Over the spring and summer I read three enjoyable books, all by first-time authors of fiction. Looking forward to more from them. Pietros Maneos, The Italian Pleasures of Gabriele Paterkallos. A lushly Romantic series of letters by young American poet on an odyssey to Rome — both contemporary Rome and the idealized and historical city […]
Three new novelists Read More »
Over the years I’ve enjoyed and learned from many of Carlin Romano’s articles in The Chronicle of Higher Education. He can do good philosophical reporting. So I picked up America the Philosophical, and I was disappointed. Romano’s thesis is that the United States is a nation of vigorous philosophical activity and — contrary to the
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Following up on a series of posts about Michelangelo, Beethoven, and Liszt. From Frederic V. Grunfeld’s very good Rodin: A Biography, the answer in the case of August Rodin is education and self education. Rodin was born into a French culture in which the large majority of the population was illiterate or semi-literate. The fact
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Does anyone know this flowing sculpture’s name, location, or creator? One suggestion I’ve received is that it’s from La Recoleta cemetery in Buenos Aires.
Sculpture name and place? Read More »
Indeed, Patrick, indeed. Click for full size. Taken in Florence, across the piazza from Santa Maria Novella.
Today’s art collectors Read More »
Shooting for Artistic Genius: When It Flourishes in the presence of real Greek temples, monuments, and amphitheatres. Awe inspiring. Greek culture, centered especially in Athens, was the fount of what art historian E. H. Gombrich called “the greatest and most astonishing revolution in the whole history of art.” The intensely personal poetry of Sappho, the
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Shooting the last two days in Florence, where republican politics, relatively free markets and innovative business, relaxed religion, and humanistic philosophy laid the groundwork for the explosion of artistic creativity in the 1400s — Brunelleschi, Masaccio, Ghirlandaio, Leonardo, Botticelli, Michelangelo, Raphael, and the list goes on. Awesome. Visual delights everywhere, a strong sense of living
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Shooting yesterday at Claude Monet’s magnificent house and grounds at Giverny, about an hour west of Paris along the Seine. It was there that he painted his beloved waterlilies. Monet left his world-class mark in two fields — painting and gardening. At Giverny he lived his final decades of a long life, after a hard-fought
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