white (5)
Giacometti Difficult Hand-Writing
Tuesday, April 28, 2020
Writing of Tara Geer’s work yesterday put me in mind of Giacometti, whose line in drawings and in paintings also has a quality of being written. This is from the Geer of yesterday: Giacometti's hand: He, too, is calligraphic: [...] more
Morisot – A Daughter at the Window
Monday, April 20, 2020
A daughter at the window is poignant. She is here with you, in the interior, but she is thinking of what lies beyond. Berthe Morisot, Cottage Interior, 1886. Musée d'Ixelles. Photos Rachel Cohen. Berthe Morisot painted and drew her daughter Julie probably several hundred times. There are masterpieces of Julie as a baby with her wet nurse, as a toddler swinging her foot [...] more
Pissarro in Snow
Out of Season
Wednesday, April 15, 2020
Snow this morning. This painting – Rabbit Warren at Pontoise, Snow by Camille Pissarro, 1879 – is a regular point of reference for me, one I visit fairly often at the Art Institute. I had thought that writing of it would wait until next year. (Will we be inside again? There are questions and predictions about future waves of the disease. Hard to grasp what the year will be.) [...] more
Sargent Stone Water Stone Paper
Frederick Project: Materials
Thursday, April 9, 2020
In 2013, a show of John Singer Sargent watercolors. I saw it at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston; it was co-organized with, and also shown at the Brooklyn Museum of Art. These two institutions have the two finest collections of Sargent watercolors. These first details are from I Gesuati , ca. 1909. [Works shown in this post belong to the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; except for two, belonging [...] more
Snow
Saturday, February 15, 2014
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At this time last year, in the days when my father was dying, it snowed and snowed. From the hospital windows, it had its beauty. The hallway near the elevators had windows that looked down on to a sort of large courtyard, not rustic, but still made precise by the snow. People crossed and you would see dark footprints. These would then be covered. The footprints and their being covered, traces of particular steps and shoes, then again white -- the tiny brevity of each passing figure, [...] more