German Expats, particularly those hailing from Dresden, played decisive and undervalued roles in the development of Neoclassicism in the eighteenth century…
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Forest Bathing
Today, I did something that for me was once unremarkable but nowadays isn’t: walking in the forest of southern Sweden. For most, it was a stay indoors kind of day—chilly, thickly overcast, windy, and intermittently drizzly…
See with Your Heart
The first time I saw Gustaf Fjaestad’s magnificent pastel, The Boy Who Sees with His Heart (1898), it was love at first sight…
Holy Family
In college, I dated a really nice fellow named Chuck…
Detective Work
Last week, a major museum asked for my help in locating a work of art I adore and about which I’ve written…
Dance!
A scientist at Institut Curie in Paris recently explained how human embryo cells dance. Yes, dance. From the moment of their formation…
Midsummer
Swedish artist Anders Zorn (1860-1920) painted Midsummer Dance (1897) at a moment when, throughout Europe, many felt it important to assert and reify one’s geographical identify—local, regional, national…
Dresden
I’ve been coming to Dresden regularly (at least every other year) since the mid-1990s and it’s been fascinating to observe the city’s transformation following the fall of the Berlin Wall in November 1989….
Caspar David Friedrich
I currently find myself residing at a house in a rural German village tucked into the corner where Germany meets the Czech Republic and Poland. It’s a region where one of my first art historical loves, Caspar David Friedrich, often wandered. He captured the rolling hills, distinguished by pale nuances even at sunset, in many of his paintings, although Cross in the Mountains (painted in 1808 and now in Dresden) depicts the nearby, pointier, red sandstone peaks a few kilometers southeast….
A Walk in the Park
Since arriving in Warsaw at the beginning of April, I’ve often found myself too distracted to write….it’s partly the fault of Łazienki Park…