This interesting (if scientific) exhibit offers a workmanlike description of how colors are achieved in many art forms – with little exploration of the creative process that informs the use of color in those fields.
Nicholas MarloweLondon,
Ultramarine is a blue pigment derived from a semi-precious stone, lapis lazuli. During the Renaissance period, lapis lazuli was more highly prized than gold, and with good reason: its only source was in the remote province of Badhakhshan in northeast ...
Nicholas MarloweLondon,
There's something deeply reassuring about a show that has been held every year, without interruption, since 1769. Wars and revolutions may come and go — indeed, entire civilizations may rise and fall — but the annual Royal Academy of Arts ...
Emily S. MendelCA,
While the East Wing of the National Gallery of Art in Washington. D. C. is being renovated, the de Young Museum is the fortunate venue of the outstanding modern art collection donated by real estate developer, Robert Meyerhoff and his ...
A Scavenger Hunt for Visitors, Fans and Obsessives
Nancy S. BishopChicago,
Chicago is known for its iconic classic and contemporary architecture, as well as for its famous and eccentric architects, such as Louis Sullivan, Frank Lloyd Wright and Ludwig Mies van der Rohe. Perhaps because of that environment, many Chicagoans are ...
This compact examination of how Italian artists tackled architecture demonstrates that buildings played a more important role in 14th- to 16th-century art than previously thought.
Nicholas MarloweLondon,
"Building the Picture" is about the bit of an Italian Renaissance painting that often seems to be jostling with the figures for pictorial space: the architectural background. In fact, as curators Amanda Lillie and Caroline Campbell convincingly demonstrate, buildings played ...
Tate Modern and MoMA offer a comprehensive exhibit of the artist's breakout technique.
Nicholas MarloweLondon,
Old age is no respecter of genius. True, there have been some artists — Goya, for example, or Monet — who managed one final great surge of creativity, but the sad fact is that far more end up plagiarizing themselves, ...
The best works in this absorbing exhibit of the early Hanoverians show the royal family in informal settings.
Nicholas MarloweLondon,
The future King George VII carried out his first official engagement at a playgroup in Wellington, New Zealand, early in April 2014. By all accounts, the 8-month-old son of the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge handled the occasion with aplomb: ...
This thorough exploration of 70 years of a country's style proves that the Italians have always had it.
EratoLondon,
Those who remember the V&A’s 2007 exhibition “The Golden Age of Couture” will find this latest kicks off in the same place, chronologically (and, sadly, in the same inadequate exhibition space as well) — just geographically, a little farther south. ...
These small-scale paintings engage the viewer with their depictions of the artists’ favorite places and familiar people.
Emily S. MendelCA,
“Intimate Impressionism from the National Gallery of Art” is an engaging exhibition of 68 pieces of excellent, small-scale Impressionist and post-Impressionist portraits, landscapes and still lifes created between 1860-1910 by unparalleled artists, including Claude Monet, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Vincent van Gogh ...
Opulence defines this show: Everywhere you look, extravagantly dressed, aristocratic figures swagger around in grand architectural settings, as if they were taking part in a series of lavishly staged theatrics.
Nicholas MarloweLondon,
For several weeks now, the National Gallery has been a hive of activity as preparations were made for this new show — the first ever in the UK — on the great Venetian painter Paolo Veronese. Rooms have been closed, ...
