Albert Einstein wrote that the mind “always has tried to form for itself a simple and synoptic image of the surrounding world.” During the RenaissanceAlbert Einstein wrote that the mind “always has tried to form for itself a simple and synoptic image of the surrounding world.” During the Renaissance, when the ancient Greek idea of man as the measure of all things leapt to the forefront of intellectual life, the human body became a preferred object for this type of “synoptic” speculation. In a widely read treatise titled “Divina Proportione” (1509), the Italian mathematician Luca Pacioli echoed fashionable opinions of the day by declaring that our body measurements express “every ratio and proportion by which God reveals the innermost secrets of nature.” Pacioli’s close friend Leonardo da Vinci provided illustrations.
In the richly rewarding history “Da Vinci’s Ghost,” Toby Lester, a contributing editor at The Atlantic, shows that Leonardo had long been fascinated by the concept of man as a microcosm of the universe. Before the Pacioli collaboration, the idea had inspired what has since become one of Leonardo’s most famous images, “Vitruvian Man” (circa 1490), a careful line drawing of a nude male figure whose outstretched arms and legs fit perfectly in the bounds of a circle and a square. “Vitruvian Man” has entered popular culture as an emblem of Leonardo’s genius — redolent of secret knowledge, referred to in the initial crime scene of “The Da Vinci Code” and reproduced on the face of...
The rest of my review is available free online at the website of The New York Times:
"The Surrender of Breda," a midcareer masterpiece by Diego Velázquez (1599-1660), depicts a rare, graceful moment of Spanish triumph during the Eighty"The Surrender of Breda," a midcareer masterpiece by Diego Velázquez (1599-1660), depicts a rare, graceful moment of Spanish triumph during the Eighty Years' War, which pitted imperial Spain against the fledgling Dutch Republic. After capturing the city of Breda in 1625, the commander of the Spanish forces, Ambrogio Spinola, declined to humiliate the Dutch under Justin of Nassau, saying he considered it "a point of wisdom to be merciful rather than severe." Velázquez shows Spinola placing a consoling hand on Justin's shoulder as the Dutchman turns over the key to the city—two military men meeting in an atmosphere of mutual respect.
Spinola's behavior at Breda was not altogether characteristic of Spain's conduct during the war, which tended to be quite brutal, particularly toward Dutch Protestants, who faced torture and execution. Thus some have seen Velázquez's "Breda" as little more than brilliant propaganda, portraying a fleeting instance of Spanish munificence. But others have perceived a poignant piece of wish-fulfillment, evidence of Spain's desire for an honorable outcome to a largely futile war. As it turned out, Breda reverted to Dutch control just two years after Velázquez completed his picture, and the Spanish crown relinquished its territorial claims to the Dutch Republic in 1648, a testament to Spain's decline as a great power.
In "Velázquez and the Surrender of Breda," Anthony Bailey chronicles Velázquez's life and career in the light of Spain's political and social history, using the siege of Breda as the fulcrum of the story. Central to his narrative is the question...
The rest of my review is available free online at the website of The Wall Street Journal:
Vincent van Gogh's life story, from his youth in the Dutch village of Zundert to his tragically early death by gunshot among the wheat fields of FrancVincent van Gogh's life story, from his youth in the Dutch village of Zundert to his tragically early death by gunshot among the wheat fields of France, has been told many times in books of wildly varying character. Irving Stone's sweetly sentimental novel "Lust for Life" (1934) invented situations and dialogue, but it convincingly captured Van Gogh's stormy personality and his passionate commitment to painting. More soberly, the Dutch art historian Jan Hulsker produced a work of painstaking scholarship in "Vincent and Theo van Gogh" (1985), a dual biography of the painter and his younger brother, a successful Paris art dealer. Unfortunately, just as Stone is fun but unreliable, Hulsker is authoritative but almost punitively boring.
In "Van Gogh," Steven Naifeh and Gregory White Smith succeed, to a remarkable extent, in bridging this gap. Winners of the 1991 Pulitzer Prize for their biography of Jackson Pollock, they bring a booming authorial voice and boundless ingenuity to the task and have written a thoroughly engaging account of the Dutch painter. Drawing on Van Gogh's almost uniquely rich correspondence—some 900 letters survive—the authors vividly reconstruct the intertwined stories of his life and his art, portraying him as a "victim of his own fanatic heart."
Van Gogh (1853-1890) appears first in this lively book as a moody lad who enjoyed solitary walks in the countryside, where he "followed the flights of larks from church tower to corn sheaf to nests hidden in the rye." He was thought "a strange boy," and the authors suggest that the beginnings of mental illness may have already been...
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Shortly before World War I, Marie-Hortense Cézanne, widow of the painter Paul, spent a weekend in Monaco as the guest of an art dealer. He granted herShortly before World War I, Marie-Hortense Cézanne, widow of the painter Paul, spent a weekend in Monaco as the guest of an art dealer. He granted her unlimited credit at the casino, and after losing at the gaming tables, she had to cede him a cache of her husband's best watercolors to settle accounts. The heirs of a great artist must learn to swim with sharks.
Not such easy prey, however, was Jackson Pollock's widow, the tough-minded painter Lee Krasner. Aware that Pollock's legacy was potentially worth millions, she patiently cultivated the market for his work, sold nothing on the cheap and flatly rebuffed the art-world grandees who hoped to profit by "advising" the estate. Krasner even conducted business for a time through London dealers, cutting New York's culture vultures completely out of the picture...
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On the night of June 25, 1906, architect Stanford White attended the opening performance of "Mamzelle Champagne" at the rooftop theater of Madison SquOn the night of June 25, 1906, architect Stanford White attended the opening performance of "Mamzelle Champagne" at the rooftop theater of Madison Square Garden, a grand New York entertainment venue that he had designed. As the orchestra played "I Could Love a Thousand Girls," an emotionally unbalanced Pittsburgh millionaire named Harry K. Thaw approached White’s table. Recently married to the beautiful Evelyn Nesbit, a showgirl whom White had seduced some years earlier, Thaw produced a revolver from beneath his overcoat and shot White three times in the head. The newspapers called it the murder of the century...
Alice Neel enjoyed the greatest second act in the history of American art. Her paintings of New York bohemian life earned high praise, especially fromAlice Neel enjoyed the greatest second act in the history of American art. Her paintings of New York bohemian life earned high praise, especially from leftist critics, during the Great Depression, but she fell into near-total obscurity with the rise of Abstract Expressionism after World War II. Undaunted, she persevered as a painter of the human form, cultivating an idiosyncratic style that combined bright colors with springy, caricature-like drawing in psychologically-rich oil portraits of art-world movers and shakers like Andy Warhol, Robert Smithson, and Frank O’Hara during the 1960s and ‘70s. A minor celebrity by the time of her death in 1984, Neel was rightly hailed as a feminist icon, a tough survivor who charted her own path to success in the male-dominated art world, never bowing to trends or fashion.
Art journalist Phoebe Hoban, author of “Basquiat” (1998), provides a methodically documented account of Neel’s life and career in the first full-length biography of the artist. Hoban clearly admires Neel and sympathizes with the struggles that carried this young woman from a Victorian upbringing in the lower-middle-class environs of Philadelphia to a complicated existence as a working artist and single mother in New York. Yet Neel emerges from these pages as a difficult, sometimes maddening personality, whose great talent both thrived upon and at times was thwarted by a taste for conflict and drama...
The rest of my review is available free online at the Boston Globe's website:
In 1930, artist Grant Wood achieved sudden national fame with “American Gothic,’’ his iconic painting of a pitchfork-wielding farmer and a stern, blacIn 1930, artist Grant Wood achieved sudden national fame with “American Gothic,’’ his iconic painting of a pitchfork-wielding farmer and a stern, black-clad woman posed before a Victorian farmhouse. Hailed by Depression-era newspapers as a symbol of American values and by avant-garde intellectuals as a satire of small-town provincialism, “American Gothic’’ has since become one of the most reproduced and parodied artworks in history — spoofed in political posters for the legalization of marijuana and cartoons about Bill Clinton’s marital woes. But the true motivations behind this picture remain as difficult to characterize as the soft-spoken and deeply-closeted gay man who painted it...
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