As far as dirty old men go, the American painter John Graham (1886-1961), whose art is the subject of a retrospective at the Allan Stone Gallery, was depressingly pedestrian. Tucked away in the back, past a lovely courtyard, are 15 of Graham’s erotic drawings. That’s what the folks at Stone call the pictures, but there Read More
As far as dirty old men go, the American painter John Graham (1886-1961), whose art is the subject of a retrospective at the Allan Stone Gallery, was depressingly pedestrian.
Tucked away in the back, past a lovely courtyard, are 15 of Graham’s erotic drawings. That’s what the folks at Stone call the pictures, but there Read MoreTo see program after program of Balanchine at the Maryinsky Theatre in St. Petersburg is to be exposed to every kind of nostalgia and fantasy. This is the theater where, at the age of ten in 1914, he made his debut as a tiny cupid in The Sleeping Beauty . It's also a theater where, Read More
Opera-the most problematic of entertainments-is also the art form
most capable of breathing fresh life into a historical episode, a buried myth or a work of literature through the transforming powers of musical imagination, theatrical compression and live, flesh-and-blood performance. An unexpected demonstration of just how potent this alchemy can be took place at the Met Read MoreThe other day, I had a call from London
that set me to brooding again about the fate of our art museums-some of them, anyway, and no doubt many more in the future. The caller was a reporter from the BBC, and he was inquiring about the opening of yet another new Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum Read MoreDid you get your invitation? You couldn't have missed it:
the gold-embossed wooden box, the faux Fabergé Easter egg nestled in a satin pillow, the creamy stationery, the Pushkin passages. And the pronouncement itself: "Paul G. Allen cordially invites you and a guest to experience the inspiring grandeur of St. Petersburg, Russia. Friday, August 17th to Read MoreOne of the cheapest thrills of history or historical fiction is spying on the average unperceptive soul as his world falls apart: Chaliapin performing in St. Petersburg the night the Winter Palace is stormed; some honest German tending bar at his saloon in New York or Chicago on the eve of Prohibition; the bellicose aristo Read More
Few painters of his generation in America are more highly esteemed today-esteemed, that is, as painters -than the late Richard Diebenkorn (1922-1993). Yet visitors to the Diebenkorn retrospective that Jane Livingston has now organized at the Whitney Museum of American Art will quickly discover much that is new to them. Few of us have seen Read More
