War on Kinkade 02, by Jeff Bennett. The late Thomas Kinkade took romanticism to absurd levels. His glowing highlights look like barn fires and his pastel peachy highlights are as hyper-saturated as a 1970s album cover. One generally shrinks from discussing him, because he was what he was—a painter of kitsch. There’s certainly no point […]

Niagara, 1857, by Frederic Edwin Church Yesterday, I talked about the differences between what is actually present in a landscape and what an artist paints. This morning I thought I’d look at a subject I know intimately: Niagara Falls. Distant View of Niagara Falls, 1830, Thomas Cole Thomas Cole, the patriarch of the Hudson River School, […]

Henry Raeburn’s The Reverend Robert Walker Skating on Duddingston Loch  (better known as The Skating Minister) manages to romanticize both the landscape and the Scottish character. The rise of Romanticism meant that the Scots were no longer defined (by themselves or others) as a marginal, occupied people; they were now dramatic, rugged primitives. What then to […]

The artist at work… November is NaNoWriMo, or National Novel Writing Month, when a quarter million Americans sign up to write a novel in a month. This is my daughter’s maddest, gladdest time of the year. She is remarkably disciplined, setting herself a goal of around 1700 words a day and consistently meeting it. (She’s […]

Banksy—as everyone in the world knows—was recently in New York. While there, he submitted the above screed to the New York Times (which, recognizing a publicity stunt, didn’t print it). Apparently Banksy never saw the late, lamented Twin Towers, or he’d know better than to call the new buildings an “eyesore.” Since that ghastly day […]