Leonardo's views of aesthetic are all important in his philosophy of life and art. The worker's thoughts on his craft are always of interest. They are doubly so when there is in them no trace of literary self-consciousness to blemish their expression. He recorded these thoughts at the instant of their birth, for a constant habit of observation and analysis had early developed with him into a second nature. His ideas were penned in the same fragmentary way as they presented themselves to his m...

Pieter Breughel de Oude was niet alleen schilder van wereldberoemde boerentaferelen, maar ook een fijn politiek commentator op de roerige tijd waar hij in leefde. Leo Spaepen leidt ons door de lagen en simultane betekenissen van een aantal historische sleutelwerken, waaronder De Dulle Griet, en ontleedt de code die Breughel hanteerde om de politieke en religieuze conficten in de 16e eeuwse Nederlanden weer te geven, een geheimtaal hem opgedrongen door de grimmigheid van oorlogsdreiging en rep...

Aan de hand van schilderijen, tekeningen en voorwerpen verklaart Michiel van Kempen in Zwarte pracht allerlei zaken uit de cultuur van die koloniën. Natuurlijk gaat het over kolonialisme (wat lag er in de wijnkelder van een slavenhouder?) en slavernij (hoe zit het met zo’n voetboei?). Maar het gaat ook over contractarbeid, over verzet en dekolonisatie, over muziek, erotiek, christendom en animisme, voedsel, mode en haardracht. Er wordt verteld over India, Nederlands-Indië, Guyana, Dominic...

Is it best to screen the error for the sake of preserving the art? Or should the art be sacrificed for the sake of truthfulness? Again and again in history a dominant church has utilised art to maintain its sway over men. Reformers (early Christians, Mohammedans, Puritans, and others) have perceived that art bound people to the old faith, and they were angry with art.

These works, in chronological order,are " My Confession ". A Criticism of Dogmatic Theology, which has never been translated....

Art, with its finite means, cannot hope to record the infinite variety and complexity of Nature, and so contents itself with a partial statement, addressing this to the imagination for the full and perfect meaning. This inadequation, and the artificial adjustments which it involves, are tolerated by right of what is known as artistic convention; and as each art has its own particular limitations, so each has its own particular conventions. Sculpture reproduces the forms of Nature, but discard...

THE LOVE between man and woman has been told in story and poem since long before the days of Sappho. It forms, indeed, the subject of the great bulk of what we call literature. In music, love's domain is less extended. With the exception song and the opera, most of the greatest music has, in its title at least, no hint of the great heart historyof human kind.

In this respect the plastic arts are more allied to music than to literature. The masterpieces in painting and sculpture generally not ...