In my own art career I have explored many media, including ‘bas-relief’, which is a branch of sculpture. But I am by no means a sculptor in the sense of someone whose medium is an encounter with three-dimensional space. Meaning … read more
In my last Andy’s Window essay about the sculptures of Imo Baird, I mentioned his art teacher Charles Littler who in the 80s introduced Imo to ‘mixing media’ as a new way of making art. The small sculpture (Figure 1) … read more
One of the most unexpected benefits of the modern internet is the encyclopedic release of digital reproductions of art-works, to any and everyone with a computer. Suddenly the visual languages of the world—new and old, historic and informal—along with its … read more
As I was writing my recent essay on the paintings of Joan Mitchell, I realized that the number of women in the United States besides Georgia O’Keeffe that I knew about for their contribution to contemporary art before 1945 had … read more
The Abstract-expressionist painter Joan Mitchell is an American artist whose large canvases of the fifties still touch me even now. ‘Touch’ is the right word because her paintings are very physical in their presence, and her mark-making core-deep, both physically … read more
“I am a writer who draws.” –Saul Steinberg “(Saul Steinberg) was the wisest person I ever met in my entire life.” –Kurt Vonnegut My life-long fascination with how images and words are related has led me over the years to … read more
Ingres’ manner of drawing was as new as the century. It was immediately recognized as expert and admirable. If his paintings were sternly criticized as “Gothic,” no comparable criticism was leveled at his drawings. —Agnes Mongan The role of portraiture … read more
“To live with Sargent’s water-colours is to live with sunshine captured and held, with the luster of a bright and legible world” –Evan Charteris (1927) I must confess up front that I am ambivalent about the work of the artist … read more
Georges Seurat is considered to be the most impressionistic of the French 19th Century painters, including Monet, Pisarro, Morisot, and Renoir—-in part because Seurat was scientifically interested the new and novel ideas of atomic particle physics. In his short life … read more
