Honored to have an excerpt from my upcoming book published with The Atlas Society. It is from the chapter, Those Who Destroy Art.
Velazquez’s Venus is a painting of a toned, nude young woman seen from the back with a mirror reflecting her face, alongside a life-like cupid, an affectation of many mythological paintings. But if we put the cupid’s wings aside, the scene takes on a touching quality of human universality. Velazquez would have painted the woman and the young child from life. I would bet you anything that this beautiful Italian model was a young mom with her child in tow. And though the mirror was a common device of Venus at her bath, I would speculate that since the model was facing away from the artist, the mirror gave her a feeling of safety by being able to watch what the artist was doing behind her back. Read more …
Update on the book, I am nearing the end, last two chapters to do. They are the reward, I get to talk about contemporary artists I love, and wrapped up the conclusions which the rest of the book set up. I started with the start of the quarantine, I wonder if it ends with when everything opens up again?
Michael Newberry, Idyllwild, 10//15/2020
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