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
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
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
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
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
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