Bruce Dorfman, Artist & Mentor
An artist who seeks subject matter is like a person who can’t get up in the morning until he understands the purpose of life. Fairfield Porter Porter could easily have said the same about segments of...
View ArticleThe Obamas’ Portraits & Identity Politics
At the end of each presidency the Smithsonian commissions an official portrait of the outgoing royals for the National Portrait Gallery. Museum curators advise, suggesting names to suit the sensibility...
View ArticlePortraits: No Politics, Just Pictures
The Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery unveiled the official presidential portraits of Barack and Michelle Obama last month. Much of the fun of it was in reading pundit responses to the paintings....
View ArticleOn the Grid with Lloyd Martin
LLOYD MARTIN LIVES AND WORKS IN RHODE ISLAND. By no means does that permit anyone to call him a New England painter. There is nothing regional about his painting. His achievement embodies Robert...
View ArticleNavigating the Cognitive Philosophy of Michael Fried
by Hasan Niyazi CARAVAGGIO AND HIS FOLLOWERS IN ROME has arrived at the Kimbell Art Museum in Fort Worth, Texas. Those unable to experience the majesty of the Baroque in person are left to ponder the...
View ArticleEuan Uglow’s Stern Beauty
The only Christian work is good work, well done. –Dorothy Sayers Ask: “Who is the greatest figure painter of the late twentieth century?” The answer on this side of the Atlantic is likely to be...
View ArticleA Few Notes
Among Euan Uglow’s studio props was a female skull, minus the jaw bone and, possibly, two thousand years old. His friend and fellow painter Tony Eyton wrote that Uglow found it in an ancient burial...
View ArticleRoger de La Fresnaye, Neglected Knight
Roger de la Fresnaye (1885-1925) painted strikingly personal, luminous, figure compositions between 1912 and his entry into the French army in 1914. They are among the grandest works of the generation...
View ArticleEl Greco, Messiah of Modernism
Among Platonists, man is mind, intellect, above all else. Man is ordained to think. His province is learning and true wisdom. The rest is flesh and appetite, or, in the phrasing of Timaeus , an Eros of...
View ArticleJohn Walker at Alexandre Gallery
In Painting and Reality, Etienne Gilson argued that painting should be experienced on its own terms. That is to say, aesthetically. He insisted that audiences greet art without thinking of it as...
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