Back to June 2009 ARTnews Retrospective  

100 Years Ago

These men [Augustus John and C.J. Holmes] are the foremost British representatives of a new European art movement that has got to be taken seriously. This movement is the successor to impressionism or “luminism,” and may be defined as a return to primitive simplicity, the aim of these artists being not to render the subtle momentary aspects of nature but to set forth with the utmost force and economy primary eternal facts.
—“London Letter,” June 12, 1909

75 Years Ago

But the artists who make the money are those who capitalize on the solid asset of human vanity. The portrait sketchers, next to the dog man, do the best business. . . .

Really aggressive business methods are however limited to a silhouette artist, a brisk gentleman in a linen duster and naval cap, who somehow seemed to have strayed from his native pursuit of barker in front of a Chinatown sightseeing bus to the marts of the aesthete.
—“Outdoor Art Mart,” by Mary Morsell, June 2, 1934

50 Years Ago

Mr. Crehan’s assault on my person, my manhood, my clothes, my appearance, his twist of the biblical metaphors of Mr. Nemerov’s poem are, of course, beneath contempt. What is to be pitied is his love of impotence. . . . What is not to be pitied in him is the unpardonable crime of blindness.

I did not come to my opening wearing a brand-new hunting cap. It was an old cap that I had been wearing all winter and which is worn by skiers to keep out the cold. Neither do I sport a mythical patriarchal white beard. It is only a white mustache. These are important differences for one who claims he can see, so that the blindness that makes him see Albers is not blindness. It is smear tactics. . . .

Some day, Mr. Crehan may learn that no matter how many it takes to tango, it takes only one real man to create a work of art.
—“Editor’s Letters,” by Barnett Newman, Summer 1959

25 Years Ago

What about O’Keeffe’s paintings?
I don’t find them erotic. I look at them for what they are. People say they’re very sexy, but I don’t.

Did you ever discuss that with O’Keeffe?
Yes. I said, “Georgia, some people think your work is very sexy.” And she answered, “I wouldn’t mind if they thought I was, but I don’t think my paintings are.”
—“Ansel Adams: The Last Interview,” by Milton Esterow, Summer 1984