Imagine living every day alongside an important work of art. What if a painting today known and loved all over the world once served as the backdrop for your daily life, from family celebrations and milestone events to Sunday breakfasts and casual get-togethers with friends?
[Read more…] about Living with Frida Kahlo’s Self-Portrait with Thorn Necklace and Hummingbird
In London, the Victoria & Albert Museum extended the run of its 2018 exhibition Frida Kahlo: Making Her Self Up, remaining open for 48 hours straight in order to accommodate demand. In Mexico City, lines regularly snake around the block for entry into Casa Azul, the birthplace of Frida Kahlo and the house in which she lived with husband Diego Rivera until her death. Museums all over the world have hosted displays of Kahlo’s paintings and personal possessions in recent years, and Kahlo’s likeness appears on everything from phone cases to protective face masks, from clothing to home furnishings, from tequila bottles to dolls.
Twenty years after her death, increased international interest in Frida Kahlo (Mexican, 1907-1954) began to percolate in the late 1970s, when her work was met with renewed interest by political activists and feminist scholars. Today it is easy to see that “Fridamania” is in full swing. [Read more…] about Looking at Frida Kahlo
In 1934, publicist Reeves Lewenthal called together a group of 23 American artists to discuss his innovative plan for distributing art to the American public. [Read more…] about For the Walls of America: Prints from Associated American Artists
The turn of the twentieth century was the Golden Age of Illustration in the U.S. and the U.K., when, thanks to advances in print technology, a vigorous public appetite for finely illustrated books was met with works by illustrators such as Arthur Rackham (English, 1867-1939). [Read more…] about Take a look at the sketches in the beloved books illustrated by Arthur Rackham
“Pray forgive my frankness when I say that two of them are not only not by A.B. [Aubrey Beardsley], but are not in the least like him! It is astonishing to me how many people are taken in. Is it not perhaps because they buy a name and not a work of art? I hope that is your excuse. But you are in good company.”
— R. A. Walker (1944)
[Read more…] about Detecting forgeries of Aubrey Beardsley’s influential artworks
“Dear Miss Crawford,” writes D. H. Lawrence in a letter dated December 23, 1909, “I hope my verses won’t offend you. I know they are poor enough. But do you like my little card?” The “little card,” sent to Grace Crawford and today part of the D. H. Lawrence collection at the Ransom Center, is a small, handmade Christmas greeting card, its front and back covers decorated with watercolors by Lawrence. On the front, four bees surround a stock of delicately drooping bluebells; one bee has attached itself to a flower. On the back, Lawrence has finely rendered a mayfly, with elegantly arranged wings and legs. [Read more…] about Season’s greetings in the Ransom Center’s collections
