Visual Arts
The show was like topping a delicate wedge of artisanal cheese with a handful of artisanal trail mix. Both the Christian Science Plaza and the sculptures themselves are exquisite on their own, but together the experience felt disjointed and oddly incompatible.
The influence of two centuries of dandies on fashion — and the artful, strategic, ready-for-the-paparazzi self-presentation at the heart of modern celebrity — is on wide-ranging and colorful display in the Rhode Island School of Design Museum exhibit.
It’s notable and heartening when informed critical opinion manages to stop a juggernaut in its tracks.
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.
In a modest tweak of Dorothy Fields’ lyrics to the famous Jerome Kern song, this weekend will be Boston’s chance, via the Design Museum Boston, to sit yourself down, dust yourself off, and start all over again.
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.
The journey of Anders Zorn, from Swedish hamlet to the top echelon of society portraitists and back again, has a couple of messages for us. The first leg of the journey tells us that careerism is not a new phenomenon in the art world. The second tells us what it may be worth in the end.
Anyone interested in figurative art ought to rush over to Boston University’s Stone Gallery before “Teaching the Body” ends this Sunday.
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