Gary Schwartz

Fuse News: Celebrate the 100th Anniversary of the “End of Reason”

January 18, 2014
Posted in ,

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.

Read More

Visual Arts Book Review: Looking at Paintings Beyond the Comfort Zone

November 20, 2013
Posted in , ,

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.

Read More

Visual Arts: The New Rijksmuseum — A Revelation

May 10, 2013
Posted in ,

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.

Read More

Book Review: “The Melancholy Art” — Art History and Depression

April 21, 2013
Posted in , ,

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.

Read More

Visual Arts/ Book Review: “Mute Poetry, Speaking Pictures” — A Treat for Word-and-Image Fans

January 10, 2013
Posted in , ,

“Mute Poetry, Speaking Pictures” is indispensable reading for word-and-image freaks and a treat for fans of virtuoso scholarship.

Read More

Visual Arts Feature: Museums in the East, Part One

December 26, 2012
Posted in ,

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.

Read More

Visual Arts: Bureaucratic Vandalism and the Survival of Sheer Excellence

September 22, 2012
Posted in ,

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.

Read More

Visual Arts Feature: Rembrandt, Rubens, the Beau Sancy, and the Jew

May 22, 2012
Posted in ,

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.

Read More

Fuse Feature: Writer Carlos Fuentes — A Personal Remembrance

May 20, 2012
Posted in , ,

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.

Read More

Visual Arts: Conservation Conundrums

April 26, 2012
Posted in ,

Art conservation is a very pragmatic field, full of compromises.

Read More

Recent Posts