Art
Dec. 6, 2010
Darwinian Theories of Art
Are we hardwired to find certain art forms beautiful and to enjoy certain kinds of stories?
Tags: Brian Boyd · Denis Dutton · evolution · storytelling · TED talks · video
Nov. 5, 2010
Still lifes by Christopher Stott
Christopher Stott paints ordinary objects with the patina of age and long use — battered old books, chairs, alarm clocks, suitcases — in ways that suggest the rich stories and lives they have led.
Tags: Christopher Stott · painting
Oct. 5, 2010
Drawing Circles
Lessons for creatives from two famous circles, Giotto’s O and the enso of Japanese calligraphy.
Tags: enso · featured posts · Giotto · painting · writing tips
Sep. 27, 2010
Giotto’s Red Circle
Pope Boniface VIII was looking for a new artist to work on the frescoes in St. Peter’s Basilica, so he sent a courtier out into the country to interview artists and collect samples of their work that he could judge. The courtier approached the painter Giotto and asked for a drawing to demonstrate his skill. [...]
Sep. 1, 2010
The High-Low Problem
The problem [Pauline] Kael undertook to address when she began writing for The New Yorker was the problem of making popular entertainment respectable to people whose education told them that popular entertainment is not art. This is usually thought of as the high-low problem — the problem that arises when a critic equipped with a highbrow [...]
Tags: art criticism · John le Carre · Louis Menand
Aug. 10, 2010
Vita Brevis, Ars Brevior
A good but not great movie from 1965 is a reminder how short-lived most art is.
Tags: featured posts · John le Carre · video · writing life
Jun. 1, 2010
The Pleasures of Imagination
Our main leisure activity is, by a long shot, participating in experiences that we know are not real. When we are free to do whatever we want, we retreat to the imagination — to worlds created by others, as with books, movies, video games, and television (over four hours a day for the average American), [...]
Tags: imagination · psychology
Nov. 29, 2009
As if they had been around all along
The best new movies carry intimations of permanence along with their novelty and very quickly start to seem as if they had been around all along. — A. O. Scott, “Screen Memories” in last week’s Times Magazine That odd feeling you get when you first run into great artworks — they “very quickly start to [...]
Tags: art criticism
Oct. 4, 2009
Vermeer
The effort to rival his best works, which was out of the question for anyone else, must have tormented Vermeer, whose self-generated standards demanded a labor-intensiveness scarcely convenient for a father of eleven, working in the middling genre of domestic interiors. Most of his Dutch peers averaged fifty or so pictures a year; Vermeer clocked [...]
Jun. 23, 2009
Richard Diebenkorn: Notes to Myself on Beginning a Painting
Painter Richard Diebenkorn’s *Notes to Myself on Beginning a Painting*
Tags: painting · quotes · Richard Diebenkorn
