Category Archives: Art

Art, Arts & Literature, Exhibitions, Views

Art Exhibitions: ‘Hockney & Van Gogh – The Joy Of Nature’ (MFA Houston)

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Two visionary artists, separated in time and space, are united by a shared fascination with nature. See the work of David Hockney and Vincent van Gogh side by side in Hockney – Van Gogh: The Joy of Nature.

This exhibition examines the common ground between British artist Hockney (born 1937) and Dutch artist Van Gogh (1853–1890). Both expressed their profound love of nature through brilliant color and the capacity to see the world with fresh eyes. The Joy of Nature reveals Van Gogh’s unmistakable influence on Hockney in a selection of carefully selected landscape paintings and drawings.

Through a bold use of color and experimentation with perspective, each artist crafts a painterly world that is utterly individual and true to themselves, yet offers immense universal appeal. The Joy of Nature brings together nearly 50 of Hockney’s vibrant works—ranging from intimate sketchbook studies to monumental paintings, as well as his experimental videos and iPad drawings—with 10carefully chosen paintings and drawings by Van Gogh.

Hockney – Van Gogh: The Joy of Nature premiered at the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam, and the Houston presentation marks the first time the two renowned artists have been paired in an American museum exhibition. The MFAH is the only U.S. venue.

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Art, Arts & Literature, Culture, Travel, Videos, Views

Culture & Covid: How Artists & Institutions Are Coping In France (Video)

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As cultural institutions struggle to return to a semblance of normality, some spaces are drawing on all sorts of resources to keep fulfilling their role in society. FRANCE 24’s Renaud Lefort took a walk around the French capital, meeting its artists and artisans to see how they’re dealing with these unprecedented circumstances.

Art, Arts & Literature, Exhibitions, Videos, Views

Art Exhibition Tours: ‘A New Look At Old Masters’ The MET, New York (Video)

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Join curators Keith Christiansen, Stephan Wolohojian, and Adam Eaker on a tour through the newly installed European Paintings galleries and explore new dialogues and themes among the works. A New Look at Old Masters is part of the European Paintings Skylights Project and is a prelude to the final, expansive re-installation of the European Paintings galleries that will take place after the project is completed.

Art, History, Videos, Views

Artists: ‘The Vibrancy Of The Scottish Colourists’

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The Scottish Colourists were some of the most important and avant-garde artists working during the early 20th century. Their art was bold and vibrant and unlike anything that had been produced in Britain before. Sotheby’s upcoming sale ‘The Way of Colour: Pictures from the Harrison Collection’ (10 – 17 March) offers Fauvist inspired paintings by George Leslie Hunter, stunning still-lifes by Francis Campbell Boileau Cadell and Cezanne-like work by Samuel John Peploe.

Art, Arts & Literature, Exhibitions, Videos

Exhibition Tours: ‘Goya’s Graphic Imagination’

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Mark McDonald, Curator in the Department of Drawings and Prints, takes us on a virtual tour of Goya’s Graphic Imagination to explore how Goya’s drawings and prints allowed him to share his complex ideas and respond to the turbulent social and political changes occurring in the world around him.

Art, Arts & Literature, History, Videos

Cocktails With A Curator: Antico’s “Hercules” (Video)

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In this week’s episode of “Cocktails with a Curator,” we welcome the Frick’s new Assistant Curator of Sculpture, Giulio Dalvit. In his premiere episode, he discusses one of the important bronze statuettes in the collection, a “Hercules” by Antico. A celebrated artist of great technical virtuosity, Antico worked primarily for the powerful Gonzaga family in Mantua in the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries. In celebration of Isabella d’Este, the marchioness of Mantua and one of Antico’s patrons, thisweek’s complementary drink is a glass of Malvasia, a sweet wine that Isabella would drink at breakfast. To view this object in detail, please visit our website: https://www.frick.org/anticohercules

Art, Arts & Literature, Travel, Videos, Views

Inside Views: The ‘Louvre Museum’ Masterpieces Undergo Renovation

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After months of closure since the beginning of the health crisis and only a reopening for a few short months between two confinements last summer, the #Louvre​ lost 72% of attendance by 2020. But despite the absence of visitors, the heart of the #museum​ has not completely stopped beating. The Louvre is even taking advantage of this period to carry out #renovations​.

Art, Arts & Literature, Magazines, Views

Illustrations: ‘The New Yorker Cover’ (1925-2020)

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For The New Yorker’s ninety-sixth anniversary, Sergio García Sánchez draws the magazine’s trademark dandy, Eustace Tilley, masked and with a vaccine dose in hand. We also see scenes of pandemic life, and the contours of a city waiting to reëmerge.

“With masks, social distancing, and vaccines, we’ll slowly recover life in the city,” Sánchez told us. “The chance encounters with people of all cultures; the thrill of eating outside at any hour. The city is a container for so many stories, and soon they’ll be out in the open again.”

This is Sánchez’s début cover, but he isn’t the first to reimagine our mascot. When Rea Irvin, the magazine’s inaugural art editor, drew a Regency dandy for the first issue, in February, 1925, he likely wanted readers to laugh—this self-serious gentleman was a caricature of the dour, bourgeois old guard. A year later, to celebrate The New Yorker still being afloat, Irvin and the magazine’s editor, Harold Ross, decided to republish the cover, establishing an anniversary tradition that endures to this day. Tilley, of course, has changed with the times, and we’ve collected, below, a few of the ways in which artists have remade him.

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Art, Arts & Literature, Exhibitions, Travel, Videos, Views

Gallery Views: ‘Normandy’ – The Lockdown Paintings Of David Hockney In Paris

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While museums in France are shut due to Covid-19 restrictions, private galleries are allowed to remain open and have become a haven for art enthusiasts. British artist David Hockney’s “Ma Normandie” (“My Normandy) show, which opened at a Paris gallery last year, has been the sensation of the season.

David Hockney, OM, CH, RA is an English painter, draftsman, printmaker, stage designer, and photographer. As an important contributor to the pop art movement of the 1960s, he is considered one of the most influential British artists of the 20th century.

Art, Arts & Literature, History, Videos

Cocktails With A Curator: ‘Piero Della Francesca’

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In this week’s episode of “Cocktails with a Curator,” Deputy Director and Peter Jay Sharp Chief Curator Xavier F. Salomon explores Piero della Francesca’s “St. John the Evangelist,” one of the few major works by the Renaissance artist in the United States. This striking panel was originally part of a polyptych commissioned for the high altar of Sant’Agostino in Piero’s hometown of Borgo San Sepolcro. The polyptych was probably dismembered in the mid-16th century, less than one hundred years after it was made, and many fragments are now lost. Enjoy this week’s program with a bourbon-powered Saint cocktail or a refreshing Grapefruit Citrus mocktail.SHOW LESS