Fall of Icarus

Bernini’s Pluto suggests Pygmalion when he seemingly presses his fingers into the flesh of his maiden, whereas what we in fact see is inert stone. Many artists have tried, however imperfectly, to capture the effect of a work of art coming alive...

The African-American artist Robert S. Duncanson painted landscapes in the style of the Hudson River School. Whether representing the Catskills, the Andes, or the Ohio River Valley, the so-called Hudson River School artists depicted locations in which forests, lakes, mountains, and streams stretched off into infinity and in which humans, if present at all, were mere bystanders at nature’s...