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Impressionism
From Russia with Love
The Taos School of painting is known for its part-academic, part-modernistic depictions of a startlingly beautiful landscape and for its celebration of the picturesque qualities of New Mexico’s indigenous people. It often takes the unjaded eye of an outsider to see a place this way, and in fact, none of the Taos painters were actually from Taos (see Art & Antiques, Summer 2009).
From the Editor: Fifty Years Ago—and Tomorrow
As 2009 comes to a close (and not a moment too soon, for many in the art world), we are being asked, from several quarters, to cast our minds back 50 years to 1959. That’s not for nostalgic reasons, but in order to understand where we are today. According to author Fred Kaplan, 1959 was “the year everything changed.”
Collecting: Made in the Shade
Mezzotint allows artists to portray the world in all its many shades of gray. The printmaking technique, invented in 1642, renders the infinite subtleties of the tones that lie between black and white in a manner ideal for reproducing oil paintings. “Most reproductive techniques until then relied on line,” says Sheila O’Connell, assistant keeper of prints and drawings at the British Museum. “Mezzotint allows smoother transitions between line and shade.”
Books: Magical Realism
This book is about Giambattista Tiepolo, the superbly energetic Venetian master of frescoed ceilings and inheritor of the mantle of Paolo Veronese. But it’s also about serpents, symbols, sacrifices, Persian magi, Chaldean oracles and ritual magic. None of which should surprise anyone who is familiar with the delightfully subversive scholarship and essayistic verve of Roberto Calasso, the Italian book publisher (his firm, Adelphi Edizioni, is headquartered in Milan) and writer on a wide variety of cultural subjects.
Crystal Clear
In 1291, the rulers of Venice ordered all glass foundries to relocate to the little island of Murano, about a mile to the northeast of the main cluster of islands, because of the fire hazard they posed to the city’s wooden buildings. Ever since then, the island’s name has been synonymous with hand-blown, luminously colored, deftly crafted glass.
Today's Masters: The Bridge Builder
Just outside a former pipe and piano factory in London’s Camden Town, several tons of rusted steel and iron scraps sit parked like refugees from the Industrial Revolution. Acquired from junkyards around Europe, these twisted bits of detritus and mysterious machine parts serve Anthony Caro as the building blocks of his brand of modernism—one that has elevated the 85-year-old British sculptor into the upper reaches of art history.
In a Nutshell: Blaze of Glory
All Fabergé objects are emblems of a vanished world, but the cigarette cases made by the great Russian luxury firm also represent a vanishing custom. “It was positively eccentric not to smoke in 1900,” says Geoffrey Munn, managing director of Wartski, a London dealer that specializes in Fabergé.
Market: Encore in Paris
By: Sallie Brady Here we go again. Underbidders at February’s historic $483 million sale of couturier Yves Saint Laurent’s collection of art and antiques have another chance to own a piece of the tastemaker’s legacy when the final portion of the estate goes up for sale Nov. 17–20 at Christie’s Paris. This time, look for…
Market: Prints Charming
By: Sheila Gibson Stoodley The International Fine Print Dealers Association fair returns to the Park Avenue Armory in Manhattan on Nov. 5–8 with 84 dealers offering, among other things, strong works by artists who excelled in more than one medium. Included in the British prints that the Fine Art Society will bring is C.R.W. Nevinson’s…
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