Visual Arts
Although I was quadruply nervous—about my historical and art-historical knowledge, my Dutch, my speaking voice, and my presence of mind—I enjoyed the tapings for the radio and have no reason to think that I committed any terrible gaffes. By Gary Schwartz My late Sunday mornings over the past decades have been torn between quiet work…
By Peter Walsh Charles LeDray, Institute of Contemporary Art (ICA), Boston, MA, July 16 through October 17 New York sculptor Charles LeDray is known for making very, very tiny things—especially men’s clothing—with fanatical precision and craftsmanship. Something about them fascinates. A British critic has compared his elaborate, Liliputian arrangements to “the model tankers and cruise…
Oh connoisseurship, what hath thou wrought? By Gary Schwartz Until June 27, a small exhibition of irresistible charm and interest is being held in the Mauritshuis in The Hague, after a run at the Rubenshuis in Antwerp: Willem van Haecht: room for art in 17th-century Antwerp. Van Haecht was one of the great masters of…
The narrative turns out to have the blandly cheerful tone and slightly stilted prose of an official biography: the sort of thing with the CEO’s picture on the cover, given out at stockholders meetings. Chuck Close: Life, by Christopher Finch. Prestel, 352 pages, $34.95. Reviewed by Peter Walsh In these media-saturated, image-obsessed times, every public…
By J. R. Carroll Photo by Nicole LeCorgne Jazz festivals come in all shapes and sizes these days, even within the modest geographical confines of New England. Up in Vermont, the Burlington Discover Jazz Festival is still in progress; among others, you can still catch Jim Hall on Friday, June 11, and Sonny Rollins the…
By Peter Walsh It’s a hot weather tradition. Generations of American artists have followed the seasonal migration out of hot, sticky, eastern cities to Cape Cod (Edward Hopper, Hans Hoffman), the North Shore (Winslow Homer, Childe Hassan, Stuart Davis, Mark Rothko), and the Berkshires (Daniel Chester French, Norman Rockwell ). Besides their work, they left…
Musings on the history, shapes, and ubiquity of donuts on the occasion of the holiday. By Sally Levitt Steinberg National Donut Day (the first friday in June) falls under the sign of Gemini, the sign of divided souls, and so it is not surprising that the donut leads its own divided life. We love ‘em,…
By J. R. Carroll June brings a cupful of world jazz. [Updated: See Mose Allison item below] Photo by Daniel Sheehan While the eyes of the sporting world may be on the stadiums of South Africa, there will be plenty of international flavor here in New England this month. Brazilian born but now Seattle-based, pianist/composer/arranger…
Walt Whitman is an exuberant poet, and fellow versifier C. K. Williams is exuberant about Whitman in this wonderfully perceptive introduction to his poetry. On Whitman (Writers on Writers) by C. K. Williams. Princeton University Press, 208 pages, $19.95 Reviewed by Anthony Wallace On Whitman is a meditation on the life and work of the…
There are dozens of excellent books about the Alcotts, Emersons, Thoreau, and Hawthorne but reading them can’t beat actually walking through the places where the people actually lived. By Helen Epstein “We are all going to be made perfect,” wrote ten-year-old Louisa May Alcott in June of 1843, “This day we left Concord in the…
Visual Art Commentary: Silence Is Complicity — Why Museums Must Use Their Voice to Defend Democracy