http://www.philly.com/inquirer/columnists/edward_j_sozanski RSS Feed for Inq Col Edward J. Sozanski en-us Sun, 20 Jul 2008 07:01:00 GMT http://www.philly.com/inquirer/columnists/edward_j_sozanski/20080720_Art__Call_him_what_you.html As I ambled through Garry Knox Bennett's exhibition at the Delaware Art Museum, I thought of Walt Whitman's lines from Song of Myself: "Do I contradict myself? Very well, I contradict myself. I am large, I contain multitudes." http://www.philly.com/inquirer/columnists/edward_j_sozanski/20080720_Art_.html Continued on H7 http://www.philly.com/inquirer/columnists/edward_j_sozanski/20080713_Art__Africans_in_Mexico.html By the way they present art, museums encourage us to engage objects one by one and to consider their individual characteristics. This usually produces a purely aesthetic response to a work's formal qualities, without regard to its cultural ramifications. http://www.philly.com/inquirer/columnists/edward_j_sozanski/20080705_Art__Not_a_pretty_picture.html The HBO documentary on Philadelphia painter Chuck Connelly is titled The Art of Failure, but it would be more accurate to call this hour-long rage against the vicissitudes of the artist's existence Chuck's War. http://www.philly.com/inquirer/columnists/edward_j_sozanski/20080706_Art__Painters_and_watery_inspiration.html Painters have been drawn to water since at least the 17th century, when Dutch artists, whose country and national temperament were shaped by the North Sea and the Rhine River, made seascapes a respected genre. http://www.philly.com/inquirer/columnists/edward_j_sozanski/20080629_Art__Friends_of_Barnes_keep_up_the_good_fight.html To paraphrase the eminent metaphysician L.P. Berra, an event has not concluded until all activity associated with that event has ceased. By that measure, the 20-year struggle for the body and soul of the Barnes Foundation might still have wobbly legs, even if, legally, la guerre appears to be fini. http://www.philly.com/inquirer/columnists/edward_j_sozanski/20080622_Art__The_dog_has_its_day_-_and_then_some.html Dogs again. Is it because summer has arrived, or because museums are subtly but inexorably lowering the bar to spare their visitors any intellectual heavy lifting? Perhaps it's those factors working in tandem that have brought William Wegman and his remarkably patient Weimaraner, Fay Ray, to the Allentown Art Museum. http://www.philly.com/inquirer/columnists/edward_j_sozanski/20080615_Art__Art_Central.html Public art is sometimes contentious, but not at the new Comcast Center. The projects commissioned by developer Liberty Property Trust for the city's newest office tower are immensely appealing, both as art and as entertainment. http://www.philly.com/inquirer/columnists/edward_j_sozanski/20080608_Art__Witness_to_a_long_and_lustrous_leadership.html Anne d'Harnoncourt settled into her new job as director of the Philadelphia Museum of Art on July 1, 1982, two months before I arrived in town to address the formidable challenge of writing about art for this newspaper. I had never set foot in the Art Museum. Nor had I ever heard of the woman who would become the cultural conscience of the city and its distinguished ambassador to the rest of the world. http://www.philly.com/inquirer/columnists/edward_j_sozanski/20080603_Art__Philadelphia_Museum_of_Art_director_Anne_d_Harnoncourt_will_be_difficult_to_replace.html The first thing to be said about the unexpected death of Anne d'Harnoncourt, beyond expressing profound shock and disbelief, is that the Philadelphia Museum of Art will not be able to replace her. The museum will eventually locate a successor, but that is not the same thing.