A few months back, I wrote about a current touring exhibition of works by Tamara de Lempicka. As I said then, the Art Deco style of the Roaring Twenties (which the French call les années folles) evokes an image of tuxedoed men with pomaded hair squiring sleek women...
My sister has been going through her attic, trying to clear it out for the inevitable day when it’s going to be time to move out of the home she’s lived in for 40 years. She recently sent me this photo: She thinks it’s our great-aunt’s, inherited by our mother. ...
Forty years ago, I was standing in a small auction gallery in New Jersey with a paddle in my hand. I was there to bid on a painting of children by a lake by the American Impressionist, Edward Dufner (1872-1957). Born in Buffalo, Dufner enrolled in art classes at the...
In this time when the world seems full of darkness, both natural and political, I have been distracting myself by reading Orlando Whitfield’s new book All That Glitters: A Story of Friendship, Fraud, and Fine Art (Pantheon Press). The fraud was committed by...
“The catbird seat” is an idiomatic phrase used to describe an enviable position, often in terms of having the upper hand or greater advantage in any type of dealing among parties. It derives from the secluded perch on which the gray catbird makes mocking...
