Tag Archives: Arts & Literature
Literary Podcasts: “WHY THE DECAMERON IS GREAT QUARANTINE READING”
The latest episode of the Octavian Report – Rostrum coronavirus crisis podcast features Wayne Rebhorn. The latest episode of our coronavirus crisis podcast features Wayne Rebhorn of the University of Texas at Austin. Wayne is the author of an acclaimed translation of Giovanni Boccaccio’s Decameron, perhaps the paradigmatic work of pandemic literature.
The Decameron is set among a group of witty, earthy social isolators who have fled the plague ravaging Florence. We spoke with Wayne about Boccaccio and his most famous work, the conditions that helped birth it, and what we can learn from them in our current situation.
Abstract Art Profiles: “City Landscape – 1955” By Joan Mitchell (1925-1992)
Joan Mitchell, City Landscape, 1955, oil on linen, 203.2 × 203.2 cm (Art Institute of Chicago 1958.193, ©The Estate of Joan Mitchell), a Seeing America video
Speakers: Sarah Alvarez, Director of School Programs, Art Institute of Chicago, Beth Harris, and Steven Zucker
Artists: Watercolor Painter Alex Hillkurtz
Alex Hillkurtz was born in England and grew up in California where he is a renowned storyboard artist for feature films, television, and commercials. His film credits include “Argo”, “Almost Famous”, “It’s Complicated”, and many others.
Alex currently lives in Paris with his film editor wife, Tiffany, and enjoys discovering the hidden corners of the city that sketching and plein air painting allow. He uses the language of cinema to inform his images, moving beyond what one sees, and depicting what he wants others to see. He believes that in our too-crowded lives, sketching and plein air painting invite us to move at a more deliberate pace… a true sense of place, and sometimes unexpected stories are revealed.
Fine Arts: “The Burlington Magazine May 2020” – The Best Of Art & Its History
Raphael and his cult
There is an unhappy irony in the fact that five hundred years after Raphael died of a fever at the age of only thirty-seven, the global covid-19 pandemic has brought to a premature end so many of the exhibitions that have been staged to mark the anniversary.
READ DIGITAL ONLINE ISSUE – MAY 2020
Art: Modern Discoveries About Titian’s ‘Poesie’ (National Gallery Video)
A look ‘beneath’ Titian’s canvases reveals the tweaks and changes he made as he worked over four hundred years ago. Find out more with Restorer Jill Dunkerton.
Art: “An Introduction To Young Rembrandt” (Ashmolean Museum)
The Ashmolean’s 2020 Young Rembrandt exhibition is currently closed, but you can still visit virtually. Watch this introduction from exhibition curator An Van Camp, and explore the exhibition section by section at ashmolean.org
The Young Rembrandt exhibition charts the astonishing transformation of the Dutch master Rembrandt. Spanning the years 1624 to 1634, it traces how a young and unremarkable artist from Leiden became the superstar of 17th-century Amsterdam and one of the greatest artists of all time.
Art Books: “Velázquez – The Complete Works”
Manet called him “the greatest painter of all.” Picasso was so inspired by his masterpiece Las Meninas that he painted 44 variations of it. Francis Bacon painted a study of his portrait of Pope Innocent X. Monet and Renoir, Corot and Courbet, Degas and Dalí…for so many champions of art history, the ultimate soundboard was—and remains—Diego Rodríguez de Silva y Velázquez (1599-1660).
This updated catalog raisonné brings together Velázquez’s complete works, jaw-droppingly reproduced in extra-large format, with a selection of enlarged details and brand new photography of recently restored paintings, achieved through the joint initiative of TASCHEN and Wildenstein. The book’s dazzling images are accompanied by insightful commentary from José López-Rey on Velázquez’s interest in human life and his equal attention to all subjects, from an old woman frying eggs to a pope or king, as well as his commitment to color and light, which would influence the Impressionists over two centuries later.
Art History: “Cocktails With A Curator – Van Dyck” (The Frick Collection)
In this episode of “Cocktails with a Curator,” Xavier F. Salomon, Peter Jay Sharp Chief Curator, tells us the story of Sir John Suckling, the subject of Anthony van Dyck’s full-length portrait in The Frick Collection. Xavier has appropriately paired his story of art and literature with an English cocktail called Pink Gin.
Profiles: 66-Year Old American Painter Peggy Cyphers – “Luminosity”
Peggy Cyphers has a persistent vision of nature that she translates into richly colored and textured quasi-abstract paintings. She pours and lightly brushes countless layers of paint and sand onto the canvas until she achieves luminous and sumptuous surface. Approaching each canvas as a kind of garden where organic and geometric elements intermingle with intense light, she nurtures elaborate hybrid forms. David Ebony, ArtNet Magazine
Peggy Cyphers (born 1954) is an American painter, printmaker, professor and art writer, who has shown her work in the U.S. and internationally since 1984. Since Cyphers’ move to New York City over 30 years ago, her inventive and combinatory approaches to the materials of paint, silkscreen and sand have developed into canvases that explore the “Politics of Progress” as it impacts culture and the natural world.
Boomers Daily 