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Showing posts from May, 2025

Day 416 - Sketches and character sketches in oil

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 May 3, 2025 Gallery 639 contains a number of small oil paintings, and its introductory wall sign bears the title "Oil Sketches." In fact, however, only some of the paintings are "sketches" - that is, preparatory works intended to guide larger treatments of the same subject. The remaining paintings are what I would term character studies - paintings of men and women meant not to capture a likeness, as a portrait would do, but to convey a quality that is generalizable, not tied to a particular individual. Many works of both types are by well-known artists, including Rubens, Van Dyck, and Tintoretto. My choice for today, in contrast, is by a Roman painter I'd never heard of, Orazio Borgianni, who se dates are 1578-1616. It's a relatively small (about 20 inches high and 15 inches wide) oil on canvas showing the head of an old woman.  Her forehead is deeply wrinkled; lines, too, surround her cast-down eyes. The skin above her bodice  has a crepe-y consistency I ...

Day 415 -

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 May 1, 2025 The works on display in Gallery 638 represent not a country or a time period  - the artists are Dutch, French, Anglo-Irish, German, and American; the works range in date from 1665 to 2014 - but a theme. The introductory wall sign is entitled "The Artist's Studio.," and in general, the paintings show artists at work; either they are self-portraits or portraits painted by their friends. Since a couple of the paintings depict  artists in their living quarters rather than specifically in their studios, I might opt for a somewhat more inclusive label - say, “Artists and the Act of Creation" -  but I realize that’s a quibble. Today's work is one that dominates the gallery,  Kerry James Marshall’s enormous painting (perhaps 13 feet wide and 8 feet high), which bears the name  “Untitled (Studio).” (Since it’s quite obviously. a studio, I have no idea where the “Untitled” comes from.) Painted in 2014 using acrylics on PVC boards, it stands out for any n...