How the Impressionists Became the World’s Favorite Painters, and the Most Misunderstood
The New York Times
Exactly 150 years ago, Monet, Degas, Renoir and their pals spurred an artistic revolution. Can we still see the defiance behind the beauty, and the schmaltz?
The haystacks have been raked up, the water lilies are clustered; the ballerinas at the Opéra and the revelers at the Moulin de la Galette have taken their places. This year is the 150th birthday of Impressionism, a movement so popular and so familiar that it can seem like some preordained crowd pleaser — all those sunsets and tutus, ready for their blotchy close-ups.
But once, those haystacks were rebellious. Once, those ballet dancers delivered a shock. Can we rediscover what was so revolutionary about impressionism back in 1874? Can we still see the defiance in its beauty, and even its schmaltz?
Right now, at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, two very different paintings hang side by side.
The one on the right is among the most famous and influential in all of French art. It’s Claude Monet’s “Impression, Sunrise.”
Rachel Handlin is possibly the first person with Down syndrome to receive an M.F.A., and one of just a few to hold a bachelor’s. Her first solo show features her portraits of others like her.
With shirts playing off Chapel Hill’s name and cutoff hoodies, a college town immediately embraced the arrival of Bill Belichick in North Carolina.
A half-million people are on the Ffern wait list hoping to do just that.
By breaking the story into two movies, the emphasis in “Part One” shifts to a nation’s potential decline into authoritarianism. Sound familiar?
For a man who rose to fame in the gilded yuppie era of New York City, today’s ringing the bell to open the stock exchange, and being named Person of the Year by Time, must have a certain appeal.
A visual tour of the show that seems to defy all the rules.
This was a year whose high points included Joan Jonas’s luminous survey, the extravaganza “PST ART,” and the 24-karat beauty of a show “Siena: The Rise of Painting, 1300-1350.”
This visually inventive adaptation of a Colson Whitehead novel follows two boys at an abusive school in Jim Crow-era Florida.
What happens when violent crimes are overshadowed by appearances?
Between her experience on “Babygirl” and her mother’s death, the star has come to understand a lot about women in unfulfilled lives.
As Elon Musk has become a key player in President-elect Donald J. Trump’s world, Tesla owners are marking their cars to signify where they stand — for or against.