Charles Rosen— Proust’s grandmother was a woman of extremely modest, unpretentious demeanour, who never ventured to contradict anyone’s literary judgement: But on matters of which the rules and principles had been taught her by her mother, on the way to cook certain dishes, to play the sonatas of Beethoven, and to
Saint Maurice in Magdeburg Jacqueline E. Jung — The stunning sandstone sculpture of Saint Maurice made for Magdeburg Cathedral around 1250 – representing the fabled fourth-century leader of the Roman army’s Theban Legion, who allowed himself and his men to be killed for their embrace of the new Christian faith
The art history I write and teach is stuck in the mid-century modern period across much of the globe–roughly 1945-1970–because those years saw the end of a “modern” way of thinking and the start of a contemporary, or some would still say “postmodern,” outlook. I want to go back and
A quotation from the French philosopher and political activist Simone Weil is the first thing the reader encounters upon starting chapter one of To Describe a Life: Notes from the Intersection of Art and Race Terror by Professor Darby English. These words encapsulate the complex questions about self-identity, agency, and force that Darby English
Kathleen Pyne — In 1916 Georgia O’Keeffe received from the admiring New York photographer Alfred Stieglitz a group of photogravures he had published several years earlier. These pictures of nudes bound to dying trees or frolicking in refreshing mountain waters provoked O’Keeffe, in her own words, to an “absurd” level
James Prosek— For an exhibition at the Yale University Art Gallery and an accompanying book, both titled James Prosek: Art, Artifact, Artifice, I juxtaposed objects from the collections of the Gallery, the Yale Peabody Museum of Natural History, and the Yale Center for British Art and works made by me.
Why would anyone write a book about the architect Gordon Bunshaft? The consensus is that he was a rude and unpleasant man and, though he was responsible for the design of prominent buildings (Beinecke Library, for one), there’s a chorus of disdain in the background saying that as the chief
Some of the most outstanding examples of world architecture, such as the Mosque of Córdoba, the ceiling of the Cappella Palatina in Palermo and the Alhambra Palace in Granada, belong to the Western Islamic tradition. This architectural style flourished for over a thousand years along the southern and western shores
Stanley Mirvis— Thirteen years ago, Yale’s Center for British Art, in collaboration with the Institute of Jamaica Museum, commemorated the bicentennial of the abolition of the slave trade with an exhibition focused on the 1834 emancipation of slaves. The exhibit centered on the work of the Jamaican artist Isaac Mendes
David Thomson— I hope this title isn’t too shocking. I am happy to trust that none of you has committed a murder—well, very very few, shall we settle for that? You disapprove of the practice. You believe there should be a law against it. And you really would prefer that