Alexander Adams

3 weeks ago | theartnewspaper.com | Matthew Holman |Alexander Adams |Andrew Pulver |José Da Silva

The British artist Lucian Freud (1922-2011) was famously private—he communicated mostly by phone but rarely gave out his number, which he changed often—so the task of cajoling him to agree to the investigative demands of a catalogue raisonné proved challenging. While the artist was amenable to helping piece together his works in chronological order, he had little desire to construct an archive in his own lifetime.

Dec 18, 2024 | bournbrookmag.com | Alexander Adams

PROPHETS OF DOOM (Imprint Academic, September 2023) by Dr Neema Parvini looks at thinkers who have opposed Enlightenment view of history as linear. The 12 writers selected advanced different theories about societal (and even civilisational) cycles of rise and decline. The cyclical view of history states that progress (in civilisational terms) is an illusion.

Dec 19, 2023 | dissidentmuse.substack.com | Walter Darby Bannard |Franklin Einspruch |Alexander Adams |Peter St Onge

, Max Beckmann, Ambiguous Prophet. “He was in many ways exemplary. He was technically skilled (adroitly moving between different mediums, exploiting the potential of each to their fullest); he had an eye for the memorable image; he was a big reader and intellectually curious, willing to absorb new influences and change his position, though not capricious; he worked hard and was greatly ambitious for his art, driven by his outsize ego.

Aug 10, 2023 | dissidentmuse.substack.com | Walter Darby Bannard |Franklin Einspruch |Alexander Adams

I have been following the work of , an artist, poet, art critic, and cultural commentator who has been envisioning a way for art to survive outside what I’m calling The Monoculture. One of his recent pieces gets into it:“What are the elements that comprise an art or cultural movement? Here are the components.” They are, sensibly, artists, collectors and audience, gallerists (I’ve never lost my preference for “dealers,” but no matter), critics, salons, and publishing.

Feb 15, 2023 | alexanderadamsart.wordpress.com | Alexander Adams

Princeton University Press has issued a reprint of a significant work of art history, “The Dehumanization of Art” and four other essays on culture by Spanish philosopher José Ortega y Gasset (1883-1955). The titular essay was first published in 1925; it will be treated last because of its importance. All the essays were written in the late 1920s and p1930s; three of them were published in Partisan Review in translation in 1949-1952.