The stooped figure of Frank Auerbach comes to mind, visiting London’s National Portrait Gallery almost daily for most of his life to copy and study the masters. So, too, the refined, deft hand of Fernando Zóbel, committed to his lifelong series Dialogues.
Fernando Zóbel: Order is Essential — a powerful and expansive exhibition ongoing at the National Gallery Singapore — showcases the artist in full transcendence of space and time
Almost always playful, the long-time New Yorker critic Peter Schjeldahl once dropped a provocation during one of his animated lectures. “Great artists,” he said, “tend to be poor students.”
Hardly one for categorical statements, Schjeldahl used the qualifying verb “tend” to soften his assertion, allowing for a touch of frivolity — and a hint of hyperbole — given the many great exceptions to that remark: artists devoted to lives of visual study.
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