Full House: Cezanne’s Card Players at the Met

Paul Cézanne painted slowly. Very slowly. The fruit in his still lives would ripen and even rot as he worked. Hortense, first his mistress and later his wife, visibly suffers in his portraits of her (although some of that may be due to their difficult union). Cézanne’s father agree to pose only if he could read a newspaper, which the painter impishly changed from the conservative paper his father favored to a radical rag. Only Mont Sainte-Victoire provided the perfectly patient subject. But before Cézanne met his mountain, he looked outside his immediate family to the “extended” family of his father’s employees on their estate just outside Aix-en-Provence. The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York brings together Cézanne’s paintings featuring his favorite setting for those workers—playing cards. Cézanne’s Card Players, which runs through May 8, 2011, brings the “full house” of this subject and invites us to join in the game of painting Cézanne played through these players. Please come over to Picture This at Big Think to read more of "Full House."

[Image: Paul Cézanne (French, Aix-en-Provence 1839–1906 Aix-en-Provence). The Card Players, 1890–1892. Oil on canvas. 25 3/4 x 32 1/4 in. (65.4 x 81.9 cm). Bequest of Stephen C. Clark, 1960. Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.]

Essentials: Stieglitz, Steichen, and Strand at The Met

When you talk about Classical music, you often begin with the three Killer B’s: Bach, Beethoven, and Brahms. If you talk about American photography, you need to begin with the Essential S’s: Stieglitz, Steichen, and Strand. Malcolm Daniel’s Stieglitz, Steichen, Strand: Masterworks from The Metropolitan Museum of Art, the catalog to the exhibition at The Metropolitan Museum of Art through April 10, 2011, provides the perfect primer to these essential artists who saw photography through its infancy as a fine art and helped find it a place in the pantheon, as symbolized by their acceptance into The Met’s collection. Please come over to Picture This at Big Think to read more of "Essentials."

[Many thanks to Yale University Press for providing me with a review copy of Malcolm Daniel’s Stieglitz, Steichen, Strand: Masterworks from The Metropolitan Museum of Art, the catalog to the exhibition at The Metropolitan Museum of Art through April 10, 2011.]

Beyond Bad: Learning to Love Damien Hirst

It’s sad to watch someone drift over to the dark side. I’m not talking about Anakin Skywalker. I’m talking about renowned Guardian art blogger extraordinaire Jonathan Jones. I don’t know Jonathan, but I’ve read enough of his work to feel like I do. When I read his recent post, “Why I've joined Damien Hirst's bad taste party,” I wanted to stage an intervention. Jonathan states his reasons clearly and argues his points well. But here’s my attempt at saving his soul, and perhaps the soul of art and culture in the world today. Please come over to Picture This at Big Think to read more of "Beyond Bad."

White Noise: Pousette-Dart and Ryman at The Phillips Collection

This summer at The Phillips Collection there’s a different kind of colorblindness going on. White is the “new black,” or at least the color telling the most interesting stories in Pousette-Dart: Predominantly White Paintings and Robert Ryman: Variations and Improvisations, both of which run through September 12, 2010. Richard Pousette-Dart and Robert Ryman share not only an affinity for using white to express larger ideas, but also a love of music—Pousette-Dart being the son of a musician and father of musicians, which Ryman himself played jazz before turning to painting. Their white works represent a different kind of “white noise,” namely that of minimalist, abstract, nonnarrative, nonillustionist art that clears away all peripheral cacophony and allows us to hear ourselves think about painting and about the world. Please come over to Picture This at Big Think to read more of "White Noise."

[Image: Richard Pousette-Dart .White Cosmos, 1950-51. Oil and graphite on board, 36 x 48 in. Courtesy of Knoedler Gallery. © 2010 Estate of Richard Pousette-Dart / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York.]



[Many thanks to The Phillips Collection for providing me with press materials for and the image above from Pousette-Dart: Predominantly White Paintings and Robert Ryman: Variations and Improvisations, both of which run through September 12, 2010.]