Authors

Val Castronovo reviews: A collaboration between The Met, The Art Institute of Chicago and the Musée d’Orsay in Paris, the works collected chronicle the golden years of Impressionist painting from the mid-1860s to the mid-1880s when Paris became the style capital of the world ... the avant-garde sought to distinguish themselves ... and paint their subjects in a new, modern light, focusing on au courant costumes and accoutrements at the expense of the individuals’ physical characteristics. more »

Joan L. Cannon writes: The wakeup call was the realization of how much we were still using that's intended to be disposable and can't be reused. The hundredweight of magazines and catalogs astonished me every time we loaded the trunk of the car. Then there was the prohibition on dry cat food pronounced by our vet. You don’t know what it’s like to collect aluminum cans until you’ve fed a voracious feline for a month on wet food. more »

Val Castronovo writes: Almost one-third of his portraits are of family members, and the ones of his wife, to whom he was extremely devoted, are quite arresting. Portraits were one of the mainstays of his career; he painted them from the time he arrived in the city up until his death. For an artist intent on blowing up the art world and defying convention, he had a quite conventional personal life. more »

Ferida Wolff writes: Who would have thought that hair could be so opinionated? It used to be reasonable, letting me do pretty much what I wanted with it. But then I guess we change in many ways as we age. Ideas we held in our twenties shift with experience and perspective. Foods we loved as teens often become indigestible later on (gluten sensitivity and lactose intolerance have become watchwords for a more mature generation). more »