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 [...]

In July, 1929, months before the stock market crash that resulted in the Great Depression of the 1930s, Albert Coombs Barnes (January 2, 1872 – July 24, 1951), sold his company for some $6 million. He made a vast fortune on the manufacture and sale of the antiseptic drug Argyrol, used to treat gonorrhea. By [...]

A recent tour of the newly expanded and renovated Yale University Art Gallery, in New Haven Connecticut, has visitors treading on a little-noticed engraved marker inlayed in the stone floor of the Ancient Arts gallery. Cool winter light slants into the space from nearby Chapel Street, illuminating the inscription: ‘Col. JOHN TRUMBULL, Patriot and Artist, Friend [...]

During the Holiday season, it was inevitable to compare and contrast the titans of the 20th Century, French modernism, Pablo Picasso (25 October 1881 – 8 April 1973), far left, and Henri Matisse (31 December 1869 – 3 November 1954) left. The Guggenheim Museum presents Picasso Black and White through January 23 while the Metropolitan [...]

 “I assure you no art was ever less spontaneous than mine…of inspiration, spontaneity, temperament—temperament is the word—I know nothing.” ~Edgar Degas Edgar Degas, best known in the public imagination for his more sentimental, impressionistic works—ballet scenes, race tracks, opera and music hall scenes—was, first and foremost, a student of the human figure. With the current [...]

The Dramatic Influence of Japanese Ukiyo-e  Prints on Impressionist Painting From the word orient, we take our meaning, ‘to establish a direction or a path based on the points of the compass’. Navigators over centuries faced east to trace the path of the rising sun to its apex for the noon sextant sighting—toward the Orient—the [...]

“In Gertrude Stein’s writing every word lives and, apart from concept, it is so exquisitely rhythmical and cadenced that if we read it aloud and receive it as pure sound, it is like a kind of sensuous music. Just as one may stop, for once, in a way, before a canvas of Picasso, and, letting [...]

Brooklyn Museum, NY, through July 5, 2009 When Impressionism is mentioned, Monet, Renoir, Degas come to mind, but less frequently among the names is that of Gustave Caillebotte (French 1848–1894). Yet, he was very much their equal and a skilled and prolific painter. Wealthy, he had no need to sell his art. He supported his [...]