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…
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…
True, you may not know him. His surviving œuvre numbers less than fifty, most of it at the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna. He did father other artistic, probably better-recognized Brueghels. And years ago, he had another five minutes of fame in a film called ‘The Mill and the Cross.” The film is an imaginative…
Revolution in art is never boring. In fifteenth-century Italy, art innovated and flourished as it had never done before. Its aim? The rebirth of classical learning and culture of ancient Rome and Greece. In other words a renaissance (naissance is French for birth). The Renaissance art style continued to evolve, eventually leading to Mannerism. Catholic…
How do you imagine Paris? For the artist in many of us, it is a Bohemian Paris we conjure up and even yearn for. But is Bohemian Paris merely an illusion? What is a Bohemian, anyway? In the popular view, she is someone unconventional, carefree, and usually involved in the arts. A free spirit who…
Milan. We like it. Quite a lot. Some guide books tell you Milan isn’t really Italy and many tours exclude it from their itineraries. Maybe, they mean it’s not the Italy they have romanticized. Nor Italy of the renaissance or baroque periods. But Milan is Italy as: • Grand gestures; • Innovation and design; •…
This is a reblog from my old “lost” site, Journey On A Limb. But, I believe it deals with a question we revisit all the time. What is art? Is it what YOU call art? What an art critic calls art? An art historian, perhaps? Or, is it what WE all collectively call art? Is…
Artsy Rambler 