The Syracuse University Art Museum today announced a major gift from artists and Syracuse University alumni Luise '46, G'51 and Morton '49 Kaish. The gift establishes the Luise and Morton .
A painter and lithographer, she worked in the ancient tradition of calligraphy, using ink that was centuries old, to produce gems of modern abstract expressionism.
Fig. 1.
The Whistling Boy by Frank Duveneck (1848–1919), 1872. Initialed and
dated “FD [in monogram]. Munich. 1872” in monogram at lower left. Oil on canvas, 27 7/8 by 21 1/8 inches.
Cincinnati Art Museum, Ohio, gift of the artist; all photographs courtesy of the Cincinnati Art Museum.
Although it would be foolish to suggest that the influential and wildly productive Jean-Léon Gérôme is lost to history, it is safe to say that the great academician is perhaps less widely known today than his students Thomas Eakins and Mary Cassatt. And while it would be equally foolish to suggest that Frank Duveneck is but a footnote to his more recognizable students, such as John Henry Twachtman, the Kentucky-born artist is not the name he was in his day. Reviewing a 1972 show at Manhattan’s Chapellier Galleries, critic John Canaday described Duveneck as “a painter who promised to establish a major position in American art but stopped halfway through his career and settled for a mi
In Woody Allen s Sleeper, a hip party-goer 200 years in the future presents a print of a big-eyed waif child to hostess Luna (Diane Keaton), and Luna breathes in awe, as though it was an original Gaugain: Oh, it s Keane! It s pure Keane! The joke is that the only art that will have any staying power in the future will be the work of Margaret Keane. In fact, it will increase in value. Hugely popular in the 1960s and 1970s (and still), Keane s work inspired critical revulsion from an art world who found her popularity baffling and disheartening. However, Andy Warhol said, “I think what Keane has done is terrific! If it were bad, so many people wouldn’t like it.” (He posed in front of a Keane print for photographer Steve Schapiro, mimkicking the child s waif-like pose.) Margaret Keane allowed her husband, Walter, to take credit for her work for a good period of time in the 1960s, and that is the strange story of Tim Burton s latest film, Big Eyes. Entertaining in spots, obvi