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.
Gary-Schwartz
Visual Arts: New Year’s Resolutions and On Augmenting Art
In practical terms the Virtual Reality helmet has still not lived up to its potential. Another device has come along, however, that can convey as much information, though without the total visual immersion of Virtual Reality. This is nothing other than the humble cell phone . . . By Gary Schwartz. In 1997 I was […]
Visual Arts: Improving on the Unfinished Past, Or Schwartz on the Radio
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 […]
Visual Arts: Worlds within Worlds
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 […]
Visual Arts: Deaccession — The Deadly Sin
By Gary Schwartz On February 21, 2007, I had the honor of delivering the Third Annual Lecture of the Project for the Study of Collecting and Provenance at the Getty Research Institute. My subject was “Rembrandt’s paper trail,” but that is not the subject of this column. What keeps coming to mind is an exchange […]
Visual Arts: The Transparent Connoisseur 2
The issues might seem highly technical and of interest only to specialists, but I think they do matter. In the first place they matter as a corrective to our understanding of Rembrandt, but they also matter for the critical insights they offer into the techniques and practices of scholarship. By Gary Schwartz Earlier columns were […]
Visual Arts: Rembrandt’s Imagination
I envision Rembrandt with chalk or pen always at hand, sketching from life and imagination constantly. This is also how he taught his pupils, who like him also produced numerous drawings related and unrelated to paintings or prints. Why do so many experts disagree? By Gary Schwartz In an earlier column I illustrated a large […]
Visual Arts: At Rembrandt’s Core, The Drawings
How many drawings by Rembrandt are around? More than many experts admit. The issue is not just a quibble over numbers. It has far-reaching consequences for our reconstruction of Rembrandt’s working method and our understanding of his art. The showdown is coming at a conference on the artist at the J. Paul Getty Museum in […]
Visual Arts Feature: O Solomon, where art thou?
By Gary Schwartz To the memory of Dan Tsalka. Among the acts of art vandalism blamed on the nineteenth century, one of the minor ones was actually undone fifteen years ago. It had to do with the dismemberment of a painting by Jan Steen of the wedding night of Sarah and Tobias, a story from […]
Visuals Arts: Rembrandt and I in Oman
It cannot be said that the average Omani was waiting for an exhibition of Rembrandt etchings. By Gary Schwartz “Frankincense from Oman and paintings by Rembrandt were both part of the good life in the 17th century.” That unlikely quotation is from the script of a film that I wrote and presented this summer to […]