"Some critics like to pin Matisse on me....But I don't think he has influenced my work." * It's hard to believe that Milton Avery actually made that statement. Just take a look at some of his paintings, like Tree Fantasy (Whitney Musuem of American Art, New York), March on the Balcony (Phillips Collection, Washington, DC) and Seated Blonde (Walker Art Center, Minneapolis). Avery's brushwork, sophisticated use of color, and his masterful reduction of forms to simple, playful,

For the next work on my list of the 50 best/most important/most interesting paintings in and around Boston, I head about 20 miles north to the Addison Gallery of American Art at Phillips Academy in Andover. Completed in 1928, “Manhattan Bridge Loop” is one of Edward Hopper’s largest paintings, about the same size as “Nighthawks” and “Early Sunday Morning.” And it might also be one of his most enigmatic. On the one hand it’s a beautiful, quiet portrait of New York City. The ab

This post is the first in a series I call "Permanent Collections." "Permanent Collections" is the result of countless hours spent traveling the country looking at paintings from institutions of all kinds: from large, encyclopedic collections built on the donations of many collectors--such as the Metropolitan Museum in New York and the Cleveland Museum of Art; to well-known eponymous legacies, like the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum and the Phillips Collection; to small, obsc

The second in my series of the the 50 best/most important/most interesting paintings in Boston-area museums, is a work that I’ve actually never seen in person. “The Mandolin” by Georges Braque (c. 1939-40) is owned by the Harvard Art Museums, and for some reason I can’t figure out, they seem to hardly ever show it. It has never been on view when I’ve visited, and whenever I check the museums’ website, the painting is still in storage. Nonetheless, I feel I can declare this as