Man of the Century

Quick Quiz: Who is the only artist to be named “man of the century”? Picasso? Did Demoiselles d'Avignon and Guernica preach love and peace to define the twentieth century? I wish they did, but, sadly, no. You have to go back all the way to the fourteenth century to find TIME Magazine’s “Man of the 14^th Century,” as named in their 1999 end-of-the-millennium roundup. By painting people three-dimensionally and more humanly than ever before, Giotto di Bondone started a revolution that no artist has equaled since. Will any, can any, ever top Giotto, who died on this date in 1337? (Giotto’s The Arrest of Christ, also known as The Kiss of Judas, one of the scenes of the life of Christ painted in the Cappella Scrovegni from 1304 through 1306, appears above.) Please click over to Picture This at Big Think to read more of "Man of the Century."

Target Practice

The American art scene lost one of the great, yet forgotten artists of the twentieth century last Tuesday with the passing of Kenneth Noland at 85 years of age. One of the Color Field painters, the abstract art movement christened by influential critic Clement Greenberg as the true successor to the Abstract Expressionism of Jackson Pollock and Willem de Kooning, Noland enjoyed his greatest success in the late 1950s and early 1960s, only to become collateral damage when Greenberg tumbled from the apex of the critical world and he and the rest of the Color Field painters became targets, too. (Noland's ") Please venture over to Picture This at Big Think to read more of "Target Practice."

Fire and Ice

Please click over to Picture This at Big Think to read "Fire and Ice," some thoughts on art history and the history of climate change both natural and man-made. J. M. W. Turner's Chichester Canal (above, from 1828) plays a starring role in a tale that begins in 1816—the “Year Without a Summer.”

An American in Paris

Please click over to Picture This at Big Think to read my review of The Paris Letters of Thomas Eakins, edited by William Innes Homer. As long-time readers know, Thomas Eakins is one of my favorite artists, so this review was a labor of love.

[Many thanks to Princeton University Press for providing me with a review copy of The Paris Letters of Thomas Eakins.]

Starting Off With a Bang

Happy New Year, everyone! Here's hoping for a happy and peaceful 2010!

To start the New Year off with a bang, I've posted my first musings over at my new blog on Big Think, titled Picture This! Please click over to read "Art Boom," a discussion of Chinese artist Cai Guo-Qiang's literally explosive Fallen Blossoms exhibition (pictured above) at the Philadelphia Museum of Art.