Word: painters
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...16th century Italian painter Dosso Dossi (1486?-1542) isn't a big name in America, unlike his contemporaries Titian, Raphael and Michelangelo. In fact, the show of his work that has just opened at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City--it was shown late last year in his home city of Ferrara, and will go to the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles in April--is the first retrospective he has ever had. It comes on the 400th anniversary of the dispersal of most of his work, which was taken from Ferrara by papal edict...
Dosso's job was hardly simple. A 16th century court painter was expected to turn out anything and everything, from ceremonial portraits to painted coach panels, from large allegorical paintings to banners for tourneys, costumes for masques, sets for the theater (which Alfonso delighted in) and perhaps the occasional crucifix or emblem of chastity for the ducal mistress's bedroom. Dosso had to second-guess the veering tastes of his boss--flatter him, keep him interested. And then there were the courtiers to deal with...
...Titians ever gave posterity that kind of trouble, but another Venetian painter always has--Giorgione, creator of the lyrical and utterly mysterious The Tempest. Dosso's work appealed to tastes fostered by Giorgione. And Giorgione certainly influenced Dosso, particularly in his treatment of landscape. From him Dosso learned how to unify his figures and the details of landscape around them--lush, wild, tinged with ominousness--in a comprehensive atmosphere instead of going from one sharp detail to another; and the weather effects of Dosso's paintings--storms, lightning bolts, sunsets, blue distances--are Giorgionesque...
Once you finally do get to the articles, it's easy to search for entries by keyword or browse by topic. I found myself going cross-eyed reading the lengthy essays on topics ranging from the history of Carnival to the brief life of American painter Jean-Michel Basquiat, but switching to the largest font option was a big help...
...wasn't. (That was Isadora Duncan for you.) But in 1929, when Brassai was finally launched into the embrace of photography, after years of resisting its charms, it really was for keeps. Though the young Hungarian arrived in Paris in 1924 ambitious to be a painter, he spent his first years working as a journalist. Eventually he started taking pictures to accompany his articles. It was his initial embarrassment at mere picture taking that led him to publish his photos under a pseudonym, Brassai, a Hungarian word meaning "from Brasso," his childhood village. He wanted to save his birth name...