Much of Piero’s life and travels are matters of quiet conjecture. In a sense, he was what might be called today an independent or an artist’s artist. His identity and the character of his art were not centered on the artistic and political pressures of Florence, Siena, and Rome.
In the second floor hallway of the Metropolitan Museum, the opening wall text of Pastel Portraits: Images of 18th-Century Europe describes the physical components of pastel and concludes with the phrase “this little understood medium.” Juxtaposed on the adjacent wall are over-life-sized photographs of the pastel-making process. These gripping introductions to the Metropolitan Museum’s first pastel…
The Metropolitan Museum of Art was not a place I expected to find myself and other museum-goers laughing while looking at a show, yet that is exactly what happened when I visited Infinite Jest: Caricature and Satire from Leonardo to Levine.