A detail from the glorious “Self-portrait in a Tuxedo” (1927) on view at the Harvard Museums weird ass “greatest hits” installation at the Sackler. Everyone is usually kvelling over his use of black but the joy is the chromatic shadows in the face. You can see this painting and then go look at the Poussin’s… (read more)
I was walking through the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston the other day. I was having a particularly nasty studio day. Nothing was going well and every color I tried to mix ended up as mud. I figured I should go look at the work of people who knew what they were doing before I… (read more)
The permanent collection at the Detroit Institute of the Arts has an enormous influence on me. Like most kids in Detroit, I first went there on a school trip. (This was back when education included things like art and culture.) I was spellbound by the building itself. I stood on the stairs with my mouth… (read more)
Anything would be a let down after Epheseus, but man, Troy is really hard to take. First off, there is a huge wooden horse inside of the entry gate to Troy. It is filled with laughing school children running around it and climbing inside it. Parents surround the thing to get a photo of their… (read more)
Nothing prepares you for Epheseus. It really is a place that seethes with life. Not just the thousands of camera-toting, sunblock-applying, child-chasing, photo-opping, cell phone-chatting humans around you. You are really catapulted into the past. You walk the same marble sidewalks as people thousands of years ago. You are under the same hard cerulean… (read more)
Well, things came to a head between the Indians and the Italians today. One of the things that happens on these tours is that you go to a site (in this case, today it was Pamukkale, Hieropolis and Aphrodisias) and then you get driven to a “special presentation” where you are offered high quality goods… (read more)
Peter Doig. Peter Doig. OH MY GOD! Peter Doig. The show at Tate Britain was amazing. I really have a hard time believing that one person has the abilities that Doig has with a brush. He does things in painting that serve the image and frustrate it at the same time, allowing you the pure… (read more)
You know, I like animals as much as anybody, probably more. But I cannot stand pigeons. It has a lot to do with living through the first part of the AIDS epidemic. There is this parasite that causes an infection called toxoplasmosis that killed a lot of PWAs in the 80’s and 90’s. There is… (read more)
Well, now I know why Sweeney Todd cut so many throats…. I’m kidding. Really, I am loving London. First off, I have never been here. There are over 300 million people in England and I think I rode on the Underground with all of them today. I was not prepared for the sheer press of… (read more)