Category: Great Landscapes
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Jean Dubuffet’s stranger things
Following World War II, French artist Jean Dubuffet began mixing paint with whatever he could scrounge up – sand, tar, gravel, shards of glass. “Art should make you laugh a little and fear a little,” he said.
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Old Masters: The dog stays in the picture
Is a dog more than “just a dog” in an Old Master painting? The ancient Greek philosopher Diogenes said dogs give an honest bark of truth and I think he may be on to something. Diogenes lived in a wine barrel on the streets of Athens. He knew dogs.
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On the road with Hiroshige’s other women
Volumes have been written about Hiroshige’s “Tōkaidō Road” woodblock prints and the men who pursued the legendary road’s prurient pleasures. So I’m focusing instead on the women in his paintings — all of the women, not only the courtesans.
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Sheeler, Rivera, and machine-age anxiety
Charles Sheeler and Diego Rivera couldn’t wait to portray Henry Ford’s revolutionary new factory. Did they want to celebrate the ability of machines to liberate us from drudgery? Or warn us about life in a technology-driven society?
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George Bellows: Last stop, 59th Street
The scale of the lone tenement building under the new Queensboro Bridge looks odd. Is it real? Or is it an architectural ghost, sent to remind us of all the homes and small businesses that were demolished in the name of progress?
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Pissarro’s unforgettable conversation
For now, the road in front of the Pissarro home in Louveciennes is peaceful. But the season is about to change. And a family’s life is about to change dramatically. The artist has portrayed a fleeting moment: the calm before the storm.
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Decoding the mysterious art of Paul Klee
Unlike Picasso, Klee doesn’t suffer from being taken way too seriously. But maybe it’s time his ideas carried more weight. His notebooks offer 1200 pages of research into color, shape, and pattern that are among the most detailed in art history.