Introduction Art lovers were agog last week when thieves made off with twelve works from the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston. The haul included a Manet, a couple of Rembrandts and Vermeer’s “Concert,” well-known to all former Art History 101 students. The event set us to thinking. Is all…
William Wegman is wearing the standard uniform for a male artist of the Sixties generation–jeans, tee shirt and tennis shoes–and by his side is the standard accessory for the successful artist from that time–a pretty young brunette. At 46, Wegman has a mop of curly brown hair and a charming…
“I just think that there are lots and lots of ways to make art, and there just aren’t any rules about how to do it. And that anytime somebody tries to make rules about it, it’s a terrible mistake.” Judging from Laurie Anderson’s reputation as an avant-garde artist, you’d expect…
For years, David Markham has had a devotion to Napoleon that some of his friends think is a bit unnatural, and that would have driven to distraction a wife less understanding than Barbara. He wears, for instance, a tie decorated with bees, the French emperor’s symbol. He has traced Napoleon’s…
Turn your art clock back to the 1920s and 1930s. Yves Tanguy has turned furniture into abstract forms and scattered it over the landscape of time. Max Ernst’s men have sprouted lion heads while Rene Magritte’s tomatoes and apples have grown as big as rooms. Andre Breton has proclaimed “the…
The opening salvo in what ought to develop into quite a lively exchange of gunfire was sounded last week when the first “counter quincentenary celebration” arrived in Phoenix. The quincentenary, as we shall all find out only too well during the next two years, is the celebration of Columbus’ discovery…
