Word: painterly
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...switched without announcement or ceremony last month, but not because the subject was unknown. The reason is that former President Richard Nixon, 71, never did like the portrait of him by Alexander Clayton that hung for three years outside the East Room. So last January, Nixon personally commissioned Houston Painter J. Anthony Wills, 72, to produce a new likeness for $20,000. Wills, who had done Dwight Eisenhower's White House portrait and had also rendered Henry Kissinger for the State Department, went to New York City to see his subject. But he tried to paint...
Letters (Abrams; 311 pages; $67.50). That is not the fault of Barbara Ehrlich White, a Renoir expert who has written a thorough and commendably lucid biography of the great French painter. The problem stems from the size of this magnificent book, which is every bit as big and heavy as it has to be to accommodate hundreds of sumptuous reproductions. They too, of course, distract attention from the text: voluptuous nudes, enchanted gardens, glittering portraits and skies filled to the brim with sunlight. Dedicated readers will learn that Renoir's long life was not as serene and untroubled...
...change reflects new fashions in art. Impassive styles of the 1960s and '70s - the chaste morsels of minimalism, the arctic pleasures of conceptualism - are now well in retreat before a wave of gesture, expressionism and all the tumult of "painterly" painting. Encouraged by a climate favoring vigor and personality, artists are propelling the brush past the borders of the canvas or turning out sculpturally elaborated frames that complement work in which the hand prevails. At the same time, a general drift away from resolutely flat abstractions and a return to representational painting have revived notions of the picture...
...innocent eye, an intelligent heart: these are the gifts that nature bestows on her artists. As a painter of the second stature, Monsieur Ladmiral (Louis Ducreux) possesses each gift in decorous sufficiency. His eye captures moments with piercing clarity; his heart helps him appreciate their evanescence. For old Monsieur is going to die soon. Now each day is unique-even this summer Sunday at his country home about 1912, when his children and grandchildren will come to visit, and memories will flip by like snapshots from a lost family album...
...takes her papa to a country inn for a chat and one lingering waltz before nightfall; then, as abruptly as she came, Irène drives off to patch up a lovers' quarrel. Dinner, farewells, and a last reflection for Monsieur on his role as parent and painter...