Art Blog - Art In History

In my last post I explored the conquest of the description of solid form and deep space in European painting. That was a glorious ride of 400 years in Western art, and is still a major option and a powerful tool in art up to the present. However, one of the most significant shifts in the 19th century, leading to what we think of as modern art, was away from the use of the surface as a window into an illusionistc space, back to the recognition of its intrinsic aesthetic values. This was a return to what had been the norm in two-dimensional art in all cultures before the great discoveries of the Renaissance… Continue reading… 2 comments

I have recently been talking to clients about framing options, and decided that the subject was very worthy of a blog. There are many theories of framing which differ markedly from each other, based in large part on assumtpions about the function of the frame itself. My own theory is that the frame is a buffer between the painting and its environment, an environment often not controlled by the artist. What does this mean for how you choose a frame for your work? One major choice you have is whether to "frame the work" or "frame the space". In the first instance, the frame is chosen entirely to best set off the works: its colors, its light, its degree of strength or subtlety… Continue reading… 1 comment

Back in my days as a student of Architecture, I read with interest the writings of Charles Jencks on Le Corbusier, one of the giants of the modern movement in the 20th century. In advocating for the greatness of Le Corbusier, Jencks did someting much more ambitious: he propounded a theory of value to be applied to all art, based on multiple levels of meaning. All works of art, he says, fall somewhere on a spectrum from "Univalence" (single-leveled) to "multivalence" (multileveled), and truly great works are always multivalent. He compares in detail Le Corbusier's apartment block in Marseilles, the "Unite d'Habitation", with a contemporary church design (of which I could find no image) in the form of a cross of thorns… Continue reading… 4 comments

The moment at the beginning of the 20th century when artists made the lead to pure non-representational art is a fascinating one. It is the culmination of a number of trends over the previous 100-200 years, each interesting in itself, and together creating a uniquely self-aware moment in art. First, I would like to register my complaint about the term "abstract", which has come to be applied indiscriminately to non-representational art. The term describes very well the process which led up to the leap, but is misleading when applied to "pure abstraction". Abstraction implies a process of generalizing and simplifying from the specific; it presumes a reality from which essentials are being drawn… Continue reading… 5 comments

This post is in some ways a response to Gary's post on Raphael's "Descent from the Cross". I agree that Raphael represents a perfect moment in the High Renaissance: fully realized, harmonious and sublime. I then had to ask myself why, of the great masters of his time, he is the least interesting to me. I decided the answer lay in the limitations of perfection itself. "In praise of Imperfection" is a bit misleading; this post is more in praise of striving, of asking the questions instead of finding the final answer. For the Renaissance, the primary questions were those raised by Humanism, both in the arts and in thought in general (Gallileo, Copernicus, and of course Leonardo)… Continue reading… 4 comments