Author Archives: Sally Whitman Coleman, PhD

Man Ray, Tears, 1930-1932, gelatin silver print, 9 x 11 3/4 in., The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles, Photo by William Cromar via Flickr, Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.0 Generic License.

Happy Birthday Man Ray

Man Ray Photographer, Dada and Surrealist Artist Emmanuel Radnitzky was born on August 27th, 1890 in Philadelphia, PA to Russian Jewish immigrants.  His father was a garment worker.  Man Ray died on November 18, 1976 in Paris where he is buried.

Jan Vermeer, The Milkmaid, c. 1660, oil on canvas, 17.9” x 16.1”, Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam, Photo by jimmiehomeschoolmom via Flickr, Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic License.

Take Five: Why Forgers Succeed

By now, you may have heard about Pei-Shen Qian, the Chinese artist living in Queens, NY who forged over 60 paintings by Abstract Expressionist artists such as Mark Rothko, Franz Kline and Jackson Pollock.  An art dealer from Long Island, … Continue reading

Gerhard Richter, Christa and Wolfi, 1964, oil on canvas, 59 x 51 1/4 in., Art Institute of Chicago, Photo by Kent Baldner via Flickr, Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.0 Generic License.

In Their Own Words: Gerhard Richter

“When I paint from a photograph, conscious thinking is eliminated. I don’t know what I am doing. My work is far closer to the Informel than to any kind of ‘realism’. The photograph has an abstraction of its own, which … Continue reading

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Delaunay’s Dizzy Modernism

The French artist Robert Delaunay celebrated modern life in this bright and colorful aerial view of the Eiffel Tower, an icon of the industrial world that was constructed in 1889 of wrought iron for the Paris International Exposition.  The aerial … Continue reading

© 2013 . All rights reserved.

Happy Birthday Andy Warhol

Andy Warhol Pop Artist Andrej Varhola, Jr. was born on August 6, 1928 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania to Andrej Varhola, a coal mine worker, and Júlia Zavacká, both of whom were immigrants from Slovakia.  Andy Warhol died in New York City on February 22, 1987.   … Continue reading

René Magritte, The Treachery of Images (This is Not a Pipe), 1929, Oil on canvas, 23 3/4 x 31 15/16 in., LACMA, California, Photo by profzucker via Flickr, Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.0 Generic License.

René Magritte on Treacherous Images

Belgian artist René Magritte created this Surrealist masterpiece that presents a realistic image of a pipe and written in French below, the words, “This is not a pipe.”  With this humorous inscription, Magritte stated something that is true but nevertheless … Continue reading

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Just a Second: Ambulatory

Ambulatory (noun) A place for walking, usually an aisle in a church around the apse. In Santa Costanza in Rome, the mausoleum for the Roman Emperor Constantine’s daughter Constantina, the ambulatory is circular and goes around a space where the … Continue reading

Edgar Degas, Concert Singer with Glove, c. 1878, pastel on canvas, 34 3/16 x 29 7/16 x 3 3/4 in., Fogg Art Museum, Cambridge, MA, Photo in the Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons.

Happy Birthday Edgar Degas

Edgar Degas French Impressionist Born July 19, 1834 in Paris, France to Célestine Musson De Gas, a Creole from New Orleans, and Augustin De Gas, a banker.