Art Review: At Venice Biennale, Centaurs & Reindeer Transfix

I’m in the Swamp for ten days working on my biography of Allan Stone, the visionary New York dealer among whose artists were Wayne Thiebaud, Joseph Cornell, Richard Estes, and Willem de Kooning. His archives, 60 years’ worth, are at the Archives of American Art at the Smithsonian. They’ve never been plumbed, so it’s virgin scholarship as well as intense work since I’m reading each and every piece of paper. It’s exhilarating, too — Allan had a covetous appetite for vitality, craftsmanship, and intrigue.

Today we’ll venture from Washington to Philadelphia, Venice, Denmark, and the Arctic, from the venal and mendacious, and D.C.’s got a bumper crop, to the frisky and fleet, and I mean reindeer.

About the Author

Brian T. Allen

Brian T. Allen is National Review’s art critic.

I’m in the Swamp for ten days working on my biography of Allan Stone, the visionary New York dealer among whose artists were Wayne Thiebaud, Joseph Cornell, Richard Estes, and Willem de Kooning. His archives, 60 years’ worth, are at the Archives of American Art at the Smithsonian. They’ve never been plumbed, so it’s virgin scholarship as well as intense work since I’m reading each and every piece of paper. It’s exhilarating, too — Allan had a covetous appetite for vitality, craftsmanship, and intrigue.

Today we’ll venture from Washington to Philadelphia, Venice, Denmark, and the Arctic, from the venal and mendacious, and D.C.’s got a bumper crop, to the frisky and fleet, and I mean reindeer.