Modern art remains a mystery to most of us, and the paintings of Paul Cézanne might be the most perplexing of all. Neither fish nor fowl, they seem to hover somewhere between failed representation and almost, but not quite, abstraction. And yet, as Alex Danchev’s recent biography Cézanne: A Life…  [more]

A painting is a vulnerable artifact. Its existence is precarious, subject to ridicule, misunderstanding, vandalism, rogue conservators and, recently, Hurricane Sandy. Ross King’s latest book, Leonardo and The Last Supper, tells the fascinating story of the precarious existence of a masterpiece that has captivated our attention for 500 years. As…  [more]

A stunning desert house by the late Frank Lloyd Wright has been spared from demolition - for the moment. The house, designed in 1952 by the then-elderly architect for his son David, is a swirling concrete confection that confounds one’s expectations of what is possible with “cinder block” construction, as…  [more]

Unless you’re a devotee of inside architecture (a fake trope I just made up to sound like “inside baseball”), you’ve probably never heard of Paul Rudolph. Rudolph was in the second tier of the Modern Movement, beloved of architects for his sensational monochromatic renderings, but largely unknown outside the profession.…  [more]

The Empire State Building has once again lost its claim to being New York City’s tallest tower (having been eclipsed several times in the “world’s tallest” category). With 100 floors complete and counting, the Freedom Tower, aka 1 World Trade Center, has passed the venerable Art Deco landmark recently and…  [more]