Tchotchkes
Tchotchke: (Yiddish, of Slavic origin) a small object that is decorative rather than strictly functional; a trinket The kind of artworld story that the public loves popped up in the general press three weeks ago: a 22-year-old college student, browsing through his...
Andy, Again
I once interviewed the artist Philip Pearlstein, who is well-known for his paintings of nudes. As a child growing up in Pittsburgh, Pearlstein was encouraged in his artistic leanings by his parents, who sent him to Saturday morning classes at the Carnegie Museum...
Framed
One of the upsides to being friends with artists is that sometimes they give you works of art. One of the downsides to being friends with artists is that those works are often unframed. You’re glad to receive a work, but, if it’s unframed, you can’t hang...
Journal of the Plague Years
In March, 2020, I sent out a letter to clients and colleagues instead of posting my usual monthly blog. Covid was beginning to make itself felt on a serious scale. The country was entering uncharted territory, at least for non-centenarians. In my...
Amphetamines and a Limo, Please!
More years ago than I care to remember, a professor in a course I was taking on Baroque architecture told us how you could tell who had power in Italian cities during the 16th and 17th centuries. Buildings were normally erected to front the streets on which they...
Your Money or the Dumpster
Many years ago, my wife and I were having supper at the home of friends. After supper, Tim said he wanted to show me something. I followed him outside to be met by a two-foot-high stack of unstretched canvases that Tim had pulled out of the garage. ...
What the Heck?
Magazzino Italian Art, a terrific small museum that opened in Cold Spring, NY a few years ago, currently has on view an exhibition of works by Costantino Nivola (1911-1988). Nivola was born in Sardinia, the son of a mason, and attended art school near...
Hometown Boy Makes Good
I like to say that there was only one truly creative genius in the whole of art history: the first caveman (or woman) to draw a mastodon on that cavern wall. All other artists have been stealing from him or her ever since. I’ve been reminded of this assertion...
Go West, Young Man
My wife and I just got back from two weeks in California, visiting our daughters. As always, Roberta and I were struck by the beauty of the California landscape. It brought back a question I have occasionally pondered: why bother to paint landscapes in...
Sticking Their Heads Up
In Chicago in the mid-1950’s, Gertrude Abercrombie (1909-1977) was acknowledged as the “Queen of Bohemian Artists.” She grew up in Hyde Park, home of the University of Chicago, the daughter of itinerant opera singers, but she became a painter, not a musician, though...
