Once, when we visited Florence, we saw this young woman absorbed in painting a copy of Boticelli’s Venus while throngs of tourists dashed by. Only a few stopped to watch. The artist is using soft dry pastels, a version of highly pigmented chalks. Find out more about pastels. Pastels are the closest you can get…
Manga—comics or graphic novels from Japan—touches everything. It considers nothing sacred. Such is the reality that hits me at the current exhibit we attended at the Centre Pompidou, France’s national museum of contemporary art, Bande dessinée, 1964 – 2024 (Comics 1964-2024). It isn’t just manga, either. From its acknowledged beginning in the counterculture (like Art…
Ah, the freedom of getting vaccinated against covid. I’m looking forward to museum-hopping again. Preferably in Paris, to me, the museum capital of the world. Many visitors to Paris scribble art-viewing into their itinerary. Not as often, though, I think as shopping and eating. But museums are great on a rainy day. Plenty of them…
A fire nearly destroyed the iconic Cathédrale Notre Dame in Paris—arguably the most famous gothic cathedral in the world. Current efforts to restore it have been hampered, like most of life nowadays, by a deadly virus. Now that we all have to stop and take many deep—hopefully cleansing—breaths, we have the luxury to wonder about…
Undulating forms are beautiful, sensuous, and seductive. You often find them in nature—in the curve of a woman’s body, the outline of a camel’s neck and hump, the motif on a sidewalk mosaic, etc. They appeal to an aesthetic sense in all of us. Artists have been aware of this appeal for a long time.…
To most people who were in Paris this June, Paris 2024 meant the Olympic games. You could hardly escape the reference. The sign “Paris 2024” has been plastered on buildings all over the city, the most prominent of which nearly covers the façade of the Hotel de Ville, the Paris city hall. To me, however,…
Not until I’ve traveled to countries with centuries of civilization have I appreciated history. My early exposure to history didn’t leave me wanting for more. Memorizing dates and places without putting such facts into relatable contexts elicited mere indifference. My first ventures into foreign countries usually lasted a very short time, sometimes less than a…
Part 2: Impressions of my first visit decades ago I’ve since returned a few times, concentrating on certain places. Athens, Greek Islands September 3 I’m not exactly prepared for what I see in the airport. It’s small and understaffed. A lot of tourists visit Athens but it seems the city won’t coddle them. More surprises…
This June, I’ll be in France, a country I’ve been to many times, though most often, Paris was my destination. On my very first visit to Europe as a young woman, I was wide-eyed and wide open to new experiences. Once there, I wrote my impressions of the places I visited. But we were decades…
Back to the art studio where I was taking a class. An art studio is a place where passions run deep, usually unseen, undetected, until a provoking moment brings forth a torrent of intensity. I tried to copy a painting by Austrian expressionist Oskar Kokoschka, The Bride of the Wind. Copying has been standard practice…
The Net is flooded with food blogs, so I haven’t written much about food though it’s for me one of the pleasures of life. But it’s that time of year again to put that diet on hold and relish the food you love preferably in the company of those close to you. Then, worry about…
Art is either plagiarism or revolution. Paul Gauguin Artists constantly debate what art is. Among, as well as within, themselves. Often the conflict, or at least the point of contention is whether art is or has to be an original creation. But what qualifies as original anyway? More likely than not, our ideas or at…
Art is in every book you read. Marcel Duchamp, notorious in the art world for having successfully argued that a urinal is art—thus ushering in the Avant Garde—would probably agree with me. Monsieur Duchamp aside, images are both essential and important for all modern-day book covers. They’re the first and most obvious means authors and…
Munich: What a city! Beautiful, clean and orderly, and friendly. We both readily chose it over London. The good weather in April definitely worked in its favor as well as ours. On our way here, in a train trip with two long delays and more train changes than we had planned, time passed quite pleasantly…
I remember, as a child, eating dark, sweet,and fragrant cake/pudding so sticky it stuck to my teeth. It was made of rice, the only kind of cake I ever ate until my mother learned to bake. She didn’t make those rice cakes. Generous aunts usually brought them. Or, we bought them from street vendors, and…
It was inevitable—the leap from Duchamp’s readymades (like the infamous urinal) to paintings of readymades. This was exactly what Jasper Johns did in the 1950s. But his interest was in iconographic objects, things that were symbols, that stood for something within a culture. And what icon in American culture could be more famous than the…
‘We’ll always have Paris.“ Remember that famous line from Bogey to Bergman (Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman, in case you’re too young to know) in the film classic Casablanca? Done in black and white, it’s vintage Hollywood. A must-see for film lovers. Here’s a short trailer. Paris fascinates Hollywood. Hollywood fascinates Paris, by far the…
Artsy Rambler 