One of the reasons most art writing is not worth reading—and there are several reasons—is the irritating habit of critics of personalizing their subject and making it all about themselves. It goes without saying that this tendency is to be strenuously resisted, if not punished, but I am about to…
In the sundry debates about the Western canon that periodically vex our culture, attention is always focused on those who have been excluded from it, with the implicit assumption that some malign force is behind that omission. Far less discussed but no less important is the question of who has…
It would be hard to invent a more pallid or inadequate title than Michelangelo: Divine Draftsman and Designer for the exhibition that has just opened at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Divinity, of course, is always an asset and Michelangelo is a name to conjure with. But neither of the words that…
In the past 100 years, no visual artist has contributed more to the sum total of human happiness than Alexander Calder. If you think about it, this generating of happiness, to the extent to which it retains any cultural prestige these days, is seen as the domain of musicians and writers far more…
In the past 100 years, no visual artist has contributed more to the sum total of human happiness than Alexander Calder. If you think about it, this generating of happiness, to the extent to which it retains any cultural prestige these days, is seen as the domain of musicians and writers far more…
If an award were given for winning awards, it would surely go, by acclamation and universal consent, to Robert Rauschenberg, the most beribboned figure in the history of art. Not only did he win almost every award you can think of, but others were invented so that he could win those as well. Had…
If an award were given for winning awards, it would surely go, by acclamation and universal consent, to Robert Rauschenberg, the most beribboned figure in the history of art. Not only did he win almost every award you can think of, but others were invented so that he could win those as well. Had…
New York
New York
George W. Bush has been painting for several years now, but has only recently become an artist. His first paintings, mostly of world leaders, were remarkably well received, even by an art establishment that had hardly been friendly to his administration. And yet, although those early paintings were…
George W. Bush has been painting for several years now, but has only recently become an artist. His first paintings, mostly of world leaders, were remarkably well received, even by an art establishment that had hardly been friendly to his administration. And yet, although those early paintings were…
New York
New York
New York
Whatever Gary Vikan, former director of the Walters Museum in Baltimore, thinks of the larger world, he has a somewhat jaundiced view of the art world itself, or at least that corner of it that forms his main area of expertise, medieval and Byzantine art. And the impression we are left with from…
New York
New York
New York
As Americans, we take Stuart Davis for granted. Although he has achieved a certain canonic status, in practice that means little more than that we no longer feel that we really need to look at him. It takes an exhibition like the Whitney's "Stuart Davis: In Full Swing" to see, with redoubled force,…
Few cultural experiences can match that moment when, for the first time, you approach the great Pergamon Altar in Berlin. Because it is famous, but not as famous as the Ara Pacis or the Elgin Marbles, many visitors will encounter it in complete ignorance that something so big or so imposing has…
New York
New York
In recent years, the Museum of Modern Art has seemed to have a target splattered across its ever-expanding façade—and not the artsy sort of target depicted by Jasper Johns. From all corners of the art world, critics have shown up with their BB guns, which they mistook for bazookas, and aimed them…
Isamu Noguchi (1904-1988) appeared before the world as a two-form, shape-shifting paradox. One is hard put to say if he was an American sculptor of Japanese extraction, or a Japanese sculptor who happened to spend most of his life in the United States. The short answer, according to Hayden…
Renzo Piano is too good an architect for his new Whitney Museum, in Manhattan’s meatpacking district, to be a total failure. The interior is, in general, quite good and surely a vast improvement over Marcel Breuer’s nuclear bunker on Madison Avenue, which housed the museum for half-a-century. And…
Piero di Cosimo was, in all likelihood, the strangest painter of the 15th century. “Men could perceive the strangeness of his brain,” wrote his biographer, Giorgio Vasari. “He knew no pleasure save that of going off by himself with his thoughts, letting his fancy roam, and building castles in air.…
Are we allowed, in 2015, to like Thomas Hart Benton? And if so, are we allowed to admit in public that we like him?
Few books of late have pleased me as much as this one. Whether it will interest anyone else is an open question, but it might, and it should. In essence, this book consists of an ongoing dialogue between two very cultured men, Philippe de Montebello, former director of the Metropolitan Museum of…
In theory, this Jeff Koons retrospective is a big deal. It has taken over the entire Marcel Breuer fortress at 945 Madison Avenue—an honor that, if memory serves, has been accorded to no previous artist. Perhaps more important, it is the last exhibition that the Whitney will ever mount in the…
New York
In one of his bolder poetic flourishes, General MacArthur once invoked “the sputter of musketry” to refer to burp guns and bazookas. His phrase had the élan of gallantry, even chivalry, to it, as it deftly sidestepped the new and very different realities of modern warfare. Some generations earlier,…
New York
Though every generation dutifully brings forth its crop of visual artists, some harvests are more blessed and bounteous than others. And while few have been as sparse as those of recent date, we can all take some consolation in the Whitney’s retrospective of Yayoi Kusama. Any age that engendered…
Paradox is supposed to be interesting and subversion is supposed to be fun. But this year’s supposedly subversive Whitney Biennial, though paradox incarnate, is the sort of thing that gives soul-annihilating ennui a bad name. And its tedium is a direct consequence of the paradox at its very heart:…
There was something almost princely in the way Steve Jobs went about selecting the shape and location of the proposed new Apple headquarters, announced in June to the city council of Cupertino, California, in Silicon Valley. Usually a large project like this—even a small project—develops gradually…
Most sophisticated museumgoers would think it ineffably crass to complain about Cezanne’s unending sequence of apples and peaches, or the relentless quadrilaterals of Piet Mondrian. But it appears that certain of these people are no proof against the ennui that sets in when they encounter yet…
Even visitors who know Rome well are unlikely to venture north along the Via Flaminia, beyond the Aurelian Walls that encircle most of the city. Compared with what lies inside the walls, and with a few exceptions beyond, there is little to see in this clean and barren part of town. Though the…
Modern Life Edward Hopper and His Time Whitney Museum of American Art Through April 10
Chaos & Classicism
Leo and His Circle
At this late date in the history of Western civilization, bashing the Whitney Biennial is such an inveterate habit among art critics that even to acknowledge the fact, as I have just done, has become a cliché. Indeed, this reflex is so entrenched by now that, in what may be the single greatest act…
For a time there, it looked as if e-readers would be a dismal, faddish flop. It was hard to argue with the preliminary assessment of Steve Jobs: “It doesn’t matter how good or bad the product is, the fact is that people don’t read anymore. Forty percent of the people in the U.S. read one book or…
Kandinsky
Chicago
George Steiner at 'The New Yorker'
Jan Lievens
Le Corbusier