While much of modern lace is loomed by machine, until the mid-nineteenth century, the art of lacemaking was a painstaking and time-consuming craft produced predominantly by women. Despite being a product of a domestic pastime, lace ruled both fashion and international markets for centuries. Flourishing trade and boosting economies, lace was highly sought after by monarchs, clergy, and the working class. Through the study of its inception, tools, and techniques, this article presents a brief history of lace and its unknown makers.
Art News
As our access to open air and meeting in public places returns, we can look to these artists to remind us what summer is for after the trying year of 2020.
The story of the Last Supper is a pivotal one in the Bible and Christians view it as the basis for the Holy Communion rite. Leonardo da Vinci’s fresco adorns a wall of the refectory at Santa Maria delle Grazie, in Milan. Despite immense damage sustained over the years, the work attracts hundreds of thousands of viewers each year.
An interior view of Matisse’s atelier in the Parisian suburb of Issy-les-Moulineaux, "The Red Studio" (1911) serves as the centerpiece for an impressive feat of scholarship that gathers photographs, documents, and ephemera related to the painting’s creation, along with a video on its conservation.
The Chavín are perhaps best known for their peculiar artistic style and iconography—one that depicts amalgamations of humans, plants, and animals in tortuous and stylized forms that act as both a puzzle for the viewer and a detailed map of the cosmological and spiritual ideologies of the Chavín.
Gentileschi’s Judith stands out because it shows the act of a woman forcefully decapitating a man. One could argue that any depiction of this tale is inherently violent. And yet, many believe Gentileschi’s deliberate inclusion of female brutality sends a feminist message that is absent from other iterations.
Silenced by the pandemic last year, The Whitney Biennial returns with an exhibition appropriately named Quiet as It’s Kept. The title seems intended to acknowledge an art world suffering from its own version of long Covid after the lockdown blew a gaping hole in the zeitgeist.
The International Center of Photography (ICP) will present a major retrospective exhibition of the work of the multifaceted artist William Klein. "William Klein: YES; Photographs, Paintings, Films, 1948–2013" will feature nearly 300 works, filling ICP’s galleries with media from Klein’s expansive and boundary-pushing six-decade career.
Monet was a master painter whose works are synonymous with the Impressionist movement he helped found. An avid experimenter, he was known for painting the same subjects over and over, drawing inspiration from the unique qualities of color and light he observed each time he sat down to paint.
Copying within the context of the art world has evolved over the centuries. What was once understood as a vital tool for study and learning is now often perceived, especially by laymen, as a kind of cheating. Even so, copying sometimes is ethically questionable.
