Word: painterly
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...painter from northern Italy visited that port twice, each time on the run: from a murder charge in Rome in 1606-07, and from the vengeance of the Knights of Malta in 1609-10. He never set up a proper studio with assistants in Naples; he took no pupils, held no salon and had little talent as a courtier. Yet by word of mouth, force of reputation and the example of four or five paintings he executed there, Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio completely changed the face of Neapolitan painting at the start of the 17th century. A few months after...
...very surprising to learn that Ribera and two painter friends (Battistello Caracciolo and Corenzio) ran what amounted to an artists' Mafia in Naples, grabbing the commissions for themselves and frightening rivals with bloodcurdling threats. Poor Domenichino, the Bolognese master who had been invited to decorate the chapel of St. Gennaro in Naples' cathedral, rushed back to Rome in a state of collapse after hearing from this cabal. Grand Guignol abounded, especially in details like the amputated hand in the foreground of Massimo Stanzione's Massacre of the Innocents, which seems ready to scuttle away, like a pink...
...reputations; yet their success seems tinged with panic. They are all young (Longo is 30, Salle 31, and Garouste 37) and, of course, figurative - the pendulum of taste having now swung so far that it is practically impossible to have a rising reputation if you are a new abstract painter. Each, in his way, is a perfect subject of the "postmodernist" image machine, that powerful contraption which, modeled on corporate p.r. lines, has transformed the very nature of reputation in the art world over the past five years. But how good are they...
Fairfield Porter might well go down in history as the preppy painter par excellence. It is a wealthy and confident artist who stands next to his wood-burning stove in his chinos, blue button-down Oxford and knit tie (his work clothes) in the Self-Portrait of 1968. Then there are picnics on the golf course in Lunch Under the Elm Tree, charming portraits of perfectly attired little girls (his daughters), and a relaxing backyard clay court match in dress whites in The Tennis Game of 1972. Even Bruno, the family golden retriever, makes an appearance...
Porter, in explaining his love for the work of the Spanish painter Velazquez, once said that "it isn't that he copies nature--he doesn't impose himself upon it." Indeed, Fairfield Porter never had to interfere in the affairs of the world; he just sat been and took in the panorama around him, a panorama of, as John Updike '54 put it., "nice people, nice places, pleasantly redolent of affection and sensitivity." The results show that sometimes realism can go just as far an abstraction in imparting a unique philosophical outlook on life...