Renoir at The Clark: How should we feel about all that flesh?
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Renoir at The Clark: How should we feel about all that flesh?

The Clark Art Institute in Williamstown, western Massachusetts, has mounted a comprehensive exhibit of the nudes of impressionist Pierre-Auguste Renoir. It’s impossible to see these paintings and sculptures in a public setting without some complicated feelings. I’ve never visited an impressionist art exhibit with a content warning before. I visited The Clark this weekend. (If…

Reflections on the inauspicious debut of Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony

Reflections on the inauspicious debut of Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony

Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony is the greatest single piece of music humanity has ever produced. I was, however, surprised to learn that this epochal work, rather than bursting successfully onto the world’s consciousness, had a problematic and stumbling debut and took years to be recognized. There is surely a lesson here for anyone attempting to create….

Art and craft
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Art and craft

Here are a few words on what it feels to successfully create art, and why we can never really understand it. This weekend I attended “The Fabrication of Imagination,” a show put on by the Arts League of Lowell, Massachusetts. The people there were fascinating. I met Judith Wombwell, an artist originally trained as a choreographer…