The Portsmouth exhibition harvests over seventy of Gertrude Fiske’s paintings from private and public collections. It is a modest venue for an ambitious agenda, namely the revival of an artist whose reputation has languished for the balance of the last century.
Coldstream seemed to me a talented curiosity: dry, meticulous, influenced by Cézanne, and—though this is no debit—reliably irresolute. He worried his paintings through dozens of sessions without ever falling victim to a conventional standard of finish.
“Tibet,” Giuseppe Tucci wrote, “was, and still is, the greatest love of my life; and the more I burn with this love, the more difficult it seems to satisfy with each visit.”
Grant Wood was opaque regarding the meaning of his paintings, and it’s entirely possible that even he didn’t know, or wasn’t willing to admit, what he felt.
It surprises and gladdens me that an artist who possesses such a sharp eye, with so little patience for bullshit, exercises a consistently lyrical vision in his art.
Michelangelo’s draftsmanship evinces not only unsurpassed skill, but also serious searching and visual thinking. It is a language of its own, drawing taken to the level of an independent art.
The mystery is in the motivation for Zuburán’s paintings of Jacob and his twelve sons.
This is Edvard Munch, the first artist to present a tormented visual autobiography in full view of the public, and an artist for whom the designation “Expressionist” too narrowly circumscribes his range and impact.
Exhibitions devoted to the work of Michelangelo, Rodin, and David Hockney are now on view at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
These small works are so full of complex narrative depictions, significant details, sophisticated symbols, and expressive marks that it is impossible not to wonder at their magic.