Posts by Art & Antiques Magazine
Design for Living
“We’ve been working on this exhibition for more than a decade,” says Kevin W. Tucker, the curator of decorative arts and design at the Dallas Museum of Art, the show’s organizing institution. “There are aspects of Stickley’s vision that, as audiences will see, are very relevant to some of the growing concerns people have today about design and the way they can or do or should live.” Tucker points out, for example, that Stickley designed houses with the landscape in mind and encouraged the use of indigenous building materials.
Read MoreThe Once and Future Philatelist
Now, after a half-century hiatus, I have taken up stamp collecting again. The stock market collapse of 2008—which took half my personal worth—surely played a role. I decided to invest in something besides shares and bonds. I read reports that during the global crisis stamps held their value while financial instruments, real estate and most collectibles plummeted. And my thoughts turned back to my childhood stamp collection. Why not put some of my savings into something that was familiar, emotionally satisfying and intellectually appealing? Leaning on my journalistic experience, I set upon a journey of philatelic discovery.
Read MoreThe Man Without Guile
For Henri Rousseau, naïveté was a powerful artistic technique. By Jonathon Keats According to a popular story, Henri Rousseau became an artist on account of a prank played by the absurdist writer Alfred Jarry. Rousseau was on duty as a gabelou at the Pont des Arts in Paris, collecting tolls for the municipal government, when…
Read MoreThe Red and the Black
By Dan Hofstadter Mark Rothko insisted that his contemplative art was the stuff of high drama. Why? Mark Rothko liked to hold forth. As a listener, you may have found his harangues enlightening, infuriating or “banal,” as Clement Greenberg did, but never funny. They weren’t stand-up. Yet the chief virtue of Red, John Logan’s play…
Read MoreTraditions and Transgressions
By Aline Brandauer In Santa Fe, contemporary art moves forward in conversation with the past. In a place as saturated with diverse artistic traditions as New Mexico, the creative process is bound to involve a complex dialogue with the past. Absorbing Native American, Spanish and Anglo-American influences, New Mexico’s cultural producers cannot escape tradition; they…
Read MoreFinders, Sleepers
By Sallie Brady Leveraging luck and sleuthing skills, savvy dealers discover hidden treasures. Miscatalogued, overpainted, lost amid the ephemera of a pokey country auction—a hidden masterpiece is the holy grail of every any good art and antiques dealer. It’s the fantasy that keeps them awake nights, the dream that their hunch on a “could it…
Read MoreThe Rest is Noise
The Futurist Luigi Russolo was a lousy painter, but as a composer he was way ahead of his time. Reminiscing in the late 1950s, Igor Stravinsky recalled an evening in 1915 when he first heard the Futurist music of Luigi Russolo. “Five phonographs standing on five tables in a large and otherwise empty room emitted digestive noises, static, etc.,” he said. “I pretended to be enthusiastic and told [the Futurists] that the sets of five phonographs with such music, mass produced, would surely sell like Steinway grand pianos.”
Read MoreA Woman of Valor
This month, Arshile Gorky: A Retrospective, which originated at the Philadelphia Museum of Art last fall, comes to the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles. With a broad selection of works, some of them never before shown, and a series of installations that demonstrate Gorky’s work process, the exhibition illuminates the development of the artist’s unique style.
Read MoreHelp Wanted
In the old days, most directors of major art museums could settle in and look forward to decades-long tenures. The job was unique and prestigious—the qualifications were a background of serious scholarship as a curator and the ability to be a reassuring pillar of the community—if a little sleepy at times. Fast forward to 2010: Museum directors are hustling more than they ever had dreamed they would have to, grappling with the perils of the Great Recession and with increasing demands on their time.
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