The week in review Running late as usual, it’s a new week, but what? This weekend the great Leonardo show at the National Gallery in London closed and I regret not having had time to post something more detailed than my Weekendavisen review from back in November while it was still open, but that’s how…
Leonardo had only recently arrived in Milan when in 1483 he was given the opportunity to realize in a painting the thoughts he had been formulating privately about art and life. The resultant picture was a watershed in his career, and in Western art. The commission was for an altarpiece depicting ‘Our Lady with her…
Yesterday I received the sad news that the great oak of Danish art history Erik Fischer has died. More thorough obituaries will surely be forthcoming, so I just want to note briefly how important his work and example has been to myself as an art historian. Fischer’s distinctions and honors are many: among other things,…
Flemish Renaissance painting is known for its sharp focus on reality. The first great master of oil painting, Jan van Eyck (active 1422, died 1441), was widely admired in his day for his ability illusionistically to reproduce the seen.
I denne uges Weekendavis kan man læse min anmeldelse af den forrygende Leonardo-udstilling, der netop er åbnet på National Gallery i London. Se den udstilling hvis du overhovedet kan. Desværre har avisen ikke fundet plads til at gengive et af de billeder jeg diskuterer indgående, nemlig portrættet af Cecilia Gallerani, i fuld størrelse (det reproduceres…
The week in review. Another fine week. Spent a few days in London for work and had the chance to see a number of the exhibitions on display there. I will return to the landmark Leonardo show at the National Gallery presently and hopefully also to the eye-opening Degas show at the Royal Academy, and…
The Week in Review What a week. Starting with Fantask’s fortieth anniversary celebration last weekend and ending with my participation at NNCORE’s foundational meeting with a short Berlin jaunt to see the astonishing Renaissance portraits and Hokusai shows there. I hope to return a bit to the portraits (though I can’t promise anything), but just…
The picks of the week from around the web. ‘New’ old masters. This seems to be the season of sensational (and ‘sensational’) discoveries. Headlining is the long-lost Salvator Mundi by Leonardo da Vinci, which has turned up in an American collection and will be exhibited publicly for the first time at the sure-to-be-unmissable National Gallery…
The picks of the week from around the web. This is a well-written piece on the sometimes hermetic and puzzling vagaries of art world authentication. It doesn’t change, however, that there is no way the Buffalo Pietà at its center was painted by Michelangelo. Look at it. The provenance may be compelling, though the argument…
The picks of the week from around the web. A bunch of quick comics links this week. Tom Spurgeon on Chester Brown’s Paying for It. D&Q only brought 25 copies of Brown’s long-awaited new book to MoCCA, so it was sold out before I arrived, but I got a chance to leaf through. Looks amazing.…
I denne uges Weekendavis står min anmeldelse af den store udstilling af Jan Gossaerts værker på Londons National Gallery at læse. Check det ud, og se endelig udstillingen hvis I har muligheden. Jan Gossaert, Portræt af en handelsmand (Jan Jacobsz. Snoeck?). Olie på træ, 63,6 x 47,5 cm., Washington, DC: National Gallery of Art.
Throughout his life, Paul Cézanne nurtured an ambition to paint figure compositions in the renaissance tradition. At various points in his career he thus attempted to populate his otherwise open landscapes with anonymous, lumpy nudes, often bathing. There is something uncomfortable, something unresolved, about these paintings — they seem an intellectual aspiration toward a pastoral…
Might the Egyptian Book of the Dead show at the British Museum be the best comics exhibition ever? It certainly contains some of the greatest comics I’ve ever read. It’s good sometimes just to forget about the historically determined understanding of comics as a modern art form and remember that humans have told stories in…
Went down to London to check out the sales today. Lots of good stuff at Christie’s — kind of sad to see the Rutland Poussin Ordination up for sale (I hope an accessible collection secures it for the public), but it was in fine company: a terrific El Greco St. Francis estimated at what seemed…
Til denne uges Weekendavis har jeg bidraget med en artikel om Cézanne i anledning af den udsøgte lille udstilling, der pt. er at se på The Courtauld Gallery i London. Giv begge dele et kig, om muligt! Paul Cézanne, Kortspillere, c. 1890-92, olie på lærred, 65.4 x 81.9 cm. Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.