Link to Post:
http://altoonsultan.blogspot.com/2013/04/piero-della-francesca-severity-and.html
Altoon Sultan blogs about the exhibition Piero della Francesca in America at The Frick Collection, New York, on view through May 19, 2013.
Sultan writes: "When people speak of his work as being calm, I would say 'still.' Rather than calm I see an austere presence, a severity of form and mien, in the sense of 'a strict or stern bearing or manner' (Mirriam-Webster). Many years ago, when I first saw the great Piero fresco cycle at Arezzo, I was surprised at how passionate the paintings were; I'd been expecting something cool and intellectual from looking at reproductions. This passion is contained within tight bounds, lending the works a sense of the eternal, of life not easily spent, of looking beyond 'this mortal coil.' "
Link to Post:
http://www.newrepublic.com/article/112813/piero-della-francesca-frick-reviewed-jed-perl
Jed Perl questions the critical response to the exhibition Piero della Francesca in America at the Frick Collection, New York, on view through May 19, 2013.
"What troubles me isn’t that people are embracing Piero’s work," Perl writes, "I love much of it, too—it’s that they are reluctant to see that its power is inextricably bound with its limitations." Perl observes: "It is [the] skittishness about overt emotion, this desire to show what [art critic Adrian] Stokes called 'the separateness of ordered outer things,' that powers Piero’s art. Although we can probably never know what Piero’s contemporaries saw in his intricate compositions, what we see is not a perfect world but a problematical world, where form absorbs feeling, and the effort to create an ideal order is the only reasonable response to life’s everyday confusions."
Link to Post:
http://paintingperceptions.com/notable-painters/review-piero-della-francesca-at-the-frick
Xico Greenwald reviews the exhibition Piero della Francesca in America at The Frick Collection, New York on view through May 19, 2013.
Greenwald writes that Piero's Virgin and Child Enthroned with Four Angels "is an often-overlooked work by Piero... Mary sits in the center of the painting, subtly larger than the four angels surrounding her, the scale-difference giving her quiet grandeur. Holding a flower in her right hand and with the baby Jesus on her left knee, Mary has a classical poise. Her garments fall naturalistically down over her form, like an ancient monument to Hera. And, as if to underline Piero della Francesca’s sense of order, her robe folds into a perfect circle at the base of the throne along the central vertical axis of the painting, giving the artwork a sense of supernatural symmetry and composure. Though crowded with figures, the space in this painting breathes easily and a pearlescent delicacy of color adds to the visual delight. The painting of St. Augustine, on loan from its home in Portugal, is also a marvel of virtuosity; the Bishop’s miter and mantel, covered in images of biblical scenes, is, on its own, almost as full of imagery as an altarpiece."
Link to Post:
http://www.pirihalasz.com/blog.htm?post=897987
Piri Halasz reviews Piero della Francesca in America at The Frick Collection, New York on view through May 19, 2013.
Halasz writes: "The paintings at the Frick are all oil and tempera on panel, and are accordingly well preserved and/or restored. Their combinations of composition and color afford bewitchingly beautiful images, even though there is relatively little variation in their subject matter. One is a small Crucifixion, and one is a relatively large Madonna and Child enthroned with four angels, but the remaining five are all single images of standing individual saints. Two are large, full-length figures, while three are smaller, three-quarter length ones. All seem to have been painted in the later stages of Piero’s career, after he’d returned to his hometown and was executing commissions for local churches (he died in San Sepulcro in 1492). What I love about all these figures is their statuesque simplicity, their dignity, their nobility and at the same time, their complete and moving innocence. These faces are too peaceful to convey signs of inner or outer stress. And their subtle, often paler colors likewise detach them from the everyday and situate them in another world."
Link to Post:
http://www.studiointernational.com/index.php/luca-signorelli-ingenuity-and-pilgrim-spirit
Julie Beckers reviews the exhibition Luca Signorelli: de Ingegno et Spirto Pelegrino (ingenuity and pilgrim spirit) at Perugia, Orvieto, Città di Castello through August 26, 2012.
Beckers notes that the show allows for a comparison between Piero della Francesca and Signorelli. She writes: "The influence Piero della Francesca had on the young Signorelli is unmistakable in [the Madonna and Child]. The soft tones of the background in which the narrative is set, the pale fleshy tone of the Madonna, her downcast eyes and thin lips that hide a hint of emotion are similar in both works. The rich garments in which both virgins are covered, especially the detail on the tightening of the sleeves, make a comparison worthwhile. In some areas such as the delicately painted veil on the Virgins head, Signorelli seems to overtake della Francesca, whereas the latter excels in his depiction of Flemish inspired interior elements such as the door behind the angel who meets the spectators gaze or the randomly placed wooden box on the shelves behind the angel dressed in pink."
Link to Post:
http://artjournal.collegeart.org/?p=59
A must read article by painter David Reed.
Reed remembers his time at the New York Studio School and the effect Philip Guston's painting and teaching had on him and his work. Reed gives a fascinating first-hand account of Guston's critiques at the Studio School and the ideas he was wrestling with in his transition from abstraction to figuative painting. Guson spoke of "tradition as something that was removing us from our own lives and the world in which we lived."
Milton Resnick, who also taught at the Studio School at the time "used to describe the method and difficulties of an artist changing his or her work [as] 'soul-beating.' He said that some artists could 'beat their own souls,' but some could not, and needed someone else to do the beating for them, a friend or an enemy.
The article also details the influence of Piero della Francesca's fresco painting had on Guston's figurative work.
