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Old Masters
Istanbul Goes International
As Turkish contemporary art takes its place on the worldwide stage, the market for it is getting so hot that collectors in Turkey are being priced out. By Abigail R. Esman Situated at the meeting point between Europe and Asia, the city of Istanbul has long been seen as a bridge between East and West….
The Sacred and the Sensual
Few Old Masters are as popular as the Early Netherlandish painters. Visit any major European or American art museum, and the corridors and rooms featuring the gentle works of Jan van Eyck, Hans Memling and Gerard David are filled with hushed, reverent admirers, faces as close to the protective glass as the guards will allow, drawn into a placid, cozy late-Gothic world. But moving along to the early 16th century, the paintings of Jan Gossart tend to give fans of the Flemings something of a jolt.
The Fanciful Forties
L’Enfant et les Sortilèges, a short opera by Maurice Ravel with a libretto by Colette, which premiered in Monaco in March of 1925, is about a naughty little boy who comes to regret his bad behavior. This coming to life was more than just a fiction; it was prophetic, because at that time furniture was about to acquire an extraordinary vitality in French society.
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,…
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