-
Van Goghs Favorites II: Hubert Herkomer and the School of English Social Realism
“There is something virile in it – something rugged – which attracts me strongly (…) In all these fellows I see an energy, a determination and a free, healthy, cheerful spirit that animate me. And in their work there is something lofty and dignified – even when they draw a dunghill.” Vincent van Gogh, October […]
-
Van Goghs Favorites I: Xylographism unbound – The influence of illustrated journal graphics on the art of Vincent van Gogh.
Only in recent years has one gained the insight that Vincent van Gogh was not only a collector of Japanese graphic prints, like many of his artist colleagues, but was also imbued by a passion for the pictorial art of illustrated journals of his times. This was mainly thanks to two exhibitions: One, in spring […]
-
Menzel and Chodowiecki – “Unreigned” drawing
When he found himself obliged to the “Verein Berliner Künstler” due to a generosity bestowed upon him, Menzel decided to gladden his colleagues with a representative gift that was meant to recommend to them his own artistic program as a path to take. He painted the posthumous, life-sized portrait of the Berlin artist and miniaturist […]
-
Robert Weaver II – Split-Level Books
In the 1980s, frustrated by the increasing restrictions in the field of magazine design, Weaver shifted the focus of his activities more and more to teaching at the New York Visual School of Arts and expanded a loose sequence of diary-like motif books he began with in the 1970s to form an independent complex of […]
-
Robert Weaver – The other Pittsburgher
In his “Songs for Drella”, Lou Reed claimed that no Michelangelo could ever come from the hicktown of Pittsburgh. But this does not stand up to close examination. Robert Weaver is from Pittsburgh and in 1949, the same year the other Pittsburgher Andy Warhol, the subject of Reed’s cycle of songs, moved to the metropolis […]