Reading “Crow Mountain” by Can Xue
"Crow Mountain." Translated by Karen Gernant and Chen Zeping. Asymptote, July 2015. When you read Can Xue's story "Crow Mountain," you're reading about a young girl who wishes to investigate a place. It's called Crow Mountain, but it's really a derelict
Hokusai at Boston’s Museum of Fine Arts
With his Thirty-Six Views of Mount Fuji, Katsushika Hokusai, whose prints are currently on exhibit at Boston's Museum of Fine Arts, seems to reinvent the very idea of point of view over and over again. He must have traveled widely
Girl in a Red Dress
(Link to Girl in a Red Dress by Paula Mondersohn-Becker in the Harvard Art Museums archive) Sometimes a work of art finds its own context within us. Some paintings are felt so deeply and so personally that any sort of discussion
Two Childhood Drawings
The little shed where the skaters sit to lace up their skates seems precariously balanced on the edge of the pond, as if I couldn’t quite figure out how to orient it accurately. That is probably because, while the skating
Russian Icons
The Museum of Russian Icons in Clinton, Massachusetts, is housed in a building so beautifully constructed, largely of wood that I’d like to move into it. I feel I could live very well there. The rooms are spacious but not
Harriet Leavens (1802–1830) by Ammi Phillips
Ammi Phillips (1788–1865) was an itinerant portrait painter working his way across Connecticut, Massachusetts, and the state of New York in those earliest days of colonial New England. Though his work spans five decades, not much is known about him.
Rafael
It happened in the Guatemalan highlands almost ten years ago. “¿Qué es eso?” I asked the Mayan shopkeeper. The wooden sculpture, obviously carved from the round trunk of a tree, seemed to me to have the face of a dog. “Es un
“Seated Man” at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts
"Seated Man"--This man is a cube. He emerges from a block of stone in his display case at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts. He is pure shape. He has a pure face with wide-open eyes. He radiates the calm of
“Horseman and Dog” at Boston’s MFA
Almost every time I visit Boston's Museum of Fine Arts, I have a look at this small sculpture. It's a favorite, and I often take guests to see the piece in the Greek galleries. The terracotta figurine is a funerary
Animal Imagery and Color—The Work of Franz Marc
"Your paintings remind me of the work of Franz Marc." I received this comment (and, I think, compliment) some months ago from a young visitor to my website. It immediately reminded me of a 1912 painting of Marc's entitled Deer
On Reading Black Elk Speaks and Seeing Plains Indians: Artists of Earth and Sky
For those who don’t know, Black Elk Speaks was written in 1932 by the poet John Neihardt, based on his translated conversations with Black Elk, an Oglala Lakota medicine man. Black Elk, who died in 1950, was a witness not
Louisa Matthiasdottir
I only became aware of this Icelandic artist a few years ago after seeing a review for a posthumous show of her work in New York City. Shortly afterward, I bought a book about her, and since then, I routinely
Winter Inspiration
I dream often of my maternal grandmother's house. This has been going on for years. Often I'm trying to return there. Sometimes I'm fixing it up or planning to buy back the place. The house itself is long gone, probably
Gauguin’s “The Spirit of the Dead Watching”
Gauguin’s “Spirit of the Dead Watching” (1892) The spirit in this painting reminds me of some of Rufino Tamayo’s human creatures. Here’s a large white eye and white lips etched into a dark face. The body is a hooded, cowl shape.
Larry Rivers and the Fluid Nature of Seeing
Larry Rivers, “Self Figure” (1953) Fractured energy plays across the surface of this work in oil on canvas. Ostensibly, it’s a painting of a single figure moving through space. To my mind, what’s represented here is not a person but an
Lenore Tawney’s Mysterious Moments
“A Dry Cry from the Desert” (sculpture 1970) A wooden box—smooth and unfinished—perhaps of pine and still retaining the resinous smell of pitch. At the rear of the box—a drawing of a skeletal hand. In front of this—a three-dimensional skeletal hand—lightly
Tàpies and Discontinued Line
Línia discontínua (Discontinued Line), 1967 Mixed media on canvas Link to image in the Fundación Juan March (scroll to middle of page) All parts of this picture are white—not white exactly though, not the same white as new-fallen snow, not a winter white,
Rufino Tamayo—The Creatureness and Spirituality of “Seres Humanos”
In many of his figurative paintings, the Mexican painter Rufino Tamayo makes human beings look strange. We have to look at them as if we’ve never seen such creatures before. He portrays human beings—in Spanish, seres humanos—as creatures and as
Cathedral
Cathedral belongs to a series of paintings I've been working on for the last year or so. These 20 images on canvases measuring 30" x 30" had their genesis in sketches I made at the Asian Civilization Museum in Singapore