- Henry Ossawa Tanner: Modern Spirit, Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Philadelphia
Posted on 31 Jan 2012 in Art, Art & Design
This exhibition of the works of Henry Ossawa Tanner is the first major reappraisal of the great African-American painter in a generation. On display in the PAFA exhibit are over 100 of Tanner’s works, including twelve paintings never shown in a previous retrospective. Drawings, photographs, prints and the only two surviving sculptures created by Tanner are featured, along with his paintings.
- Art Review: The Renaissance Portrait from Donatello to Bellini, The Metropolitan Museum of Art
Posted on 10 Jan 2012 in Art, Art & Design
In his Portrait of a Young Man, painted in 1478, Antonello fused the psychological intensity of Byzantine icon painting with a close regard for his subject’s unique, personal identity. Antonello died the year after he painted Portrait of a Young Man, but with this and a handful of similar works, he blazed a trail for all of the great portrait painters who came after him.
- Book Review: Van Gogh: The Life by Steven Naifeh and Gregory White Smith
Posted on 15 Dec 2011 in Art, Biography, Books, Non-Fiction Reviews
For an artist who vied with Rembrandt in painting self-portraits, van Gogh seldom allowed himself to be photographed. The one surviving photo, from his days at Goupil’s, shows a scowling, tousled haired young man with troubled, searching eyes. It is the face of a man destined to be a prophet or a lunatic.
- Art Review: Transition to Christianity, Onassis Cultural Center, New York City
Posted on 13 Dec 2011 in Archeology, Art, Art & Design, Religion
After Christianity was recognized as the official state religion of the Roman Empire in 380, a number of Christian groups, notably monks in Egypt, changed roles from martyrs to persecutors. A magnificent head of Aphrodite, dating to first century Athens, bears the marks of Christian vandalism. The eyes and lips have been chipped to “blind” and “silence” the deity. A cross was then inscribed on the forehead of Aphrodite.
- Book Review: Verdi and/or Wagner: Two Men, Two Worlds, Two Centuries by Peter Conrad
Posted on 28 Nov 2011 in Biography, Books, Germany, Italy, Music, Non-Fiction Reviews, Opera
Perhaps, the best way of approaching Conrad’s book is to regard it primarily as a meditation on creativity. As with opera itself, where passion and empathy lead, intellectual appreciation will follow. The key insight of this fine book is easy enough to grasp. In an age of strutting nationalism, both Verdi and Wagner gave the world music that ultimately transcends the limits of borders or political ideology, regardless of how subsequent regimes used it.
- Book Review: Christ to Coke: How Image Becomes Icon by Martin Kemp
Posted on 21 Nov 2011 in Books, Design, Non-Fiction Reviews
The Vietnam War had been shredding bodies and hopes for so long that it hardly seemed possible that a single image of human conflict could pierce through the war’s futility and touch our hearts. And then photographer Nick Ut captured “The Girl in the Picture” on film. He aimed his Leica M-2 camera and with one quick “click,” Phan Thi Kim Phuc, became a symbol of the horror of the Vietnam War and by extension all wars.
- Art Review: Stieglitz and His Artists: Matisse to O’Keeffe, The Metropolitan Museum of Art
Posted on 06 Nov 2011 in Art, Art & Design
Beginning with paintings, drawings and a limited number of sculptures by such “wild men” as Matisse, Picasso and Brancusi, Stieglitz went on to champion works created by American painters in the years following World War I. His one-man crusade met with a very mixed reception. Many in the New York art establishment viewed Stieglitz as a cultural anarchist, intent on dynamiting the Beaux-Arts foundation of American art.
- Book Review: The Great Sea: A Human History of the Mediterranean by David Abulafia
Posted on 01 Nov 2011 in Books, History, Non-Fiction Reviews
David Abulafia’s new book about the Mediterranean Sea, The Great Sea, has everything a major work of history requires. An important theme, solid research, magnificent writing and a perceptive insight into human nature figure prominently in the pages of his study of the body of water that the Romans called mare nostrum, “our sea.”
- Art Review: Charles Dickens at 200, The Morgan Library and Museum
Posted on 19 Oct 2011 in Art, Art & Design, Great Britain, Writers
Dickens’ novels probed the social ills of Victorian England in order to create unforgettable images of human misery and redemption in the minds of the literary public. Conscious of how the accompanying illustrations to his text would help in this respect, Dickens worked very closely with the artists who provided these memorable pictures.
- Book Review: The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined by Steven Pinker
Posted on 13 Oct 2011 in Books, History, Non-Fiction Reviews, Sociology
In this profound and spirited work, Pinker champions the civilizing process that, according to his detailed research, has enhanced the cause of peace, decreased the scale of violence and enabled peoples of widely separated nations and ethnic groups to realize their common humanity. Using a mass of scientific data and an intensive reading of history and current events, Pinker makes the case that Planet Earth is becoming a more Peaceable Kingdom.
- Book Review: Virginia Woolf by Alexandra Harris
Posted on 30 Sep 2011 in Biography, Books, Great Britain, Non-Fiction Reviews, Writers
Woolf spent much of her life trying to free herself from the grasp of the past, specifically the Victorian milieu of her childhood. Her father, Sir Leslie Stephen, was the editor of the prestigious Dictionary of National Biography and a personification of the Victorian pater familias. Woolf both loved and rebelled against him. She suffered a severe nervous breakdown following his death in 1904. Yet it was not until her father died, that she was able to liberate her emotions to the point where she could begin a serious career as a writer.
- Art Review: de Kooning: A Retrospective, MoMA
Posted on 29 Sep 2011 in Art, Art & Design
De Kooning exhibited six “Bitch Goddess” paintings when most American men preferred to watch Marilyn Monroe stand over a steam vent. These paintings, as Robert Harris observed, are rooted in the “simultaneous desire for and fear of women.” De Kooning may not have intended to paint Woman I to express these suppressed emotions. But that is what he put on the canvas and he may have been as perplexed as his critics as to how it got there.
- Book Review: Carthage Must Be Destroyed by Richard Miles
Posted on 19 Aug 2011 in Africa, Books, History, Italy, Military, Non-Fiction Reviews
Carthage, however, was not merely conquered by Rome. As the title of Miles’ book asserts, Carthage was destroyed. In three brutal wars, Carthage’s military power was annihilated by the legions of the Roman Republic. The city was ransacked and burned, down to its foundations. The people of Carthage were massacred or enslaved. The literature of the city was put to the torch. Not a stone was left upon a stone.
- Art Review: Rembrandt and the Face of Jesus, Philadelphia Museum of Art
Posted on 08 Aug 2011 in Art, Art & Design
Living in close proximity to the growing Jewish population of Amsterdam, the biblically-minded Rembrandt experienced an artistic epiphany of lasting significance. Why not paint the portrait of Jesus, a 1st Century Jew from Galilee, using a live model with Jewish features? The resulting portraits, seven out of a likely eight that were painted, now grace the walls of a landmark exhibition at the Philadelphia Museum of Art.
- Book Review: Rules of Civility by Amor Towles
Posted on 01 Aug 2011 in Books, Fiction Reviews
The theme of making a life choice between love or ambition has been a staple of literature since the Aeneid. You might think that this novel has little new to recommend it besides the unorthodox choice of the Depression as a setting for a romance Rules of Civility, however, is a book of amazing depth. In this, his first novel, Amor Towles reveals an exceptional flair for character development.
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