Modern Art

From New York to Monhegan Island, Lynne Drexler stayed true to her artistic inspirations—abstraction, music, and nature. By John Dorfman Many modern artists have perceived deep connections between visual art and music and have even tried to express these in their work. But how many actually brought a portable lap-sized desk to the opera or…

The sculptor and interdisciplinary artist Harry Bertoia manipulated form, space, and metal to create a unique and lasting version of Modernism. By Sarah E. Fensom The Italian-born American artist Harry Bertoia entered into the midcentury modern design pantheon with his Diamond Chair. The famous design incorporates a bent wire-mesh grid in the form of a…

Far from being a Romantic dreamer, J.M.W. Turner had a lively interest in technology and politics that profoundly informed his work. By John Dorfman J.M.W. Turner is often spoken of as “modern” before the fact, because he seemed to flirt with abstraction, especially in his late works. But there’s another reason why the early-19th-century English…

Charles Biederman, influential in the abstract art world of 1930s New York, spent the last 60 years of his career in rural Minnesota, relentlessly pursuing his own direction and artistic philosophy. By John Dorfman It’s hard to imagine in these days of constant marketing and hype, but there used to be artists who resigned from…

The Met spans the globe to reveal the unruly vastness of the Surrealist experiment over an eight-decade period. By John Dorfman According to a once-standard narrative, the Surrealist movement began in France in the early 1920s, flourished in Europe and to a lesser extent in the U.S. until World War II, and then petered out…

An exhibition in Paris puts a large number of Botticelli paintings on view and delves deeply into the Quattrocento artist’s role as master of a workshop. By Sarah E. Fensom Sandro Botticelli, a Florentine painter known for his fluidity of line and profound sense of elegant beauty, was also an enterprise. The latter role is…

A unique two-museum retrospective invites a thorough reconsideration of the meaning of Jasper Johns’ work. By John Dorfman Jasper Johns, at 91, is the ranking member of the contemporary American art world. In the words of the New York Times, he is nothing less than “America’s foremost living artist.” In the late 1950s, Johns was…

The impact of ghosts and the spirit world on American art is explored in depth in a highly unusual museum exhibition By John Dorfman The United States has the reputation of being a hard-headedly rationalistic, materialistic nation, but in fact, Americans have been ghost-obsessed from colonial days down to the present time. The harsh conditions…

A new exhibition in The National Gallery of Art’s Cabinet Galleries provides an expanded view of 17th-century Dutch and Flemish painting. By Sarah E. Fensom In the second volume of his sweeping art-historical compendium The Lives of the Painters (1969), John Canaday includes a chapter titled “Vermeer and the Quietest Revolution.” “Of all the contrasts…