Venetian Disegno: New Frontiers, circa 1420–1620, edited by Maria Aresin & Thomas Dalla Costa (Ad Ilissum): From Vasari we learn that Venetian painters prized colore (color) above disegno (drawing or design). It’s an appealing notion (and who, looking at the work of Titian, would dare disagree?), but one that, as Maria Aresin and Thomas Dalla Costa argue in a new book, “can no longer be upheld in the light of modern scholarship. . . . Today it is clear that drawing played a crucial role in the creative process of Venetian artists.” Venetian Disegno, a copiously illustrated volume out recently from Ad Ilissum, brings together some twenty scholars to tease out the point. —BR
“Paul Klee: Psychic Improvisation,” at David Zwirner on Twentieth Street, New York (through June 15): “Is there actually such a thing as a line?” To this question Paul Klee devotes no small amount of ink in his notebooks. You’d be forgiven for finding such head-in-the-clouds rumination off-putting—but there is much more to the artist than his cerebral side. Consider, for example, the playful formulation “A line is a dot that went for a walk.” This duality, equal parts erudite and sportive, cuts through the entirety of Klee’s oeuvre. Both halves are on full display in David Zwirner’s “Paul Klee: Psychic Improvisations,” a sweeping look at the artist’s 1920s and ’30s work. An opportunity to see this much Klee in one afternoon is rare and should not be missed. —LL
SCNY 3rd Annual Hartley invitational, at the Salmagundi Club, New York (through May 31): The term “classical realism” is best applied with a broad brush. The wide-ranging vision of today’s classical revival is on full display at the Salmagundi Club, where the third Hartley Invitational has gathered sixty-two artists “who draw inspiration from nature” for a juried exhibition. Selected by Jacob Collins, Milène J. Fernández, Alex Katlan, and Judith Pond Kudlow, the invitational brings together the movement’s guiding lights, including Odd Nerdrum, Daniel Graves, and Burton Silverman, with younger talents such as Joshua LaRock and Travis Schlaht. The art historian Gregory Hedberg will award the prize for best in show. —JP
Yuja Wang performs Messiaen, Scriabin, Debussy & Chopin, at Carnegie Hall (May 10): We may be well into the season of Easter, but the Nativity seems to be in the air of late. As John Adams’s oratorio El Niño makes waves at the Metropolitan Opera, the pianist Yuja Wang will open her Carnegie Hall recital this Friday with two pieces from Olivier Messiaen’s Vingt regards sur l’Enfant-Jésus (Twenty Contemplations on the Infant Jesus), a suite completed just after the Allied liberation of Paris in 1944. Wang will also play Scriabin’s Piano Sonata No. 8, which plumbs great mystical and tragic depths; Debussy’s L’Isle joyeuse, which limns rather the opposite; and Chopin’s four ballades, which run the gamut. Seating is available onstage for one of the year’s hot-ticket recitals. —IS
From the Archives:
“The ambiguities of Milan Kundera,” by Roger Kimball (January 1986). On Milan Kundera’s novels & beliefs.
“The resurrection of Man Ray,” by Deborah Solomon (March 1989). On the artist’s resurrection.
Dispatch:
“I like Eyck,” by Gregory T. Clark. On “A New Look at Jan van Eyck: The Madonna of Chancellor Rolin,” at the Louvre, Paris.
