Around 1980, I was running a public art gallery in North Vancouver (Presentation House) whose mandate I had changed to one of photography. In the early days, I brought to it, two exhibitions of work by Ansel Adams. I love his photography and it seemed like a good fit for our mountainous region of Canada, [...]
Category Archives: Art History
Art Identification App
Wednesday, June 9, 2010
“Plink Art” a mobile phone application that allows users to identify a work of art by simply taking its photo. The app contains thousands of famous paintings in its database, which can also pull up information on the artwork, including content from Wikipedia about the artist. Plink Art users can also leave digital comments and order prints of the [...]
Fear and Comfort
Tuesday, June 8, 2010
I look after a woman who is 87 years old. Her name is Rita. She was one of my mother’s nurses. My mother lived in a hospital for almost 13 years. I barely knew her; her personality and her disease were one. When my mother died, Rita and my father embarked on an affair. Then [...]
The Artist’s Palette
Wednesday, June 2, 2010
Renoir’s palette.
Lucy Davies, on the Telegraph.co.uk website features an article on the value of analysis of the palette of famous artists. The images that illustrate it are pictorial diaries. Link.
Porcelain at Nymphenburg
Wednesday, April 21, 2010
I am not a fan of chotchkas or china figurines, but artists have made some incredible art in ceramics and it is a medium I am increasingly drawn to. Then there is the world of porcelain manufacturing. I have loved some Limoges and Spode pieces and contemporary ceramics span a vast range of styles. Nymphenburg [...]
Be Alone in the Sistine Chapel and See It Up Close
Monday, April 19, 2010
I could not believe this site when I found it. Being raised a Catholic, a lover of the Renaissance, all things Italian and passionate about choral music, I spent hours looking at gazillions of details in the world’s most famous church. What a treat. (Meanwhile, pervert priests and a horrible Pope are making headlines.) Link [...]
Understanding Art for young People
Wednesday, January 20, 2010
From Boing Boing:
Looking at Paintings is a beginning textbook for young children (I’d say 6-12) who are wondering the same thing. Using beautifully reproduced paintings and crisp prose,Looking at Paintings expounds on the history of visual art, and the use of size, shape, color, light and dark, perspective, frame, motion and materials in creating visual [...]
Access the Victoria & Albert Museum Collection
Wednesday, November 4, 2009
The Victoria & Albert Museum announced that visitors to its website can now find online over one million records detailing objects in its collections ranging from well known treasures such as Tippoo’s “Tiger” to less familiar paintings and ceramics. People using Search the Collections, at collections.vam.ac.uk, will find images of more than 100,000 objects with more [...]
Artist Self Portraits
Thursday, September 24, 2009
Until my ex took up portraiture, I thought it was an uninteresting genre of painting. But, in fact, it is a fascinating medium. Through Steve’s eyes I entered a new world wherein I could really lean a lot about the creative imagination.
Transmitting a reliable likeness is not necessarily the goal of the contemporary artist. Indeed, [...]
The Greatest Diagram Ever (?)
Friday, September 11, 2009
“It may well be the best statistical graphic ever drawn.” Charles Joseph Minard’s 1861 thematic map of Napoleon’s ill-fated march on Moscow was described thusly by Edward Tufte in his acclaimed 1983 book, The Visual Display of Quantitative Information. Of all the attempts to convey the futility of Napoleon’s attempt to invade Russia and the utter [...]