Category Archive: ART
The Munch Museum
(Oslo, 26 August 2026) Edward Munch: Robert Hughes (in 1980) wrote of him: “Twenty-five years ago, there was no general agreement about Munch’s stature. He seemed too local, too narrowly “northern” a painter, for his work to be set against the art historical values that centre on Paris; and besides, virtually all his major paintings had remained in his native city of Oslo, not a stop on the art-lover’s normal itinerary. He therefore seemed more provincial after his death than he was in life, and many people who should have known better insisted on thinking of him as a gaunt…
Continue Reading →A Day in Cologne
(23 August 2026) Köln it is in German, on the left bank of the Rhine, and was founded in the 1C AD as the “Roman Colonia Agrippina“, hence ‘Cologne’. It had key strategic and trading benefits, as well as a sweet smell (Eau de Cologne has been made there since 1709). Unfortunately, as with many European cities, WWII caused it to be ‘bombed about a bit.’ Fortunately (miraculously?) the Cologne Cathedral (Kölner Dom), the tallest in the world, survived more-or-less intact. The foundation was laid by the then Archbishop on 15 August 1248, and after numerous vicissitudes, completed on 15…
Continue Reading →Misery of Modern Statuary Continued
(Europe, northern autumn, 2026) We regret to say that our foray into northern Europe has left our bleak view of the modern plastic arts un-changed. The worst sculptor in the world, a Dane, has plenty of competition, particularly from Norway. Some of this ‘work’ is arrayed below, comment largely superfluous:
Continue Reading →Sir John Soane’s House
(13 Lincoln’s Inn Fields, London – 12 September 2026) John Soane (10 September 1753 – 20 January 1837), an architect, filled his crowded house with pieces of art collected over the course of a long life. Marshal Blücher arrived with his army, as he had promised, on the afternoon of Sunday 18 June 1815, and helped Wellington defeat Napoleon at Waterloo.
Continue Reading →Städel Museum
(Frankfurt, 22 August 2026) The Städel (1817, new building 1878, war damage repaired 1966), officially the Städelsches Kunstinstitut und Städtische Galerie as rendered in monumental German, (named after Johann Friedrich Städel, who left his collection to the city) is on the south bank of the River Main and houses an impressive array of art, ranging from the sublime to the rather ridiculous. In 1937, 77 paintings and 700 prints were removed as “degenerate.” TVC deprecates a lot of modern art (i.e. https://www.thevarnishedculture.com/more-from-the-post-eternal-phase/) but we’d never expunge anyone’s effort, no matter how far short it fell. In 1939, the collection of the…
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