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Impressionism
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…
The Pursuit of Prints
Here in their high-rise Upper East Side apartment with sweeping views of Central Park, Leslie and Johanna Garfield, the husband-and-wife collecting team, could always use that extra square foot for their latest acquisition. Six years ago, in order to accommodate their growing collection, the apartment underwent a four-year renovation before the couple moved in. Today the home doubles as a private gallery, with specially constructed hallways and sliding walls, conservation space, and an office for an in-house cataloger and registrar. Still, there never seems to be quite enough room.
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.
The 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.
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