From impossible staircases to gravity defying waterfalls and hands that draw themselves, Dutch artist M. C. Escher’s paradoxical works defy logic and reason. His use of mathematical objects and operations allowed him to create works that play with perspective and conceptions of reality, creating impossible constructions and infinite […]
“The airplane has unveiled for us the true face of the earth.” Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, Wind, Sand and Stars Imagine life as Leonardo da Vinci: you want to know everything. The land, the sky, how things work, how things within invisible spheres exist, how to make brand new […]
Sundance artist Kent Christensen takes human obsession seriously: Like food, especially food, with an emphasis on dessert. And typically, that is what he paints. He recalls growing up “in the orange, lemon, and avocado groves of Southern California, where I acquired a fondness for orange crate labels, pop […]
In the memoir An American (Homeless) in Paris, the reader is invited to la mansion of author Chris Ames, a tent pitched atop an abandoned golf course overlooking the bourgeois center of Paris. Having returned from a sabbatical year of travel after being extricated from French domesticity as […]
Collecting and displaying damaged artifacts, like broken pottery and scuffed postcards, was almost certainly a matter of necessity before it became a preference, but if the choice is between a flawless replacement and an original that shows a mixed patina of age, history, and prior condition, the latter […]
When she’s creating her paintings, Sunny Belliston Taylor thinks in terms of “constructing” an image, or “building” a surface. “I piece visual information together in a way that feels very sculptural,” she says. “And although my works are flat, I’m always concerned with their objecthood, the way they are […]
The work of Alwin Nikolais presented in Ririe-Woodbury Dance Company’s Strata spanned three decades, but the exploratory nature of Nikolais’ work appears to transcend time. What was once progressive still feels to be so; while others have emulated areas Nikolais pioneered, his own work maintains its sense of existing on […]
“Reader, this is a record of loss and abundance. Let me be clear – what is vulnerable has potential for change. Reader, as this is consequential, so let us be systematic.” So opens an excision poem by Devon Wootten, whose text overlays Nicole Pietrantoni’s commanding, cascading digital landscapes […]
Ballet West’s production of Sir Frederick Ashton’s 1948 story ballet Cinderella, last performed by the company in 2013, was well-wrought and thoroughly charming. Production decisions were made in appreciation of the structurally simple narrative of the fairytale couched in timeless pastiche. The sparseness of the classic staging left space […]
Shawn Porter’s works are derived from observation, developed by idea, and realized through a mastery of diverse materials and technique. The physicality of his installations capture the viewer with an aesthetic composed of formal elements and a playful taste for pushing the boundaries of material, balance and weight, […]
Jean Valentine, when once asked about the difference between a short poem and a longer poem, answered that a short poem was “like putting your face in icy water.” The water in Mike White’s Addendum to a Miracle, winner of the Anthony Hecht Poetry Prize in Britain, is […]
Two artists featured at Art Access, beginning Feb. 16, bring similar precision to abstract design using different mediums. Eric Fairclough paints with acrylic or aerosol paint on birch panels, while Jessica Springman cuts her geometric designs out of paper using a very sharp knife. Fairclough is a […]
Figurative artist William "Bill Whitaker died on March 6, aged 74. We remember him with this interview, conducted in 2007 by the late Ehren Clark.
The Ascension of Classical Arts: An Interview With William Whitaker
Many are aware of classical art, but most are unaware of the fullness of the tradition, whose elements are so fundamental to the basic structure of painting, sculpture, and architecture. It was a tradition that had its genesis with the Greeks, the Romans, subsequently the Renaissance revival, and a 400-year dominance of the French Academy, only to become obscured, lost amidst the paths of the modern. With limitless forms of contemporary art, are we to find classical art, in its pure and original state, a part of the forefront of mainstream art once more?
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