Degas at the Clark
My latest for The New Criterion.
Exhibition Note: On “Edgar Degas: Multi-Media Artist in the Age of Impressionism” at the Clark Art Institute, Williamstown, Massachusetts is presently posted at The New Criterion and forthcoming in the September print edition. Let me know if you need access.
Content at DMJ is free but paid subscriptions keep it coming. Please consider one for yourself and thank you for reading.
Our current title in the Asynchronous Studio Book Club is Abstraction and Empathy: A Contribution to the Psychology of Style by Wilhelm Worringer. For more information, see the ASBC homepage.
“Franklin Einspruch: Tangibilia” is an online exhibition representing the physical one in New York in June 2024.
Dissident Muse’s first publication, Backseat Driver by James Croak, is available now at Amazon.
Aphorisms for Artists: 100 Ways Toward Better Art by Walter Darby Bannard is out now at Allworth Press. More information is available at the site for the book. If you own it already, thank you; please consider reviewing the book at Amazon, B&N, or Goodreads.
As for the Lethière (real surname Guillon) show, I have no problem with it as such, only with what's behind it. In other words, the Clark would not be doing a big show on a now-obscure Neoclassical painter if there were no sociopolitical motive, meaning for purely artistic reasons. Not a good look.
Yes, the laundress is superb. Pity there's no particular message or politics involved, which leaves it as mere art, which of course is no longer enough--assuming it's much of anything at all.