There can be no doubt that Malevich was right, and that since February 1914 reason has played a distinctly subordinate role in human affairs, including art.
Visual Arts Book Review: Looking at Paintings Beyond the Comfort Zone
Daniel Arasse’s method has been defined by his students as “looking, [taking] pleasure and [being] imprudent.” Any and every detail of a work of art can serve as his starting point.
Fuse Visual Arts: The New Rijksmuseum — A Revelation
Respect for the building and its makers, respect for the historical study of art, respect for the visitor’s relation to the displays. These are qualities that I find in the New Rijksmuseum and missed in the old one.
Book Review: “The Melancholy Art” — Art History and Depression
If I suffered half as much from the thought that most art has been lost as I suffer every day from the recollection of departed family and friends, I would be in a mental hospital. In this sense, I found myself resisting the message of “The Melancholy Art,” to the point that I felt that the book was laying a guilt trip on me.
Visual Arts/ Book Review: “Mute Poetry, Speaking Pictures” — A Treat for Word-and-Image Fans
“Mute Poetry, Speaking Pictures” is indispensable reading for word-and-image freaks and a treat for fans of virtuoso scholarship.
Visual Arts Feature: Museums in the East, Part One
In the first few days of our first visit to China, I was nonetheless unable to keep myself from formulating a hypothesis. In China the distinction between art, artifice and artificiality is not drawn as sharply as it is, at least in principle, in the West.
Fuse Visual Arts: Bureaucratic Vandalism and the Survival of Sheer Excellence
In order to pay tribute to the supreme Frits Lugt and his Fondation Custodia — and to protest the announced closing of the Institut Néerlandais with which it is joined — the column describes an example of Lugt’s collecting genius.
Visual Arts Feature: Rembrandt, Rubens, the Beau Sancy, and the Jew
The history of the Beau Sancy took me back to the years around 1640, when it passed into and out of the orbit of the greatest Netherlandish artists of the day, the Dutchman Rembrandt and the Brabander Rubens.
Fuse Feature: Writer Carlos Fuentes — A Personal Remembrance
As sorry as I was to lose Mexican writer Carlos Fuentes last week, I was nonetheless deeply pleased that he reached the age of 83. I almost killed him when he was 37.
Visual Arts: Conservation Conundrums
Art conservation is a very pragmatic field, full of compromises.