Tag Archives: Vermeer

connectivity through form

Guest blog from Tai Carmen at Parallax.Parallax: exploring the architecture of human perception Tai Carmen: “There is a special ratio that can be used to describe the proportions of everything from nature’s smallest building blocks, such as atoms, to the … Continue reading

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Golden Guilders: going dutch with jan de witt

Under Jan de Witt, the Dutch bested the great powers at both arms and commerce, arts and science. However, in a moment of panic they killed him and the Dutch Golden Age turned to lead. So much of what we … Continue reading

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PASSION & ELEGANCE: Uneasy Companions

The work of Jan van Eyck, with its balanced, reserved, and dignified realism. is usually considered the summary expression of Flemish genius. His complete Flemishness, along with his unapproachable technical perfection, may explain why his art was less easily assimilated … Continue reading

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SEURAT & THE PSYCHOLOGY of GEOMETRY: Point By Point

Over the past several decades, many scholars have attempted to explain the meaning of this great composition. For some, it shows the growing middle class at leisure. Others see it as a representation of social tensions between modern city dwellers … Continue reading

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AN OBSESSION WITH UNREASON: Absolute and Faithless Doubt

Caravaggio has become the ultimate old master superstar; his only real rival is Vermeer. It was a great if sadly short career. Caravaggio’s work was an expression of awareness of the precariousness of a reason that can at any moment be compromised, … Continue reading

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ORANGE LIGHT DISTRICT

On a narrow, low lying strip of coastal country in Northern Europe, scarcely two hundred miles long, a country so water logged that enemies and rivals spoke of it as mud flat, there arose in the seventeenth century one of … Continue reading

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PAINTED FROM MEMORY: PETER PAUL PAINTING JOY

“Like many people, I have trouble with Rubens’s nudes, especially the female ones: all that smothering flesh, vibrantly alive but with the erotic appeal of a mud slide. (Rubens, owing to moral constraints of the time, rarely worked from nude … Continue reading

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THE BULL LIES DOWN ON BROADWAY

”Bullfighting is the only art in which the artist is in danger of death and in which the degree of brilliance in the performance is left to the fighter’s honor.”…“There are only three sports: bullfighting, motor racing, and mountaineering; all … Continue reading

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MAN, THE MARKET and THE MESSIAH

Pious consumption. As Easter is upon us, so is a recurring drama of what the holiday means. Believer based critiques as opposed to the deeply secular and atheistic. It is often a case of the message overwhelming the medium and … Continue reading

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TENDER ANTIQUARIAN STOOP

We look at old pictures through a double frame. The solid gilt frame which isolates it from its surroundings and creates for it a hole in space; and the period frame in our minds which creates for it a hole … Continue reading

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