Word: whistlerisms
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...boldness, not to say the rashness, with which Soyer has reached into the past for forms that have faded away after a century or more of desuetude. His picture is modeled after Hommage à Delacroix by Henri Fantin-Latour, who in 1864 lined up seven artists, including Manet and Whistler, and three writers, including Baudelaire, who had been Delacroix's admirers. Fantin-Latour then judiciously posed them beside a portrait of the great French Romantic painter. The composition is as simple as the relationships. Soyer, on the other hand, chose a much more difficult situation to compose. He selected...
...words until they gleam, and watch them fly in lovely arcs toward one's fellow creatures. How happy Sir Edward Coke must have been when he told Sir Walter Raleigh: "There never lived a viler viper upon the face of the earth than thou." How empty Whistler must have felt at the end of his life when he lamented that he had "hardly a warm personal enemy left." Naturally, such violence is not for everyone. It takes a person of extremely bad temper, a truly unredeemable sourpuss, to feel comfortable with insults, to take deep pleasure in things like...
There were two James McNeill Whistlers. One was the artist of the putdown. Oscar Wilde: "I wish I'd said that." Whistler: "You will, Oscar, you will." The other was the artist of subtle landscapes and unprecedented arrangements of color and light. The wit was amply recorded in his autobiography The Gentle Art of Making Enemies...
...innovator is revealed in The Paintings of James McNeill Whistler (Yale; two volumes; $150). In a way, these volumes, edited by four art historians, represent the truest kind of biography, for the decades have worn away old enmities, and what remains is the record of a genius who grew from American prodigy to European master. The attractive work should win the painter a new audience, and therefore deserves an alternative title: The Gentler Art of Making Friends...
...formed and shaped by the same principles of beauty as any painting or sculpture. By the time he was 31, Tiffany had abandoned "pure" painting almost entirely to turn his talents to interior decoration and design, with a strong predilection for the Oriental simplicities and tastes preached by Whistler...