One of the wonderful things about old Brooklyn houses is the way they slowly soften and relax. This doorway started as crisp shapes, but it has been trimmed and painted many times until even that wandering electric wire stapled to the right side has slowly become an organic part of the whole.      …

There is so much first rate art available these days, in museums, books, and on the web, that when you encounter a more typical mix of fine and less than fine, as in “Botticelli to Braque: Masterpieces From the National Galleries of Scotland,” recently at the de Young in San Francisco, the experience can be…

The recent show at the de Young in San Francisco, “Botticelli to Braque: Masterpieces From the National Galleries of Scotland,” was a decidedly mixed bag. Here we admire three particularly fine pieces; next week we’ll consider some of the duds and their deadening effect. Particularly fine: “The Reverend Robert Walker Skating on Duddingston Loch” (c.1795)…

Conventions in portraiture are much concerned with identifying social category. These Elizabethans can’t have been interested in making themselves the subject of some artist’s sensitive exploration of personality; they wanted their images to evoke grandeur. The more an earl’s portrait resembled a duke’s, the better he’d be pleased.   The same objective, group identification, applies…

Museum wall labels are generally pretty humdrum, but not in the Martin Family Gallery at the deYoung in San Francisco. Here, each label includes a poem by an elementary school student responding to the piece in question. This is new to me. Clearly, these kids had a rich experience, and we have some teachers/docents/curators/administrators who…

    Speaking of Kathe Kollwitz and her fixation on the theme of the peasants’ revolt (as we were last week), this etching hangs in my living room. Its powerful description arises from its monumental abstract strength– like a Franz Kline, with narrative. On the wall next to Kollwitz we have David Levine’s puckish adaptation…

Vincent Van Gogh’s early work is heavy on the hardships of peasant life. As time passes, however, he becomes less involved with subject, and more with execution. Manner overtakes matter. The subject is much the same, but the dancing, suggestive brush strokes are what engage the viewer, and set a lighter tone. As opposed to…

The city views of Jean-Jacques Sempe manage to be lovingly observed, intriguing and complex, without getting bogged down in all the detail. Facades, roof vents, windows, cornices, traffic—rich as it is, it’s all summerized so that the eye isn’t diverted from the central point, the wonderful, intimate moment of delight. And yet that, too, is…

Vitality is the first principle of the work of Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, so it seems natural that if he were in a teasing mood he would go after the pallid “Sacred Grove” (1884), an ideal landscape by Pierre Puvis de Chavannes, the noted symbolist. (If a landscape can be considered ideal with so many majorly…

“The quality of mercy is not strained; It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven Upon the place beneath. It is twice blest; It blesseth her that gives and her that takes . . . ”  * Or not, as the case may be.   Reader Paul Hoffman points out that Hazel Bryan, the white…