Category Archives: art

REQUIRING BUILDINGS TO BE WHITE.

REQUIRING BUILDINGS TO BE WHITE. David Watkin’s review describes a period when there were important people claiming that all buildings should be white. Surprisingly, that period is the last hundred years. The story begins with Adolf Loos in 1908 “calling … Continue reading

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WHY ARE THE COLORS OF ROMAN BUILDINGS SO OFTEN OCHRE?

WHY AE THE COLORS OF ROMAN BUILDINGS SO OFTEN OCHRE? One of the delights for me of coming in to Rome is the different shades of earth tones in the buildings. David Watkin reviews THE COLOURS OF ROME by John … Continue reading

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PROUST’S LAST THOUGHTS.

PROUST’S LAST THOUGHTS. The article on the essentialvermeer blog about the effect of Vermeer’s View of Delft on Proust shows that there are some biographers who think that the Proust was making changes to his novel on the night he … Continue reading

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THE NOVEL THAT WAS NOT FINISHED.

THE NOVEL THAT WAS NOT FINISHED. I knew that Proust continually made extensive revisions in the drafts of his novel. The critics seem to feel that Proust began with SWANN’S WAY, the first book of the six which comprise THE … Continue reading

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WHICH PATCH OF YELLOW WALL?

WHICH PATCH OF YELLOW WALL? The essentialvermeer blog says that scholars still differ over where the “little patch of yellow wall” is in the painting. There are three possibilities, identified as A, B, and C on the blog post. The … Continue reading

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THE LITTLE PATCH OF YELLOW WALL.

THE LITTLE PATCH OF YELLOW WALL. After many years, my old computer died, and I have been trying out my new Mac with a 27 inch screen. One image I looked at was Vermeer’s View of Delft (a favorite painting, … Continue reading

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ANOTHER ARTIST WITH DAMAGED EYESIGHT—CHUCK CLOSE.

ANOTHER ARTIST WITH DAMAGED EYESIGHT—CHUCK CLOSE. I have posted, including here, on the theory of Margaret Livingstone, a Harvard neurobiologist, that it is an advantage for an artist to have poor depth perception because the artist sees the world as … Continue reading

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HOW IMPORTANT IS THE DATE OF A PAINTING?

HOW IMPORTANT IS THE DATE OF A PAINTING? When I go to an art museum, I pick out one or two paintings in each room I enter and try to spend most of my time looking at those. I was … Continue reading

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PAINTING—“LOSING CURRENCY AS A WAY OF RESPONDING TO THE WORLD”.

PAINTING—“LOSING CURRENCY AS A WAY OF RESPONDING TO THE WORLD”. I posted here about the possible death of painting, based on comments by reviewers (“the collapse of painting as art’s preeminent form”). Jackie Wullschlager in the Financial Times (November 16-17) … Continue reading

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IS PRETTINESS IN ART BAD?

IS PRETTINESS IN ART BAD?. I posted here about a question Laurence Grenier of the proust pour tous blog (link here) asked some 150 people, including Mary Jane and me: could we identify any characteristics of the paintings that we … Continue reading

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