Giovanni Battista Piranesi
Fri Jul 09 2010 at 19:36:51
In the 17th century, there were large deserted districts of Rome, built in the time of the Cæsars and still more or less standing; they were largely situated on the outskirts of the city. In those days, you see, Rome was a shadow of its imperial self, a million strong; population crashed beginning in the 2nd century A.D, and had been recovering very slowly: people had been steadily scavenging the old quarters for material with which to build new houses, but there is only so much stone any one house needs, and people mostly took chunks of the Colosseum anyway; the stones are bigger and normally much better than those gotten from the remains of ancient domi, let alone the brick piles of the Aventinerookeries of old. Of course, the insulæ sometimes fell apart even while inhabited, but there were more ruins left of old Rome even in the 18th century than we, perhaps, might think.
This week, associate editor Zack Hatfield revisits “James Bishop: Remembering to See,” Carter Ratcliff’s 1988 feature on the unclassifiable painter, who died in February at age ninety-three. Art historian Molly Warnock reflects on Bishop’s legacy in the current issue.
John Ashbery once described the art of James Bishop as “half architecture, half air.” In other words, a ruin. In his 1988 essay on the elusive painter, who was born in America but resided in France, the poet-critic Carter Ratcliff revels in the “ruined image” of Bishop’s abstraction, locating in his idiosyncratic treatment of surface, structure, and luminosity a bracing alternative to modernity’s ideas of artistic progress, its tenuously promised futures. “Bishop carries on a demolition whose chief residue is the subtlety that empties his art, opening it to the questions memory supplies,” Ratcliff writes. It’s difficult to imagine Bishop as a wrecking ball. A specialist in the barely perceptib
BEACHWOOD, Ohio â A gorgeous pair of Chippendale mahogany side chairs, crafted in Philadelphia in the 1700s, sold for $33,210 in an online-only Fine Estates Collection auction held April 10th by Neue Auctions, based in Beachwood, an upscale suburb located outside Cleveland. The sale featured 432 lots of fine merchandise from the homes of celebrated interior designers.
âIt was an awesome sale from start to finish,â said Cynthia Maciejewski of Neue Auctions. âWe offered personal collections of traditional furnishings and European antiques, and bidders took note. Sixty percent of participating bidders were first timers with us, and 90 percent of the items sold. A few lots did extremely well and it seems like furniture is finally making a comeback.â
Pair of 18th century Chippendale mahogany side chairs brings $33,210 in Neue Auctions online auction held April 10th einnews.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from einnews.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
On the fifth Friday of the 2004 Classical Summer School, a large number of our group of twenty-six sat comfortably ensconced in the second floor lounge of the American Academy to share excitedly William Wylerâs film âRoman Holidayâ starring Audrey Hepburn, Gregory Peck, and Eddie Albert.
By this stage in our rigorous training under the incomparable direction of Myles Mc Donnell and the steady assistance of Justin Walsh, we were well-equipped to identify all of the sites, ancient and contemporary, used by Wyler to convey to the film enthusiast the wonders and generously welcoming spirit of the Eternal City, Roma.