Just a short update on that gorgeous drawing, which is gaining recognition as a Leonardo at the moment, and which I wrote about briefly earlier this year. If nothing else, it gives me an excuse once again to run a picture here. Apparently, a forensic art analyst, Peter Paul Biro, has now found a fingerprint…
OK, so this is one of those half-baked posts that are the bread-and-butter of most blogs, but I just cannot believe that there’s even a controversy over the miraculous appearance a few years ago in a gallery in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico, of five cases of deeply personal, never-before-seen work by Frida Kahlo. The…
For this and other readers of David Mazzucchelli’s at the time almost revelatory work in Rubber Blanket and elsewhere in the rather meagre early- to mid-nineties, the wait for his Next Big Thing had become a thing unto itself, a running joke with undertones of rapt anticipation. It has been so long since we first…
I was excited to learn of, and especially to see, the spectacular results the recent cleaning of a Spanish 17th-century portrait at the Metropolitan Museum have yielded. Hidden under a thick, dull varnish for ages, the picture has long been taken to be by a follower of Velázquez, but has now been upgraded to fully…
Just read Neil Gaiman’s Coraline (2002), which I often hear hailed as his best novel. I don’t know — I think the premise is good, while the execution leaves something to be desired. This is especially apparent when compared with Henry Selick’s excellent film version from earlier this year, which improves quite considerably upon the…
I should have noted this before, but at the moment a small painting by Titian, The Triumph of Love, showing Cupid surfing the back of a lion, is on view at the National Gallery in London. Although the painting has been known for a long time, it has only recently emerged from the private collection…
Yale University Press’ decision to publish Jytte Klausen’s upcoming book on the Danish Cartoon Crisis, The Cartoons that Shook the World, without reproductions of the cartoons themselves is distressing news. In its press release, the Press expresses concern that including them would risk triggering new episodes of violence and they cite consultation with a number…
Lars von Trier’s Antichrist is, at one and the same time, amongst his subtler works and one of the most blunt and, frankly, simplistic. It’s his first movie since Europa (1991) in which the artifice of the cinematic image is explored for illusionistic effect, but that film was simultaneously emphatically Brechtian with its jarring, intellectual…
I’ve been reading that Showcase collection of 1950s Challengers of the Unknown comics by Jack Kirby intermittently over the past months. The stories are pretty dreary — although large parts of them can probably be ascribed to him, Kirby was still working with a pretty pedestrian writer in Dave Wood — but the art is…
Jeg har haft den her til at ligge et stykke tid og skriver som Bunkerens læsere måske vil have noteret kun sjældent anmeldelser, men den fortjener alligvel et par ord. Jacob Rask Nielsen er manden bag den noget ujævne, men grafisk stærke “Klovn!” i Free Comics og var vinderen — med striben Carlo & Co.…
The English illustrator, painter and comics artist Martin Vaughn-James passed away last week (obits here and here). Perhaps this will be an occasion for comics world to take greater note of this significant artist and innovator in the medium. Owing to his influences and probably especially the fact that he lived in Brussels for the…
I owe Michael Jackson a huge debt. In many ways, he gave me a music I could call my own. Thriller hit at just the right moment for me, opening a musical path different from that of my parents. Youngsters were already popping and locking on the corners around my neighbourhood and tags were being…
Så er denne signatur atter kommet hjem fra Roskilde Festivalen i god behold. Som sædvanligt med følelsen af at være totalt mørbanket efter dage med musik og fest i overdådige mængder, og med farvelråbet “vi ses til næste år!”
I 1984 lokaliserede Ivar Gjørup Gud i det enkelte menneske. Tegneserien Egolands ene centrale figur — Gud i menneskets billede, Divus Madsen — ankom til virkelighedens galeanstalt og blev prompte indlagt for storhedsvanvid. Under sin første samtale med Overlægen, blev han spurgt “Hvad får Dem til at tro De er Gud?”, til hvilket han naturligt…
Whew. The last three weeks have been pretty busy, and while work’s not letting up for at least another few weeks, I’m allowing myself a bit of a breather here. And what better way to do that than by not changing tack at all and just writing some more about Venetian Renaissance art? Thing is,…