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Essay: What Goya Saw
“The author is convinced that it is as proper for painting to criticize human error and vice as for poetry and prose to do so,” proclaimed Francisco de Goya y Lucientes in the Diario de Madrid on Feb. 6, 1799, announcing the publication of Los Caprichos(or “Caprices”), his suite of 80 prints made by etching and aquatint, which were intended to reveal “the common prejudices and deceitful practices which custom, ignorance or self-interest have made usual.”
Read MoreThe New Outsiders
The late 1940s saw the first rumblings of appreciation for what is now called “Outsider” art—works created by nonacademically trained artists who operate apart from the cultural mainstream and its art-historical canon. In France, the artist Jean Dubuffet, the Surrealist leader André Breton and the art critic Michel Tapié celebrated visionary autodidacts, whose work they labeled “art brut,” or “raw art.”
Read MoreTalking Pictures: Sons, Fathers and Forefathers
In his new book, Tom and Jack: The Intertwined Lives of Thomas Hart Benton and Jackson Pollock (Bloomsbury, $35), Henry Adams, a professor of art history at Case Western Reserve University, challenges the received wisdom about these two great 20th-century painters—one, the foremost exponent of American Regionalism; the other, the mysterious genius of Abstract Expressionism
Read MoreFrom the Editor: Ancestral Voices
By art-world tradition, the last week in January is Americana week in New York, when the auction houses hold dedicated sales of antique furniture, silver and various forms of vernacular art. The American Antiques Show, benefiting the American Folk Art Museum, takes place at the same time, as does the Winter Antiques Show, not limited to American material but rich in it nonetheless.
Read MoreExhibitions: Down to a Science
Virtually everyone is familiar with the phrase, “I don’t know much about art, but I know what I like.” Now The Walters Art Museum and the Zanvyl Krieger Mind/Brain Institute at Johns Hopkins University, both in Baltimore, are collaborating to determine what people like, and ultimately, why they like it.
Read MoreThe Lure of Egypt
Ancient Egypt has always inspired awe. Part of its power lies in the grandeur of its ruins, the “vast and trunkless legs of stone” that Shelley described in his sonnetOzymandias. Part of it is sheer age. Founded over 5,000 years ago, Egyptian dynastic civilization seemed ancient even to the ancients: In Plato’s Timaeus, an Egyptian priest tells Solon that compared to his own people, “you Hellenes are never anything but children.”
Read MoreIn a Nutshell: Tales of the Tusk
In the ancient world, ivory was an elite material for everyday items. Peoples across the world created small and large works of art by carving bone from the tusks of a walrus or an elephant. “Ivory has always been a very highly valued substance; there’s a universality of its usage from antiquity on,” says Steven Alpert, an expert, dealer and collector of traditional Indonesian art and the arts of the Pacific.
Read MoreBooks: Furnishing an Explanation
It’s unusual for a book about antiques to be published by a major literary house. But Maryalice Huggins’ Aesop’s Mirror is quite an unusual book, by an antiques insider who can tell a good story. It’s a “love story,” as the subtitle says, and the beloved here is an 8-foot-tall gilt mirror decorated with whimsical figures illustrating the ancient fable of the fox and the grapes.
Read MoreCollecting: All in the Family
“La Maladie de Porcelaine” was what Augustus the Strong, Elector of Saxony and king of Poland, called the obsession that led him to amass one of the world’s greatest collections of this decorative substance. Among his holdings were superb examples from China’s Qing Dynasty, including the beautiful and popular varieties known as famille rose and famille verte.
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