Why was one of the twentieth century’s greatest Surrealists spending time at a Tibetan Buddhist center in upstate New York? At the time, I didn’t know to ask. Years later, after I had become familiar with her paintings, the answer would become obvious.
I left Bard SummerScape admiring Richard Strauss’s magnificent score, the exceptional singing, and the imaginative staging. What I didn’t expect was that the opera’s bewildering story would send me back to Homer, Euripides, and the enduring mystery of Helen of Troy.Continue Reading →
Long before personal branding became a marketing strategy, Frida Kahlo had become a brand all her own. Her face now appears on clothing, coffee mugs, tote bags, cosmetics, and countless souvenirs. Yet somehow the commercialization has never diminished the emotional power of the paintings themselves.Continue Reading →
They worshipped her, they painted her, they imitated her, and then they forgot her. Loie Fuller, the 19th-century dancer who inspired an extraordinary body of sculpture, drawings, photographs, and color lithographs, was captured by artists in almost every conceivable position and creation.Continue Reading →