After much anticipation, the Robert Mapplethorpe archive is now available at the Getty Research Institute. More»
December 1, 2012, marks the 24th year that museums and other art organizations have observed Day With(out) Art in order to raise awareness about the AIDS epidemic. Although medical advances in the treatment of HIV/AIDS have improved the lives of… More»
Most dogs are impeccably well behaved—in art, anyway. They sit quietly on laps, raise a paw for their beloved master, or contort themselves into perfect S curves. The king of Old Master dogs is Guercino’s heroic mastiff, who looks like… More»
The exhibition The Photographs of Ray K. Metzker and the Institute of Design in the Center for Photographs charts the five-decade-long career of Philadelphia-based photographer Ray K. Metzker and offers a context for his visual aesthetic through a selection of works by founding members and influential students of Chicago’s Institute of Design. More»
In the 1860s, an era fascinated with spiritualism—spirits, the supernatural, messages from the Great Beyond—a small-time engraver named William Mumler realized he could apply the latest technology of his day, photography, to create “spirit photographs.” Almost a visual séance, Mumler’s… More»
Last year the Getty and LACMA jointly acquired the art and archives of Robert Mapplethorpe, including more than 2,000 works of art as well extensive documentation of this important artist’s celebrated career and working methods. Now both museums are presenting… More»
Today is National Coming Out Day, which seeks to promote a safe world for lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people. Keith Haring was one of the early advocates of the movement, donating a drawing of a person dancing out of… More»
The exhibition Inside Out: Pompeian Interiors Exposed, recently opened at the Italian Cultural Institute in Westwood, provides a historic glimpse inside the houses and villas of Pompeii and Herculaneum. Drawing mainly from the photo archive of the Getty Research Institute,… More»
Ray K. Metzker is one of the most innovative photographers of the last half century, though he is not as well known as some of his contemporaries. The new exhibition The Photographs of Ray K. Metzker and the Institute of… More»
You’ve seen them on billboards, magazines, and TV—images of young, thin, overtly seductive women posed to sell. Herb Ritts photographed the world’s top models for ads and fashion spreads, but his women are different. Though beautiful, they have strength and… More»
Andrea del Sarto, Various studies, c.1520’s
Son of a tailor (sarto). Andrea became one of the best loved artists of Florence. Vasari had good things to say about him.
…Andrea del Sarto, in whose single person Nature and art showed all that painting can achieve by means of drawing, colouring and invention: and indeed if Andrea had possessed a little more boldness and daring of spirit, to match his very profound judgement and talent as a painter, he would, there is no doubt at all, have been without equal.
Browning wrote poems about him:
Ah, but a man’s reach should exceed his grasp,
Or what’s a heaven for?His drawings are natural, graceful and sensitive, an excellent draughtsman.
…and he was very much in love with his wife… (something we don’t often hear about Renaissance artists!)
Our curator Julian Brooks is in Florence now researching del Sarto for an exhibition in 2015.