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Neolithic to Nebuchadnezzar
Ancient Near Eastern art, also called Western Asiatic, is not as well-known as Greek or Roman art, but is a fascinating and very complicated field.
Mix Masters
The biggest museum news in the world this month is the opening of the new Art of the Americas wing at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. To make it shine in the snazzy new digs, the curators have re-thought, re-arranged and re-interpreted the MFA’s formidable American collection, a process that took a decade to complete.
Threads of History
In 1932, a New York engineer, Arthur Arwine, artfully recreated the plush atmosphere of a Turkmen yurt in his Sheridan Square apartment by draping colorful carpets on his walls, his furniture and, of course, his floors.
Drawn Together
Drawing is to the visual and design arts what mathematics is to the sciences—a lingua franca that serves, across disciplines from painting and sculpture to fashion, architecture and industrial design, as a widely expressive language in which creative types of all kinds can jot down their ideas and efficiently share them with each other. Traditionally, drawings have been works made with various media on paper, including different kinds of cardboard.
A Well-Carved Life
By Ted Loos Remembering the folk artist and furniture craftsman Stephen Huneck. A time-honored trope in Western culture has it that creativity and depression go hand in hand, that artists are “born under the sign of Saturn.” Whether or not there really is such a thing as creative melancholy, artists from the Renaissance to today…
The Ultimate Attic
By Sallie Brady The Duke of Devonshire is cleaning house, and collectors, dealers and curators are descending on his Chatsworth estate for a historic auction conducted by Sotheby’s. Forget the 2009 Yves Saint Laurent/Pierre Bergé sale. For anyone who is passionate about any aspect of the English country house, be it architectural, decorative or historical,…
The Real Grant Wood
The story of Grant Wood is surely one of the strangest episodes in the entire history of American art. As of 1930 he was a little-known local painter in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, whose greatest honor was that he had once won a blue ribbon at the Iowa State Fair. Then he made a painting of his sister and his dentist dressed up as farm folk, standing in front of a little wooden cottage with a gothic window, and sent it to the annual exhibition at the Art Institute of Chicago.
Interview with Author Tripp Evans by Henry Adams
He became an instant celebrity with American Gothic, but understanding of Grant Wood’s art has been slow in coming. A new biography reveals the hidden depth—and strangeness— of both the man and his work. ADAMS: When did you first get interested in Grant Wood? When I was in seventh or eighth grade, I remember seeing…
Organic Ceramic
By Sallie Brady Bernard Palissy made porcelain come alive in the 16th century, and nature’s forms continue to inspire artists in clay today. When groups of school children are brought to the Wallace Collection, the jewel of a London museum that was once the private collection of Sir Richard Wallace, they are always shown the…
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