Michael Lobel
@mlobelart
Professor of Art History, Hunter College & CUNY Graduate Center. I look at things and then write about them. Author of Van Gogh and the End of Nature, from Yale University Press:
Vincent van Gogh, Street Scene, Celebration of Bastille Day, Paris, 1886
I know there's a lot to bemoan in the world right now, but it's painful to see Marcel Breuer's jewelbox-like Whitney building, where I lectured in my grad school days, become a high end showroom for Sotheby's. Another data point in the wealth-ification of our culture www.nytimes.com/2026/07/14/a...
Where we are right now in a nutshell: when you ignore someone's significant moral, ethical & professional culpability because you *like* them. The era of gullibility & fatuousness
Just saw Ross McElwee's new feature, "Remake," at Film Forum in NYC. A tremendous film, but completely gutting. Highly recommended, if you're open to an extended meditation on art, memory, & grief
Interesting that the range of hues on Sweerts's palette is not that far off from the palette in this self-portrait of Thomas Willeboirts Bosschaert from the same general period
Ted Gordon, Untitled (Cat), nd collection.folkartmuseum.org/objects/365/...
Ted Gordon, Head of a Man, 1980 collection.folkartmuseum.org/objects/1414...
Today's mood: Human Angel, 1990, by self-taught artist Ted Gordon high.org/collection/h...
He *loved* cats; here he is in 1921 with another cat - Fripouille, French for "rascal" or "scoundrel" - dozing on a chair in the background
One of my favorite images from the current Paul Klee show at the Jewish Museum in NYC: the artist with his wife Lily and their gorgeous long-haired cat Bimbo on his shoulder💗
What's perhaps even more interesting is that while the painting I posted above may seem like a crazy outlier, the motif wasn't that uncommon..! There are multiple versions from the period of these so-called cat concerts, including this one below
There are dozens of works of art that have stayed with me, but honestly this one's close to the top of the list: it's just so absolutely bonkers I'm obsessed that someone actually conceived of & then painted it
What I love about Archibald Motley's self-portrait at the Art Institute of Chicago is how he piles up pigment so that the surface of the canvas & the depicted palette become one. Brilliant..! www.artic.edu/artworks/140...
William Blake, Death on a Pale Horse, c. 1800 data.fitzmuseum.cam.ac.uk/id/object/17...
See also: Joseph Haynes after John Hamilton Mortimer, Death on a Pale Horse, 1784 www.artic.edu/artworks/158...
Benjamin West going hard: Death on the Pale Horse, 1796, his second of three major versions of the composition (with thanks to @edzitron.com for the inspiration) dia.org/collection/d...
Brought a friend to Meg Webster's "Thicket" at Paula Cooper Gallery after seeing it two weeks ago, & was interesting to see it change over time: the structure wilting & thinning out, turning from green to brown. That process will continue until the show's end in couple of weeks
Lithograph celebrating 1982 World Cup by Belgian artist Pierre Alechinsky. This is how I learned that Alechinsky, one of members of influential post-WWII Cobra art movement, is still alive today at 98 years of age
Officially nominating this dude for the Maine senate race: Marsden Hartley, Canuck Yankee Lumberjack at Old Orchard Beach, Maine, 1940-41 www.si.edu/object/canuc...
Suzanne Lacy, Three Weeks in May, 1977, an extended performance art piece. Each day Lacy stamped locations of LA sexual assaults on a map; fainter markings stood for estimated nine additional rapes for every one reported. A second map displayed sites of resistance www.suzannelacy.com/three-weeks-...
Just found out that when I look up Jenny Holzer's iconic "Truisms" text works on MoMA's collections website, I now get an ad for a Bodum® programmable 12-cup coffee maker. Everything sucks now
What's remarkable about current Paul Klee show at the Jewish Museum are its uncanny echoes with our own time. In his 1929 painting "Monument in Progress" Klee depicts tiny figures erecting a monumental head that meets us with an icy, imperious glare. The show closes in three weeks; see it if you can