Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn, Self-Portait with Gorget, ca. 1629, Oil on Panel, Germanisches Nationalmuseum, Nuremberg

As I've mentioned before, anniversaries, despite our culture's undue fascination with them, can prove useful as reminders for critical assessment. And so it is today, on the anniversary of Rembrandt's birth, that we look back to Hilton Kramer's April 1988 piece "Rembrandt as Warhol: Svetlana Alpers's 'Enterprise.'" Kramer's masterful lamentation of the subjugation of art history to the social sciences is worth a read any day, but especially with Rembrandt already on the mind.

 

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