I like to say that the only truly original artist was the man or woman who drew that first mastodon on the cave wall. All other artists have been stealing from that person ever since. Wayne Thiebaud, currently the subject of a wonderful exhibition at the California...
A few months back, I wrote about a current touring exhibition of works by Tamara de Lempicka. As I said then, the Art Deco style of the Roaring Twenties (which the French call les années folles) evokes an image of tuxedoed men with pomaded hair squiring sleek women...
In this time when the world seems full of darkness, both natural and political, I have been distracting myself by reading Orlando Whitfield’s new book All That Glitters: A Story of Friendship, Fraud, and Fine Art (Pantheon Press). The fraud was committed by...
Leaving aside the World War II years, which were more than just an “era,” there have been two periods in the past hundred years that have caught the popular imagination. The more recent was the Sixties in America, particularly the Summer of Love in 1968. ...
When Norman Rockwell died in 1978, Time Magazine art critic Robert Hughes briefly discussed the artist’s place in American art. Hughes acknowledged that Rockwell in his last years had moved beyond the soda-fountain-American-flag-and-Mom’s-apple-pie subject matter...
O’Keeffe’s art is currently having a moment. Not Georgia O’Keeffe’s – that’s as popular as it’s ever been. No, I’m talking about the art of her little sister, Ida Ten Eyck O’Keeffe (1889-1961), which scored a huge success at Christie’s last week. Born in Sun Prairie,...
