Stories for February 2008

Different Strokes: Hans Hofmann

February 29, 2008

Hans Hofmann's Fermented Soil Fermented Soil (1965) by Hans Hofmann contains such fresh joy and vigor it is hard to believe it was painted by a man in his mid-eighties. It swings like a jazz sextet. Hofmann was right in...

Framework: Artistic Collaborations Over Time

February 21, 2008

Elihu Vedder's The Sun God In the Washington Post, Style Section Editor John Pancake discusses Elihu Vedder's The Sun God in an interview with SAAM framer Martin Kotler, who faced a challenge in building a frame for the piece. Originally,...

Drawing on Love: Artists' Love Letters

February 13, 2008

Jackson Pollock and Lee Krasner, ca. 1946. Photograph by Ronald Stein. Jackson Pollock and Lee Krasner papers, ca. 1905-1984. Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution. One of my all-time favorite stories is a love story between Russian poet Anna Akhmatova...

John Alexander in Conversation

February 12, 2008

John Alexander, La Casa de los Locos, 1991, oil on canvas, Collection of Mr. and Mrs. Robert C. Larson. © John Alexander Texas-born John Alexander, whose thirty-year retrospective fills the main galleries at SAAM, lived up to his introduction by...

The Ryder Moon

February 11, 2008

Albert Pinkham Ryder's Moonlight It must be a dozen or more years since the night I took a ferry ride with a friend across Long Island Sound. Hilda Morley, a poet from the influential Black Mountain School, and I were...

Kogod and Flickr

February 1, 2008

Photo of Kogod Courtyard by Tom Klancer via Flickr DCist observes that the Flickr response to the Kogod Courtyard has been enthusiastic. Judging from a selection of Flickr photographs, the response to the light available in the courtyard has indeed...