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Old Masters
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.
The Man Without Guile
For Henri Rousseau, naïveté was a powerful artistic technique. By Jonathon Keats According to a popular story, Henri Rousseau became an artist on account of a prank played by the absurdist writer Alfred Jarry. Rousseau was on duty as a gabelou at the Pont des Arts in Paris, collecting tolls for the municipal government, when…
The Red and the Black
By Dan Hofstadter Mark Rothko insisted that his contemplative art was the stuff of high drama. Why? Mark Rothko liked to hold forth. As a listener, you may have found his harangues enlightening, infuriating or “banal,” as Clement Greenberg did, but never funny. They weren’t stand-up. Yet the chief virtue of Red, John Logan’s play…
Traditions and Transgressions
By Aline Brandauer In Santa Fe, contemporary art moves forward in conversation with the past. In a place as saturated with diverse artistic traditions as New Mexico, the creative process is bound to involve a complex dialogue with the past. Absorbing Native American, Spanish and Anglo-American influences, New Mexico’s cultural producers cannot escape tradition; they…
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