Michael Kimmelman on Chuck Close

Self Portrait, Chuck Close

One of the most lucid writers on art, Michael Kimmelman writes about Chuck Close and a survey of his prints on exhibit at the Metropolitan Museum in 2004.

Savoring the Process

By MICHAEL KIMMELMAN

Published: Friday, January 16, 2004

"TO marvel is the beginning of knowledge, and not to marvel, the first step toward ignorance. So the Greeks said. You can test this axiom in the Chuck Close print survey now at the Metropolitan Museum."

Permalink Full Text, New York Times

Link Goggle Image Search, Chuck Close

Al Hirschfeld - Master Caricaturist

Self-Portrait, Al Hirschfeld

"(Al) Hirschfeld's art style is unique, and he is considered to be one of the most important figures in contemporary caricature, having influenced countless cartoonists. Hirschfeld's caricatures are almost always drawings of pure line with simple black ink on white paper with little to no shading or crosshatching. His drawings always manage to capture a likeness using the minimum number of lines." - Wikipedia

Caricature is an ancient art and of great value to visual artists. The caricaturist must keenly observe and understand the unique visual characteristics of an individual. To do it well, one must thoughtfully and skillfully simplify, emphasize, contextualize, and exaggerate these characteristics to create content.

Link Al Hirschfeld, Wikipedia

Link History of Caricature, Wikipedia

Link The Art of Caricaturing - A 'how-to' digitized book, Mitchell Smith, 1941, Internet Archive

Pop Art Quiz - NYTimes Interactive

A test devised by Jeremy Wolfe of Brigham and Women's Hospital and Harvard Medical School demonstrates a phenomenon known as change blindness: the frequent inability of our visual system to detect alterations to something in plain view. Try it.

Related Article

The Unheralded Pieces of the American Puzzle

Photo: Rob Shelley/National Gallery of Art

NY Times writer, Roberta Smith, comments on the recent reopening and redesign of the displays of American Art at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC.

"These 11 paintings are among 400 works of naïve art (300 paintings, 100 drawings) that the collectors Edgar William and Bernice Chrysler Garbisch gave to the National Gallery between 1935 and 1980. As a result the National Gallery may be better prepared than almost any museum on earth to bring the strands of American painting together and make their reunion stick. The institution has the prominence and the depth in both naïve painting and the traditional narrative, as the current galleries excessively demonstrate."

Permalink Full NY Times Article - The Unheralded Pieces of the American Puzzle
Link National Gallery of Art

Cezanne: Maverick, You Cast a Giant Shadow

Paul Cezanne

NY Times writer, Karen Rosenberg, comments on the exhibit, "Cezanne and Beyond," at the Philadelphia Museum of Art. It continues through May 17.

' “Cézanne and Beyond,” at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, refines that lineage for the 21st century. It builds on the museum’s 1996 Cézanne blockbuster, interspersing the works of 18 modern and contemporary artists among some 40 paintings and 20 drawings and watercolors by the prolific master of Aix-en-Provence.'

Permalink Full NY Times Article - Cezanne, Maverick You Cast a Giant Shadow
Link Philadelphia Museum of Art

Fold-Ins, Past & Present - Mad Magazine

An interesting interactive feature from a New York Times web page allows you to view and 'fold'  Al Jaffee's Fold-Ins from Mad magazine. The Fold-Ins are located on the last interior page of the magazine (1960's to present). The reader folds the page as directed to reveal a second comical image in answer to a question. Instead of the significance of the viewer's  position in actual space, it relies on the viewer to reconfigure the content of the two-dimensional image with a surprising new result.

Link New York Times

Link Mad Magazine