There’s not a whole lot of Goya in “Goya’s Ghosts”, the 2006 movie by detail-oriented, lush filmmaker Milos Foreman. Religious persecution, Dickensian plot twists, and Natalie Portman’s tears, sure. But in this wholly fictitious tale played out in a true-to-life historical setting, Stellan Sarsgård as the great painter of violence and intolerance is more of concerned observer as the ... Read More »
As an article over at Arts21 notes, “The new Chris Ofili mid-career retrospective at Tate Britain feels like walking through a mixtape of semi-obscure black American music from the last 50 years, created by a middle-aged record shop owner with an encyclopedic knowledge of musical history and a body odor problem.” Actually, it’s not just the backward glance that ... Read More »
As we head out for the weekend and, hopefully, you head off toward the airport, we thought we might leave you with these useful tips from the pros at Gadling for incorporating the lessons we learn as we travel into our daily lives (one can’t be up in the air or leagues from home all the time, after all). ... Read More »
A fascinating little piece in the New York Times today looks at the once-contentious relationship between the Renaissance arts scenes of Florence and Rome through two current exhibitions just a few neighborhoods away from each other in Manhattan. While Rome is represented in one corner by the Morgan Museum & Library’s Rome After Raphael exhibition, which features a slew ... Read More »
Our forthcoming title, “Art + Travel Europe: Step into the Lives of Five Famous Painters”, tours you through the life of Francisco José de Goya y Lucientes (“Goya” to you and me) in his beloved Madrid. But for those of you who want a full serving of Goyas that you haven’t seen at New York’s Metropolitan but aren’t cashing ... Read More »
In the summer of 1610, the 39-year-old painter Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio was on the run, sleeping with his hand on his sword. He had risen from selling his art on the streets of Rome to the heights of national fame. Now, he was traveling through Tuscany, hoping the law didn’t pick up on his trail before he reached Rome, ... Read More »
News comes today that the somewhat controversial “La Belle Ferronnière”, a painting most likely from the 18th Century and once questionably attributed to Leonardo Da Vinci, has sold through Sotheby’s auction house at the princely sum of $1.5 million, about twice what it was expected to garner. Beautiful as it is, “La Belle” has been through the critical ringer ... Read More »
Perhaps you remember yesterday when we noted that Chinese officials of Wulingyan National Park had renamed one of the famous peaks in that Hunan-province natural reserve after the “Hallelujah Mountains” in “Avatar”, a movie that apparently used the unique landscape to create their CGI environment. Well not so fast now. Seems that officials speaking through the State’s Xinhua news agency ... Read More »
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