We care less now about the subjects than the paintings, which reaffirm that the business of commissioned portraiture—historically treated as a second-level endeavor—was capable of producing breathtaking stuff, art of the first rank.
Kollwitz’s art was both a response to the suffering of others and a processing of personal experience. For Kollwitz, character born of hardship was indistinguishable from—lo, was the necessary source of—beauty.
An exhibition at the Royal Academy of Art asks, Does great art begin with studying nature, or studying the great art of the past?
With Lucian Freud, the issue isn’t nudity, and it certainly isn’t pornography. The problem is the insistence on the abundant stuff of the physical world.
Reviews
Moroni: The Riches of Renaissance Portraiture at the Frick Collection
Feb 27, 2019, 12:41 PM
Giovanni Battista Moroni receives his first retrospective in this country.
Two major exhibitions at the Peabody Essex Museum.
While Delacroix might defy easy classification among art historical “isms,” his lifelong devotion to drawing is certain.
What we can learn from the process of an artist who defies neat categorization.
Is something lost when sculptures get too close to reality?
For an aspiring artist, being born in South Florida turns out not to have been such a bad thing.