Crazy for art
Did Inge see herself as the serving girl in the upper window of Andrea del Sarto’s Last Supper in Florence? The wonderful thing about reading on a Kindle is how easy it is look up things you’re not familiar with. Yesterday, I stumbled across hyperkulturemia. Stendhal’s syndrome or hyperkulturemia is a psychosomatic illness that causes …
Louis Comfort Tiffany need not apply
Pastoral window in Second Presbyterian Church, Chicago, IL, installed 1917. Too bad Tiffany was an artisan, not an artist, right? Luckily for him, he could have bought his way into SoHo several times over. Only a Philistine could doubt that New York is the center of the art world, but I have to admit there …
The trouble with Hortense
See what I mean about her paint handling? Hortense* has been my painting student since the very beginning. I haven’t taught in my own studio since last spring, so when she came to class on Saturday, I had a fresh perspective about her painting. She handles paint as well as I do, and she draws …
Nothing new under the sun
Leonardo da Vinci’s Vitruvian Man was based on book III of De Architectura. Vitruvius said the human figure was the principal source of proportion for the classical orders of architecture. The art of hydraulic cement was lost after the fall of the Roman Empire and not rediscovered until 1756, but if people had just read their Vitruvius, the …
Animated books from antiquity
Fore-edge painting of Diana sitting with a handmaid by a lake, c. 1817, Boston Public Library. You can see a video of the book here. Yesterday, my friend John Nicholson sent me this lovely link to gifs of fore-edge painting of books.“I am truly amazed by the love lavished on books before the paperback epidemic,” …