3,213 words
Andy Goldsworthy, Ice Ball
The English sculptor Andy Goldsworthy is a practitioner of Land art, a practice that seeks to create art from natural materials and settings. Other practitioners of Land art include Richard Long, Robert Smithson, and David Nash. Whilst there is this common element of setting art in (or creating it from) the landscape, there is also a particularly striking quality to Andy Goldsworthy’s work that sets him apart from other Land artists. In short, this particular quality of his work might be termed sacred or numinous. For this reason he is both lauded as a contemporary shaman and derided as a twee pastoralist. Neither extremity really reveals much about Goldsworthy’s art. (more…)
Los portadores de la antorcha (The Torch Bearers) (cast aluminum, University of Madrid, 1955)
2,069 words
Despite the triumph of modernism, a handful of American sculptors, including Anna Hyatt Huntington, creator of The Torch Bearers (1955), continued to work in the neoclassical mode prior to and after WWII. Huntington was highly regarded for her large-scale public commissions at a time when the preferred product of most women sculptors was the small bronze statuette. In the words of one art journalist, she “made a name for herself depicting fierce creatures, strong leaders, and legendary heroines.”
Born in Cambridge, Massachusetts in 1876 (more…)
155 words
H. P. Lovecraft is not just an inspiration to writers but also to visual artists who wish to translate his uncanny and sometimes elusive descriptions into visible realities. Harold Arthur McNeill is one of my favorite Lovecraftian artists. This portfolio of his paintings, drawings, sculptures, graphics, and book-bindings will show you why.
Mr. McNeill makes his living from his art, so if you like his work, please contact him at [email protected] to arrange a purchase or a commission. (more…)
Camille Paglia
595 words
On Wednesday, October 24, 2012, some friends and I met at Jupiter Pizza in Berkeley and then went to see Camille Paglia speaking on her latest book Glittering Images at the Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive.
The auditorium was almost packed. Paglia spoke for about 90 minutes, answered one question for about 10 minutes more, then signed books for an hour or so. (more…)
Donald De Lue, Rocket Thrower, 1964
2,236 words
For nearly 50 years between 1940 and 1988, Donald De Lue (1897–1988) may have executed more monumental public commissions than any other sculptor of his generation. An iconoclastic figurative artist in an era dominated by apostles of ugliness in art, art criticism, and academia, De Lue’s monumental sculpture adorns such sites as Valley Forge, the Gettysburg Battlefield, Omaha Beach at Normandy, and the 1964 New York World’s Fair.
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“Stetind” by Norwegian painter Peder Balke
time: 33:37 / 4,984 words
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For Part One, click here (more…)
time: 56:15 / 7,643 words
Audio Version: To listen in a player, click here. To download the mp3, right-click here and choose “save link as.”
To subscribe to our podcasts, click here.
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155 words
H. P. Lovecraft is not just an inspiration to writers but also to visual artists who wish to translate his uncanny and sometimes elusive descriptions into visible realities. Harold Arthur McNeill is one of my favorite Lovecraftian artists. This portfolio of his paintings, drawings, sculptures, graphics, and book-bindings will show you why. (more…)
Frank Frazetta, “Death Dealer”
1,429 words
Frank Frazetta was an artist who created countless paintings, comics, and book and album covers with a focus on the superhero, fantasy, and science fiction genres. He lived between 1928 and 2010. (more…)
Auguste Rodin, 1840–1917
1,503 words
Sculpture, as an art form, is not native to Northwest Europe. Northern Europeans excel in painting, graphics, drawing, music, and dance: aesthetic forms more individualistic than the grandiose formalism of monumental sculpture. Sculptural development needed large metropolitan areas, rich patrons, and masses of artisans. Thus, sculpture came to us through the Classical corridor of Egypt, Crete, Greece, and finally the Roman copies that diffused into Northern Europe.
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(New Haven: Yale University Press, 1990) is the greatest work of art and literary criticism since the days of Matthew Arnold and Walter Pater. It is a work of extraordinary ambition, the most sweeping and synoptic book on Western civilization since Spengler’s Decline of the West. 
