An unusually interesting exhibit at the Met Breuer reminds you that high definition has been around a long time if you knew where to look. Johan Gregor van der Schardt, a Dutch artist created this self portrait half a millennium ago.
Five hundred years also separates these two works. "Buster Keaton" by Jeff Koons may not be going anywhere, but 15th century Germans pulled Jesus through their Palm Sunday processions before the Church banned movable sculptures as works of the devil.
I used to think that Greek and Romans preferred their statues monochromatic. Not so. Hermes likely was painted before "Enlightenment" curators whitewashed the messenger of the gods to reflect contemporary taste for purity in art.
In the mood for a mind fuck? Hiram Powers used a Native American model to personify California for this mid-19th century work but his choice of pure white marble--influenced by his residence in Florence where he was surrounded by bleached classical sculpture--erased her ethnicity!
Flesh-colored paint on John De Andrea's brushes shows him doing just the opposite in a self-portrait that demonstrates his commitment to realism over the male gaze.
Blood may be an inherently more colorful medium than plaster, but it cost Marc Quinn ten pints of his own and constant refrigeration to produce this macabre self-portrait.
The curators give people of color their due in the exhibit. Unfortunately, their representation in Western art begins later than much of the rest.
In a case of the lady doth protest too much, the patriarchal Church fretted about the eroticism implicit in a lot of male religious iconography. Are St. Sebastian's arrows tipped with pain or pleasure?
Art conducts sexual current in both directions. Is this cute young man going for a swim in his underwear? No, in Reza Aramesh's "Action 105," he's a Palestinian about to be strip-searched by an Israeli at gunpoint.
So said the woman who photographed us when I requested that she include the gay slurs in the frame at The Boys in the Band. Fifty years after the play was first performed off Broadway, we own them!
