The National Catholic Review

Art

  • July 21-28, 2014

    The great trinity of major postwar German artists is generally reckoned to include Gerhard Richter, Anselm Kiefer and Sigmar Polke, who all wound up studying at the Kunstakademie in Düsseldorf, where Joseph Beuys was the presiding shamanistic presence. The three might well be named elegance, agony and experiment.

  • May 26-June 2, 2014

    In 1959, Pope John XXIII redesignated the Diocese of Galveston as the Diocese of Galveston-Houston, and elevated Houston’s Sacred Heart parish to the unusual status of co-cathedral, shared with the St. Mary cathedral basilica in Galveston. As the population of Houston boomed, more than doubling in the second half of the 20th century, the diocese outgrew the space, and in 2002 Pope John Paul II approved the design of a new co-cathedral of the Sacred Heart.

  • May 12, 2014

    Whether you have lived in Paris or just visited, read about Papa and Scott and Zelda, Josephine Baker clad only in bananas or Gertrude Stein armed only with words, created your image by seeing Audrey Hepburn (sigh) in “Funny Face” and “Charade” or perhaps more recently dreamed with Woody Allen of “Midnight in Paris,” the capital of romance universally entrances. Rome is eternal. London is grand. But Paris is like a first love, real or imagined—and never...

  • His parents were horrible people. He was sickly all his life, dying eventually of an excruciating bladder cancer at only 48. His emotional life was often ungovernable. His at first rapturous marriage to a beautiful young aristocrat far above his station was plagued by suspicion, jealousy and outright brutality. And he was frequently defrauded by his most prominent patrons.

  • April 21, 2014

    The sumptuous colors, dazzling brushwork and sheer drama in the paintings of Anders Zorn (1860-1920) earned the Swedish artist fortune and fame during the Gilded Age. But Zorn’s work and name gradually fell into obscurity outside Sweden. As a result, his brilliant body of work has not been shown in the United States for 100 years—until now.

  • March 3, 2014

    The Jewishness of Jesus has seldom been rendered more clearly in art than in the crucifixion scenes of Marc Chagall. Although he was not the only Jewish artist to focus on the crucifixion, Chagall (1887–1985) made so many crucifixion images over his long lifetime that some have called the habit an obsession.

  • December 23-30, 2013

    Well before globalization and technology unified the world, trade in textiles wove it both practically and sumptuously together. In the Age of Discovery that began in the early 16th century, ships sailing from Europe to the East to find new routes for the spice trade carried textiles with them and brought even more home. Originating in China, Japan, India, Southeast Asia, Turkey and Iran, the textiles often functioned as currency and gradually became even...

  • The Jewishness of Jesus has seldom been rendered more clearly in art than in the crucifixion scenes of Marc Chagall. Of the 31 paintings and 22 works on paper in “Chagall: Love, War and Exile” (on view until Feb. 2, 2014, at the Jewish Museum in New York City), the handful of crucifixions are most provocative. In these, and in dozens of other crucifixions not shown here but searchable online,...

  • You know how sometimes you find yourself slogging through a literally and figuratively Big Novel thinking “This ‘work’ is long merely for sake of acquiring the Heft of Importance”—and “I’m 400 pages into this thing but still think I’m going to cut bait, rather than keep throwing good mental money after bad.” Not so with the wonderful “Living by the Book” show at the Walters Art Museum in Baltimore. This small exhibit is packed with remarkable treasures and illuminating ideas. At the risk of...

  • For students of the American Civil War, it’s hard to imagine a better classroom this summer than the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Two sterling exhibitions there, one entirely devoted to photography, the other chiefly to painting, illumine the years from the Confederate attack on Fort Sumter, South Carolina, on April 12, 1861, to General Robert E. Lee’s surrender to General Ulysses S. Grant at Appomattox, Virginia, on April 9, 1865.