Art and Museums
A Timely Show, Precision and Splendor: Clocks and Watches at The Frick Collection
Val Castronovo writes: A tribute to art and a tribute to science, the elaborate gilded works on display date from the early 16th to the 19th century. Their provenance: England, France, Italy, Germany and Switzerland. They were valued as much for their artistry and craft as for their functionality. They signified a person’s wealth and taste. Napoleon, Louis XVI, Marie-Antoinette, and the daughters of Louis XV were just some of the many rich and famous people who coveted them. more »
Who Isn't Obsessed by Shoes: An FIT Exhibition We Missed
We admit, with all apologies, this NYC exhibit that closed earlier this month, but hope to make it up by some history and images:
The Museum at the Fashion Institute of Technology (MFIT) preseneds Shoe Obsession, an exhibition that examined our cult… more »
Drawing Surrealism at the Morgan Library: The Exquisite Corpse Will Drink the New Wine
Some of the most striking surrealist drawings were exquisite corpses, a game that involved collaboration and chance. In the game — the name of which derives from a sentence created when the surrealists first used the process to write poetry: The exquisite corpse will drink the new wine — each participant made a drawing on a section of a folded sheet of paper without seeing the others’ drawings. The resulting hybrid creatures generated by the game influenced surrealist imagery, reappearing in artists’ individual works. more »
Anders Zorn: A European Artist Seduces America; Boston's Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum's 23-Year-Old Theft
The exhibit presents new international scholarship about an artist who was considered among the most prolific and talented artists living around 1900. Although highly esteemed by his contemporaries on both sides of the Atlantic, Zorn is little known to the general public in the US today. "Anders Zorn is one of the most significant artists of the Belle Époque." more »