Why is it so hard for academics to write for a general audience about something as omnipresent and so appealing as visual art? I had planned to write an essay about a recent book on an American artist, a woman whose paintings have long deserved more attention than they’ve gotten, but I was so dismayedContinue reading “Who Cares If You Look?”
Category Archives: Writing Style
Love Everyone in the Frame. Ingrid Rowland’s Vasari and Jim Jarmusch’s Taxicabs.
“[I]n these Italian films . . . they love not just the lead characters, they love everybody in the frame, . . . they love everybody, warts and all.” Director Alexander Payne on Dino Risi’s Il Sorpasso (1962) and Italian cinema Does a writer have to like the artist he or she writes about? I think theContinue reading “Love Everyone in the Frame. Ingrid Rowland’s Vasari and Jim Jarmusch’s Taxicabs.”
F for Fake and R for . . . Rembrandt? Looking Closely with Svetlana Alpers
If you want to write about art for a wide audience, you may find yourself needing not just an argument about your particular art works, but one for art itself. Orson Welles’ F for Fake (1975) tells several stories. The first is about an art forger, the next is about his equally deceitful biographer. But through itContinue reading “F for Fake and R for . . . Rembrandt? Looking Closely with Svetlana Alpers”