Arabesques at the Clark Art Institute traces the influence of a curving line that feels as though it moves freely across the page, from Islamic art to 19th-century Europe.
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Renoir touches the body with light at the Clark Art Institute
Pierre Auguste Renoir is known as a painter of optimism. His scenes brim with light and color. Adriatic blue water laps close enough to touch. Men and women sit at cafe tables, laughing under lime trees and lanterns. Couples waltz outdoors on warm nights. He is one of the founders […]
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Women Artists launch careers in Paris 1850 to 1910 — Summer show at the Clark Art Institute
Rosa Bonheur had won international fame for her scenes of horse fairs and ploughing oxen. She went to abattoirs and open markets to study animals, and she dissected them to learn their anatomy, like Leonardo Da Vinci learning the chambers of the human heart. But she had to get a […]
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A collage shows the first statewide Artweek festival in images
Get behind the scenes, get muddy, get up close to paper and paint and clay. ArtWeek crossed the state to the Berkshires in April and May 2018 with dozens of events, most of them free …
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Artweek festival crosses Massachusetts and the Berkshires
The Germans called them the Night Witches. In World War II they flew planes made mostly of wood and canvas at night, without parachutes or radios. They were a Russian regiment, a few hundred women as young as 17. In 1941, the Soviet air force became the first in the […]
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Cubist and Surrealist encounters at the Clark — BTW column
The cloth of her shirt ripples like light on water, and above her three circles of light shine like bubbles or sun on a lens. This is a self-portrait. Dora Maar was about 28 when she made it. I can imagine her in her darkroom, shaping light and shade on […]
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Northern Berkshire museums meet in color field abstraction and colossal collage
In 1999, the summer Mass MoCA opened, Robert Rauschenberg came several times to see his work installed in the football-field-sized gallery in building 5. The 1/4 Mile or 2 Furlong Piece gathered images from athletes and animals to umbrellas and planets. In collage or silkscreened onto fabrics, aluminum and copper, […]
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Art in her hands at International Women’s Day — By the Way column
Women known around the world in art and music have come to the Berkshires, and we remember them as Women’s History Month honors International Women’s Day.
Read articleVincent Van Gogh: Painting nature at the Clark Art Institute
As a boy he knows the names of birds and collects beetles in glass jars. As a young man teaching himself to paint he finds perspective in alleys of poplars, texture in birds’ nests and color in petals. He came to Paris to discover Impressionism, and he left it again […]
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Clark Art Institute shows Van Gogh at a turning point
A dark stack of peat at sunset may not feel like Van Gogh — not in watercolor. A river at dusk softly undercuts its banks of dark mud with a fringe of long grass. Farmhouses sit low in the background, almost lost against the tree line. He was 30 when […]
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