ARTES MAGAZINE

“We find ourselves faced with the only reality—despite ourselves we encourage our painters to reproduce us on their canvases just as we are, with our costumes and customs.” ~Émile Zola (1868) Does life imitate art, or art imitate life? Addressing that very quandary, a stunningly-curated show at the Met demonstrates how to pull out all [...]

Experiencing the creative work of architectural brothers, Greene & Greene, is like sipping a rare, richly-made wine—offering sensory delights from the firm of two authentic American Arts and Crafts masters. As the brothers Greene—Charles and Henry—worked primarily in California, they created the ‘gold standard’ for the Arts and Crafts design style. Their work, both as [...]

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, [...]

The Former Soviet Republic of Georgia is unique in every aspect – from its varied landscape ranging from the Caucasus Mountains, the coast of the Black Sea and the deserts on the border with Azerbaijan – to its art.  Georgia’s location makes the country a crossroads of cultures, from the Asiatic influence of the Persian [...]

In 1995, the gallery of the Massachusetts College of Art presented Language Lost, a deconstruction of text and communication by Xu Bing. Seventeen years later Phoenix, two enormous, junk metal birds (left), are suspended in the vast space of Building Five of Mass MoCA. They will remain on view for the coming year. Other elements [...]

During the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, California’s spectacular landscape was the catalyst for a profusion of light-filled paintings. Artists determined to capture its vivid colors painted the landscapes in a distinctive style that has come to be called California Impressionism or California plein air painting. Left: Joseph Morris Raphael (1869-1950), Market of St. Catherine, [...]

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 [...]

“The act of painting is about one heart telling another heart where he found salvation.” ~Francisco de Goya  Left: Henri Matisse, The Dream (Le rêve), 1935. Collection Musée National d’Art Moderne, Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris Casting Call! ARTES, a fine arts magazine, is approaching its fourth anniversary. A concerted effort by a small group of [...]

“This country is just too f***ed up about color. It’s a distraction. People at each other’s throats just because they are a different color. It’s the height of insanity, and it will hold any nation back – or any neighborhood back or anything back. Blacks know that some whites didn’t want to give up slavery [...]

When the doors to the treasure house are thrown open, discrimination is not a viable option. There is only the slow walk through its many chambers, the visitor stunned at the heaped up glories. And so it is with the Yale University Art Gallery, now reconfigured and expanded on a grand scale. It is a [...]