article recommendations: art & art history
fragments on artists, paintings, and visual inspiration
Here are twenty five or so articles about some artists, paintings, and art history in general! I’ve written a short description / introduction of each article and added more supplementary reading or video essays to some of them as I see fit.
Check this out too:
article recommendations: literature
Here are twenty or so articles about some classics, some of my favorite books and authors, and literature in general! I’ve written a short description / introduction of each article and added more supplementary reading to some of them.
This isn’t exactly an article, but I always tell people it’s a great starting point for anyone wanting to learn more about art and aesthetics itself. All of his essays are linked above, but it really helped me to buy the actual book and read it. His essays were originally a television series, which is also online if you want to watch while you read.
In Dark Times, I Sought Out the Turmoil of Caravaggio’s Paintings | New York Times
The work the artist made near the end of his life changed my understanding of both beauty and suffering.
Teju Cole explores Caravaggio’s later life through his paintings, and writes in tandem how it deepened his understanding of beauty and suffering. Caravaggio, who painted during the Italian Baroque period, is famous for his expressive paintings and the intersections between beauty and suffering. Cole explores this specific quality of Caravaggio’s paintings and how there’s a timelessness to it that can be applied in turmoil in the current day.
Read with an article on Caravaggio’s dramatic life and paintings
Periwinkle, the Color of Poison, Modernism, and Dusk | The Paris Review
The Hue’s Hue column is probably my favorite column of all time, as Katy Kelleher takes a color and writes a profile on it, from its history to examining its uses throughout time. One of the most fascinating one she has written about is a profile on the color Periwinkle.
When the periwinkles are blooming, it’s hard to have eyes for anything else. The delicate mist is an impossibly soft color, like clouds descending into twilight, like the snowfall in an Impressionist masterpiece.
Some of my other favorites: Verdigris, Chartreuse, Marian Blue