baptist, c. 1606–10. Oil on canvas. The National Gallery, [...]

John James Audubon (1785-1851) was not the first person to attempt to paint and describe all the birds of America, but for half-a-century he was the young country’s dominant wildlife artist. His seminal Birds of America (1827-39), a collection of 435 life-size prints, quickly eclipsed others’ work and remains a standard against which ornithological renditions [...]

Loss of a Halo By Charles Baudelaire, from, le spleen le Paris: petits poèms en prose (1863)     “Eh!  What!  You here, my dear?  You in a place of ill-repute!  You, the drinker of quintessences!  You the eater of ambrosia!  Indeed, this really surprises me.” “– My dear, you know my terror of horses and [...]

ARTES Magazine was recently made aware of a possible threat to a national treasure. As part of its austerity measures, the United States Post Office is in the process of selling its Bronx General Post Office building, in New York City. While the exterior of the building has been identified as a national landmark, a [...]

 How much do you know about John F. Kennedy, our 35th president? If little or nothing, then don’t read on, just go to Long Wharf Theatre and see “Ride the Tiger,” a dramatized history lesson (of sorts) with a little nudity thrown in for good measure. If, however, you were born, say, in the `50s [...]

A Brief Artistic History of Valentine’s Day to Impress Friends and Lovers Passion for life is often spoken through the heart. This powerful organ beats an average of about 100,000 times in one day and about 35 million times in a year. During an average lifetime, the human heart will beat more than 2.5 billion [...]

  Part I of this story appeared on June 18th and can be found at: http://www.artesmagazine.com/2012/06/20th-c-documentarian-seeks-film-truth-in-early-revolutionary-soviet-union/ In all his films, the presence of sound, either implied or field-recorded played a role. In his first, and most faouus, The Man withthe Movie Camera (1929), the film bears the sub-title, ‘A Visual Symphony.’ Later, his visual eulogy to Lenin [...]

When we think of Goya, we think of his iconic Black Paintings and his clothed and naked “Maja”s, but a giant anteater is the last thing we’d associate with the Spanish painter. However, a recently published article by Javier Jordán de Urríes y de la Colina looks to change all that. In the curator’s office [...]

Did you know that on his deathbed Paul Gauguin traded his soul for immortality and the ability to “inhabit” and influence future artists? Not many do know that, and neither did English theatre artist Tony Stowers, who migrated to France in 2006 to live, work and re-invent himself. Stowers only found out about Gauguin’s trade [...]

A comprehensive rendition of the living arts of India, from pre-historic to contemporary times, is featured in 5000 Years of Indian Art, by Sushma K Bahl. The 240 page richly-illustrated volume, published by Roli Books, traces an ancient civilization, entwined in the history, religion and philosophy of the un-fragmented subcontinent of yore. The narrative weaves together [...]