ArtSeptember 2010 The pleasures of late Renoir by Karen Wilkin On "Renoir in the 20th Century” at the Philadelphia Museum of Art. What is it about Pierre-Auguste Renoir (1841–1919)—especially his late works? The public can be made misty-eyed by his rose-lipped children and full-fleshed blonde bathers, but today’s sophisticated art lovers usually declare their immunity to the charms of such images, as if admitting to a taste for snub-nosed kids and ample bathers with luminous skin and heavy hair were a sign of aesthetic weakness. Some will reluctantly own to a general affection for the sun-dappled urban pleasures, both working class and bourgeois, of Renoir’s paintings of the 1870s and early 1880s—a domesticated Parisian Arcadia that’s hard to resist—or allow that they find a few select pictures appealing. But even those who admit a weakness for the Boston Museum of Fine Arts’s large painting of a shy shop girl in the arms of a young man, Dance at Bougival (1882–3), or the Phillips Collection’s s ... This article is available to subscribers and for individual purchaseSubscribe to TNC (Print and Online editions) Subscribe to TNC (Online only) This article originally appeared in The New Criterion, Volume 29 September 2010, on page 37 Copyright © 2012 The New Criterion | www.newcriterion.com http://www.newcriterion.com/articles.cfm/The-pleasures-of-late-Renoir-6276
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by Karen Wilkin On “Rembrandt and Degas: Two Young Artists” at the Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute, Williamstown, MA. by Karen Wilkin On "Stieglitz & His Artists" at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. Marioni's liquid light at the Phillips by Karen Wilkin On “Eye to Eye: Joseph Marioni at the Phillips” at the Phillips Collection, Washington, DC. On "New Formations: Czech Avant-Garde Art & Modern Glass from the Roy and Mary Cullen Collection” at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston. On “Ai Weiwei: Dropping the Urn, Ceramic Work 5000 B.C.–A.D. 2010” at the Victoria & Albert Museum, London & “The Flamboyant Mr. Chinnery: An English Artist in India and China” at Asia House, London. On "Johann Zoffany RA: Society Observed” at the Yale Center for British Art.
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