By Nina Heyn – Your Culture Scout After John Singer Sargent died in 1925, his formal paintings of English and American socialites went out of fashion. Throughout the 20th century, the art world was giddy about other things—abstracts, installation art, pop—visual ideas very much removed from the realistic portraiture that was Sargent’s specialty. In that…
By Nina Heyn – Your Culture Scout This summer, the Tate Gallery in London is presenting an exhibition entitled “Now You See Us: Women Artists in Britain 1520-1920,” showcasing 400 years of women creating art in Great Britain. Some of them, like Artemisia Gentileschi and Angelika Kauffmann, came from other countries in search of clients…
By Nina Heyn – Your Culture Scout No matter how much or how little we know about fine art, we can all spot the difference between paintings by old masters and the art that was launched by post-Classical artists—Impressionists, Modernists, and representatives of all subsequent movements, from Surrealism to Abstractionism. There are various reasons for…
By Nina Heyn- Your Culture Scout The Venice Biennale is an international art show that alternates between architecture and fine art every other year. 2024 is the year for artworks, and Venice, the city already crowded with thousands of tourists, is now also home to artists, critics, and viewers who have been flocking to the…
Florence’s Uffizi Galleries—which contain the most famous Renaissance art on the planet—are, unfortunately, best avoided this spring. The size of the crowds is staggering, including huge field-trip groups of high-schoolers and tour groups with guides who block the view of every painting in sight. Right now, those elegant Uffizi halls could be the set for…
By Nina Heyn – Your Culture Scout “Appreciation of works of art requires organized effort and systematic study. Art appreciation can no more be absorbed by aimless wandering in galleries than can surgery be learned by casual visits to a hospital.” ~ Albert C. Barnes When Dr. Albert C. Barnes—physician, inventor, chemist, entrepreneur, and one…
By Nina Heyn – Your Culture Scout Philadelphia’s main art museum was established in 1876 as part of the centennial celebration of the Declaration of Independence. Since then, the Philadelphia Museum of Art (we’ll call it PMA for short) has been expanding its catalog to its current grand total of almost a quarter of a…
By Nina Heyn- Your Culture Scout In Asia, being born in a Year of the Dragon means to arrive in an auspicious year; dragons, in Chinese astrology, are symbols of power, good luck, and success. Western culture—the modern take from Game of Thrones notwithstanding—treats dragons as monsters to be vanquished. These two radically different views…
Canadian director Denis Villeneuve has always made interesting films. After his intriguing sci-fi tale Arrival, he was brave and talented enough to make Blade Runner 2049, which is a sequel to the iconic Ridley Scott’s dark vision of an AI-populated future. If you have not seen Dune: Part One directed by Villeneuve in 2021, it…
The theme of the rarefied world of New York socialites in the 1970s is being explored in the second season of the ongoing TV series Feud. This season’s story, Capote vs. The Swans, portrays the rise and fall of a gossipy relationship between Truman Capote and some of Manhattan’s most prominent rich and famous, who…