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So, the other day I thought I’d take a quick look at the history of fabric and clothes, then report.  That turned out like taking a quick glance at the entire worldwide history of art.  In other words, it includes virtually everything.  First off,  everyone was naked for who knows how many tens of thousands of years or whether they had...

Jackson Pollack (1912-1926), Number 19, 1954, 30 7/8″ x 22 5/8″, Paint dripped on canvas Our smoky San Francisco skies these days put me in mind of Jackson Pollock’s drip paintings. The one above is actually a bit unusual because he signed it upper left as a vertical and it is more ‘conveniently’ sized than his enormous, wall sized...

Cathedrale Nortre-Dame de Chartres So, appropriately because it was Sunday, I took a quick trip to Chartres.  (via Zoom and an artist guide who is leads tours to the site).  It was my first time ‘there’ and really one of the few times I’ve been so attentive to the details of church architecture and history.As architecturally significant...

Johannes Vermeer, Girl Reading a Letter Before an Open Window, 1657-59, oil on canvas It’s thought this young woman Vermeer painted around 1659 wants out of that open window and into a larger life, perhaps with the person who has sent the love letter she is reading.  Why?  Well, in the mid-17th century (their Golden Age) the Dutch made...

Edward Hopper, Western Motel, 1957, oil on canvas So, today I’ve been thinking about the relationships between Richard Diebenkorn’s and Edward Hopper’s art.  They aren’t accidental.  When Richard Diebenkorn was learning to paint in the 1950’s, Abstract Expressionism was the vogue.  So much so that, in a determination...

Granville Redmond, Malibu Coast, Spring, @1910, oil on conavas Richard Diebenkorn, Cityscape #1, 1963, 60 1/4 x 50 1/2″, oil on canvas Which painting do you prefer? One of my favorite art critics recently wrote of the painting on the bottom “There may be no more beautiful painting of California than this 1963 work by Richard Diebenkorn.”*  And,...