German Expats, particularly those hailing from Dresden, played decisive and undervalued roles in the development of Neoclassicism in the eighteenth century…
Tag: art history
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…
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…
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….
Vision: Motif from Visby
As a staunch Social Democrat from the bourgeoisie, Bergh hoped to dissolve social demographic barriers, establish common ground, and generate empathy among social layers…
Hope & Happiness
I thought about my sudden change of humor and how someone else’s success transformed my somber mood of detached concentration into a vibration of joy that lingered as a gentle quivering undercurrent…
Light, Solstice, Tradition
I confess to wanting to live in this idyllic world, one attainable through self-creation. The Larssons do-it-yourself, be yourself ethos guided me once I learned about it…
A Visit to Chantilly
During the spring and early summer of 2021 in Paris, I made numerous excursions about which I do not write in An American in Pandemic Paris. Chantilly, birthplace of whipped cream, was one of my favorites….