Dennis Raverty

In the turbulent art world of late 18th-century Paris, Louise Élisabeth Vigée Le Brun was one of the few women to be recognized as a full member of the academy, rising to become the first painter to Queen Marie Antoinette. But after the execution of the royals, she was branded a counter-revolutionary and forced into exile. The artist continued to pursue her career in Italy, Russia, Switzerland, England and Prussia before eventually being allowed to return to France. Her style ripened from the Rococo manner of the ancient regime to eventually embrace the new classicism of Jacques Louis David and his mostly male followers, while vehemently disagreeing with their radical politics.

Reacting to the Expressionism of the prewar years, many artists in Germany returned to realism during the 1920s, a tendency labeled Neue Sachlichkeit, or the "New Objectivity." These artists explored the harsh realities of contemporary life during the unstable period between the wars and are the subject of an exhibition at the Neue Gallerie in New York City from February through May 2025.

    The socially conscious realism of these artists was the target of the Nazi's cultural policy against Modern art, brought to a climax in the "Degenerate Art Exhibition" staged by the Nazi's in 1936 to ridicule Modernism, whether abstract or realistic, as decadant "cultural bolshevism."

"We were like two mountain-climbers roped together." This is how Georges Braque described his collaboration with Pablo Picasso during the years before the First World War. The art they developed was called "Cubism" by a baffled critic (although it has nothing whatsoever to do with cubes). The movement they started had profound influences not only on subsequent painting, but also graphic art, industrial design, sculpture and modernist architecture of Corbusier, the Bauhaus and the International Style.

Culturally, the Song dynasty (960-1275 C.E.) marks a high point in the long civilization of China—an era that would be returned to again and again for inspiration, not only by the Chinese themselves, but also by the Koreans, Japanese and others. This presentation will examine classic landscapes from the period and the Daoist nature mysticism that viewed the creative process as a revelation of natural forces (qi) manifesting itself through the spirit or "breath" of the artist's brush. Jing Hao's 10th c. treatise on the six principles of painting will be used as our guide for how to "read" a Chinese landscape.