If George Clooney can rev up our righteous indignation decrying the barbarities of Joe McCarthy, why on earth couldn’t he become eloquent when it comes to talking about fighting to keep Hitler’s mitts off Michelangelo?
visual-art
Short Fuse: Steve Martin’s Balanced Vision of Beauty
What An Object of Beauty proves is that while people were fixated on his Hollywood day job, Steve Martin has made himself into a genuine novelist who gives the art world over the last 20 years an exquisitely balanced sort of attention. An Object of Beauty by Steve Martin. Grand Central Publishing,295 pages, $26.99. By […]
Coming Attractions at Museums: December 2010
Many museums slow up and party like the rest of us this month, but there are a few new exhibitions worth a look, some offering visuals that brim over with good cheer, such as a collection of handmade holiday cards, others displaying a more violent view of humanity, such as “Goya and the Bullfight.” By […]
Fuse Visual Arts Review: Questioning the Image
But The Image in Question begs a crucial question: Isn’t modern media supposed to be flashy, colorful, and loud beyond all sane toleration? Aren’t shrill, unceasing proclamations a part of what drives some individuals away from television and video-games to art galleries, the concert-hall, and the cinema? THE IMAGE IN QUESTION. WAR — MEDIA — […]
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 […]
Book Review: ‘Chuck Close: Life’ ignores the Big Questions
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 […]
Visual Arts: The Beauty of Bars of Color within Squares
Sometimes what is initially thought to be awkward will eventually be visually pleasing. —Sol LeWitt, “Paragraphs on Conceptual Art,” 1967 Bars of Color within Squares, a permanent installation in MIT’s Green Center, Cambridge, MA. Finding Bars of Color within Squares. Photo: George Bouret Reviewed by Yumi Araki Hidden between three buildings surrounding Massachusetts Institute of […]
Visual Arts Feature: An Impressive Prize
By Gary Schwartz Once every three years since 1992, the Prince Bernhard Cultural Foundation, originally launched under another name in 1940 to aid the war effort, has awarded a prize to a person or institution in the humanities. It is a generous prize of 50,000 euros, of which two-thirds is to be spent on projects […]
Book Review: All About Art (except the art)
Mostly, Richard Polsky writes entertainingly about the art world in the American vernacular: cash. i sold Andy Warhol. (too soon) by Richard Polsky. other press, 288 pages, $23.95. Reviewed by Peter Walsh “The nature of the art business is that it’s filled with pettiness and jealousy…” complains art dealer Richard Polsky early in his new […]
Book Review: A History of Art Made to Shock
Edgar Degas once said that painting should be akin to committing a crime. And many Americans saw creation of some of the most important works of American art as just that—roguish, cunning and wicked—in short, criminal. Visual Shock: A History of Art Controversies in American Culture by Michael Kammen. Penguin Random House, 480 pages, $18. […]