A tryptic is an early form of Christian Art, dating back to the Middle Ages but thanks to artists like Francis Bacon, it still speaks to modern, perhaps non-religious, artists. Francis Bacon has kept the idea of dividing a painting into three panels but his tryptics are so large that it seems even the tryptic format cannot contain his creative output. Our emotions cannot be contained, the theme cannot be defined within the boundaries of a canvas. Perhaps that is why frames seem to restrict and finalize a painting in a false way. There is no beginning or end to a painting. Usually a tryptic di ..read more

What images come to mind when you think of the work of Marc Chagall? If you’re like me, you’ll think of the boyhood scenes of his native Vitebsk in Russia, the stain glass windows of the Metropolitan Opera in New York City, the surreal characters of his dreams that populate his canvasses. I’m guessing that depictions of the crucifixion of Jesus might be the last thing you would think of. Yet, beginning in 1938, Chagall would go on to create a series of striking and unforgettable images of the Crucifixion. I recently saw one of Chagall’s profoundly disturbing crucifix paintings in the exhibit ..read more

In a previous blog article, I followed the steps of young Modigliani in Venice. Not much of his work survives that period. He left Italy disillusioned. His friends spoke of Paris as the avant-garde capital of early 20th century Western Art, so he left for Paris in 1906 hoping that he too would find success there. It was not to be his fate. He died destitute at the young age of 35. So on my latest trip to the French capital, I wanted to experience Modigliani’s Paris. And that meant exploring first Montmartre and then Montparnasse where he lived until his death. As luck would have it, the trip ..read more

I saw these three Bacon works at the De’ Visi Mostruosi e Caricature from Leonardo da Vinci to Bacon Exhibition in Venice at Palazzo Loredan during February 2023. Although not a triptych per se, I cannot help to consider it a small triptych, especially the way the works are hung. Francis Bacon unapologetically worked from photographs. If you have ever seen images of his working space, you would have noticed photographs everywhere, many of them trampled on, torn and crumpled on the floor. Bacon eloquently tells David Sylvester who records it in the published Interviews with Francis Bacon: “I ..read more

White Balls on Walls was a slogan of the Guerrilla Girls as they protested the racism and sexism in the art world. The time was 1985. Here we are at the Stedelijk Museum of Modern Art in Amsterdam in 2019 where its director and curators are finally sitting down to address the fact that indeed most of the work in their museum is by white men. I found this documentary very irritating. For the better part of an hour and a half, the (largely white) curator/administrator group of the museum agonize and pull apart the various “problems” involved with bringing fine-art diversity to their institution ..read more

Memento mori is translated from Latin to mean ‘remember you must die’. Edvard Munch’s art reminds us to reflect on our mortality. Munch’s work was obsessed with memento mori, not just as he got older but throughout his life. It is not hard to understand why Munch was obsessed. He tells us that his mother and his paternal grandfather, as well many members of his extended family, died of tuberculosis. If they did not succumb to death, they suffered life-long consequences. Munch believed that he had inherited the seed of madness from his father and a weak constitution from his mother. He writes ..read more

Sheer serendipity led me to this 13th century Italian sculpture from Bologna, tucked away in a small room in the medieval Cluny Museum of Paris. This solitary figure expresses the quiet, dignified life of the scholar. It brought me back to a series of tomb sculptures I had seen in Bologna – tomb decorations that mesmerized and delighted me and that were unlike anything I had ever seen before. I had seen beautiful tomb sculptures before. In Rome’s Palazzo Massimo, I had seen tomb sculptures that expressed the solemnity and honor thought due a member of the imperial family. I had seen a sarcoph ..read more

It is always a moving experience when I visit San Francesco della Vigna in the Castello section of Venice. I make a beehive for the Cappella Santa. This chapel has one of Bellini’s Madonna and Child paintings over the altar. The chapel is dark and I compose myself. I need the change to activate the light that will illuminate the painting but I am not ready yet. To know that I am about to come face to face, all by myself, with a work of sheer beauty by one of my favorite painters is too much to bear. The coin goes in and there it is. The expressions of the figures are somber. The path they are ..read more

Dialogue with Sherry Fyman at the Oskar Kokoschka exhibition in Paris. October 2022 Sherry and I had first discovered Oskar Kokoschka in Vienna in 1913. We both liked his paintings but it is only by seeing an artist's work over and over again that you can start to appreciate an artist. Nearly 10 years later we got that chance. Rossella There are some elements of composition in this painting that I find very interesting. The reds around the eyes and the hands draw you to the parts of the work that are the most emotional, the center of the painting, but the figure is facing in profile - taking ..read more

NoMad stands for North of Madison Square Park. It is the Manhattan neighborhood boarded by East 25th Street to the South, East 30th to the North, Sixth Avenue to the West and Madison and Lexington Avenues to the East. See NoMad through the eyes of an artist. The Churchill Tavern is on my block on East 28th St. I understand they play Churchill’s speeches in the bathroom. Did you know Winston Churchill’s grandparents lived at 41 East 26th Street? Did you know Winston Churchill turned to painting when his political career was not going well and continued to paint through his old age? My tour of ..read more