Spectral Passages

The history of Arctic exploration is full of cul de sacs, of narrow channels in ice fields, of straits that turn out to be bays, and of illusions that appeared to be opportunities. Some adventurers hesitated and missed breakthroughs of discovery. Others rushed in and found their retreats cut off by enclosing pack ice that ground their ships to flinders. Islands also appeared where none existed: cloudbanks and enormous ice fields masqueraded as solid ground. People saw things that were not there—or that we insist could never have been there.

Slashers in the Louvre, and the beautiful Ideas that kill

Two vicious slashings of paintings in the Louvre in 1907 shocked Paris and its cultural elites. Then the Futurists arrived in 1909, celebrating "the beautiful Ideas that kill" in a "manifesto of overthrowing and of incendiary violence."

“Beardmore” revisited: Jens Bloch’s dark Norwegian past

Fresh information from a Norwegian archeologist adds new dimensions to the man who brought the "Beardmore" Viking relics to Canada

A.Y. Jackson’s “unknown” landscape

I visited McMaster University's Museum of Fine Arts in February 2020, to view several early (pre World War I) works by A.Y. Jackson. One of them, Girl in the Middy, an oil sketch of Rosa Breithaupt, herself painting by the water's edge, contained a bonus painting on the obverse side: a landscape catalogued as "unknown" in subject matter. Jackson's fellow member of the Group of Seven, A.J. Casson, actually wrote (in ink!) on it: "The sketch on the reverse side could possibly be an early AY Jackson." That clearly seems to be the case. But what does it depict?

“The Place of Stone” review in Winterthur Portfolio

"A timely contribution that provides a historical perspective on current discussions about who is and who is not American, and about whose history matters, and raises questions about political uses of the past, historical imaginings, and evidentiary constraints."

Losing Tom

After a promising interview with Lord Beaverbrook on his candidacy as a war artist, Private A.Y. Jackson returned to his base in August 1917 and shocking news: Tom Thomson was dead.