Link to Post:
http://hyperallergic.com/69690/durer-in-dc-some-observations-on-the-great-observer/
Thomas Micchelli reviews the exhibition Albrecht Dürer: Master Drawings, Watercolors, and Prints from the Albertina at the National Gallery of Art, Washington D.C., on view through June 9, 2013.
Micchelli writes: "Dürer’s boldness with his materials is evidenced in what is probably the most emblematic image to come from the Great Observer, namely 'The Great Piece of Turf' (1503)... The work is minimal in its color choices — tonal gradations of raw umber and mint green, with dabs of aquamarine and amber — and if you continue to look closely at it, raising your eyes inch by inch up through the weeds, it can seem like a dull profusion of busy green verticals. Take one step back, however, and the whole thing pulls together, not unlike a Jackson Pollock or a Joan Mitchell, with the blank backdrop suggesting a field of hazy, ambient light while simultaneously behaving as an undisguised paper support. The great piece of turf looks virtually collaged to that support, its dry densities of paint creating a hyper-real alternative reality to the paper’s all-too-real, blank tactility."
Link to Post:
http://leftbankartblog.blogspot.com/2012/12/mannerism-at-morgan.html
Charles Kessler visits two exhibitions at the Morgan Library: Fantasy and Invention: Rosso Fiorentino and Sixteenth-Century Florentine Drawing (through February 3) and Dürer to de Kooning: 100 Master Drawings from Munich (through January 6).
Of Rosso's Holy Family with the Young Saint John the Baptist (c. 1520), Kessler writes: "Rosso makes no attempt to create a plausibly real scene in a real space. What's being depicted is not ordinary human activity, and it's not an idealized scene either, but rather it's an almost hallucinogenic, spiritual ecstasy more akin to medieval mosaics in spirit than to the High Renaissance. This ecstatic emotion is conveyed by the glowing colors and the swirling, rhythmic brushwork. (The painting is unfinished so it's probably rougher and less polished than it would be if he had finished it — but still.) In the Rosso, St. Joseph and St. John are so emotionally overwrought they seem to be dissipating visually."
Link to Post:
http://art-unwashed.blogspot.com/2012/10/mantegna-to-matisse-master-drawings.html
Laura Gilbert reviews the exhibition Mantegna to Matisse: Master Drawings from the Courtauld Gallery at the Frick Collection, New York, on view through Janaury 23, 2012.
"As might be expected in a show that covers art from the late Middle Ages to the early 20th century, the styles and purposes of the drawings are all over the place. There are Leonardo's scribbled studies of Mary Magdalene, Pieter Breugel the Elder's detailed line drawing of a peasant scene that would be used to make a print, and a watercolor by Cezanne meant as a finished piece.... Exceptionally high quality is the glue that holds the show together. So this is an exhibit that presents art as pretty much ahistorical and at its most fundamental -- pure visual pleasure, of which there is plenty."
Link to Post:
http://art-unwashed.blogspot.com/2011/02/passion-in-venice-even-curatorial-mess.html
Laura Gilbert reviews the Museum of Biblical Art's Passion in Venice. Her post, entitled "Great Art in Curatorial Purgatory," deems the show a curatorial "mess," but the paintings, prints, and other works on view well worth a visit. "Although the show disappoints, the art doesn't" she writes. That's a pretty ringing endorsement.
Link to Post:
http://berkshirereview.net/2011/01/strange-world-albrecht-duerer-clark-art-institute-williamstown/
Michael Miller reviews The Strange World of Albrecht Dürer at the Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute (through March 13, 2011). He writes that the exhibition "presents the artist and his work partly in the context of his time and place and partly as artefacts present-day viewers respond to literally, without much explanation, as images that will strike them as strange or alien, either because of a cultural disconnect or because of the uniqueness of Dürer's imagination."
