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Rachel Cohen

history (2)

Lorenzetti, Fogg

Lorenzetti and Neighborhood

Frederick Project: Elegy

Tuesday, April 7, 2020

This week, the week of Passover and Easter, is a strange one. I think of it as a place in the year where time folds over itself. In our family, we observe Passover, the commemoration of the exodus. The story of enslavement and liberation told over and over down the generations. That story, the ritual of its retelling at a meal, is then the setting for the last supper, the prelude to an execution, and the foundation of the new testament, also [...] more

Turner Looking

Frederick Project: Abstraction and Retrospect

Tuesday, March 24, 2020

I am interested in the time layers of paintings. I always go back to J. M. W. Turner (1775-1851), painter of hundreds of oils (radical landscapes, history paintings, the abolitionist Slave Ship , scenes from his teeming imagination), of thousands of watercolors (a lingering soft touch, delicate effects of light, hundreds of studies of Venice, an inspiration to the Impressionists), and artist of some 30,000 works on paper (wonderful sketchbooks, studies in history, architecture, travel. ) Turner died, impoverished and strange, in London in [...] more