As an editorial cartoonist, I am drawn to Study of Putti by the master draftsman Annibale Carracci, on view in “Marks of Genius,” for two reasons. First, I always love seeing the sketches and working drawings of great artists. In fact, I largely prefer these to the seeing the finished artwork. This is because the  ...

The new Apple Watch that was unveiled this week, with its potential to merge timekeeping with the body and its rhythms, feels like the future, like something new. But it may be more like a return—time, after all, has only recently become fixed, divorced from our actual experience of the world turning. Which is where  ...

Despite all the evidence from the Minnesota State Fair, men are supposedly dressing better. GQ recently offered that the newish term “metrosexual,” meaning a modern man who looks after his appearance, is already all but extinct as such habits have become mainstream. We’re all metrosexuals now. Right. One look at the fellows in the “Fancy  ...

I first met Paul Shambroom while working at Mpls.St.Paul Magazine, when he presented editor Brian Anderson with his idea of setting up a photo booth in front of the Shinders newsstand at Sixth Street and Hennepin Avenue, in downtown Minneapolis, on two Saturday nights. He wanted to capture the avenue’s night owls in the era  ...

The great American bebop bassist and composer Charles Mingus observed, “Making the simple complicated is commonplace; making the complicated simple—awesomely simple—that’s creativity.” What has drawn me to write about Flower Vendors, of all 100 drawings in “Marks of Genius,” is the reverence it shows for human life by capturing and honoring a particularly inconspicuous, unspectacular  ...

What do you find when you peel back a gallery wall? This was a driving question for Minnesota artist James Holmberg and he needed to find the answer. In his most recent work, featured in the MAEP exhibition “Forever,” Holmberg works with architectural structures, like those in the gallery wall, zeroing in on commonplace objects  ...

Wherever people love one another something very sad remains. —Käthe Kollwitz During the waning years of World War II, my father was taken as a prisoner of war in Germany. He was 21 years old at the time of his capture—exactly the same age as my youngest son as I write this. My father told  ...

This week I will be in New Hampshire with my family on our annual summer trip to Little Lake Sunapee, where my husband’s family has vacationed every August for more than 60 years. Time stands still at “the Villa,” the New England resort we visit. We play shuffle board and bingo, go on mountain picnics, dance  ...

“An illuminated manuscript shows an attention to detail, a genius for decoration and ‘selective realism in pictorial details.’” — Susan Jones As a contemporary artist, I often reflect on what it is about an illuminated manuscript that captures my attention. The short answer is the work’s complete fusion of idea and image. Within a format that  ...

Miley Cyrus is purposefully provocative. But you generally don’t want to punch her. Her new pet pig, on the other hand, may make you want to tear through a wall. That’s not your fault or the pig’s. That’s aesthetics and the human mind’s reaction to it. Miley may be cute. But the pig is unbelievably  ...