By Gary Schwartz
In 1942, in fulfillment of an essay competition announced in 1936, the Teyler’s Second Society in Haarlem published the winning study on the spread of Dutch painting throughout the world: Horst Gerson, “Ausbreitung und Nachwirkung der holländischen Malerei des 17. Jahrhunderts” (The diffusion and after-effect of Dutch 17th-century painting). Written in German-occupied Holland […]

By Gary Schwartz
I would not go as far as my travel companion and say that I am sorry that I ever saw the exhibition. But it comes close. In December, at the Sackler Museum in Cambridge, Massachusetts, we went to “Gods in Color: Painted Sculpture of Classical Antiquity.” To shock and awe you unprepared, here […]

By Gary Schwartz

Israeli-Dutch Artist Joseph Semah’s Full Moon Project
Five years ago next month I ran into a buddy of mine at Café Luxembourg in Amsterdam. The Israeli-Dutch artist Joseph Semah and I had been through challenging times together. In 2001 he had challenged me to come up with an adjunct to his performance Full Moon […]

By Gary Schwartz
The Rijksmuseum has published the first volume in a series of scholarly catalogues of its collection of Dutch paintings of the 17th century. The two books, one of text and comparative illustrations, the other of color plates, are not only a model of collection catalogues, they are also an unguarded kaleidoscopic self-portrait of […]

By Gary Schwartz
Is there or is there not such a thing as “the Dutchman?” My fellow immigrant Princess Maxima thinks there is not, but since she dared express that opinion in public last September, she has been subjected to an ongoing barrage of reprimands. Indeed, since the brief era of Pim Fortuyn, public discourse has […]

By Gary Schwartz
On October 26th an unusual painting was sold at a country auction house in the Cotswolds, Moore Allen & Innocent. The subject looks for all the world like a fanciful self-portrait of the young Rembrandt, a laugh on his face and a gorget of the kind he never had to wear in real […]

Some of the best moments of my visit to documenta XII I spent in bed. Even though Loekie and I had decided this time not to try to see everything and to spend as much time on a display as we wanted, and even though we stuck to this strategy and enjoyed the exhibition all […]

Cleaning up my desk, I came across the following mysterious note, written on a sheet torn out of a small spiral notebook: “Now I see what you mean with the question you had about the stones outside who is different on every sides. I have asked but no one could give some answer. Maybe they […]