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Archive for the ‘Art’ Category

Get Lost! (Lost in Liberty Park, that is)

Editor’s Note: This article originally appeared in Cultural Cocktail Hour in 2008. In 2017, the Sphere moved from Battery Park to Liberty Park, where it now overlooks the World Trade Center site.  Fritz Koenig’s The Sphere by Leticia Marie Sanchez It is the stillness after the storm, a place for reflection on the violence that occurred nearby in lower Manhattan. It is what Mayor Michael Bloomberg called a symbol of the “power of art to heal.” The Sphere, a globe sculpted by the German artist Fritz Koenig, is the only structure to survive and remain standing after the terrorist attack on the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001. The 45,000-pound steel and brass work, its face dented, chipped, fragmented, scuffed and scratched, now rests in a quiet place in Liberty Park, a short distance from Ground Zero. More than survivor, the

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Cultural Cocktail Hour in Paris: Backstage at Palais Garnier, the Paris Opera, Part II

Backstage at Palais Garnier, the Paris Opera Part Two by Leticia Marie Sanchez All Photography and text © Leticia Marie Sanchez This article first appeared on Cultural Cocktail Hour in 2012 Charles Garnier declared, “I have two shows in my opera; one on the stage and one in the theater.” The most prestigious box, that of the emperor, was monitored by bodyguards.  Nobles and industrialists had private boxes equipped with a curtain that came in handy for playing cards, ordering food, and engaging in amorous intrigue. On the ground floor stood working professionals, writers, and composers. Ladies were not allowed on the ground floor due to the tight conditions and bumping which resulted in occasional fisticuffs. Only prostitutes stood here as very few ladies in the nineteenth century worked as writers or composers.  The very high chicken box nosebleed seats were called Paradise:

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Cultural Cocktail Hour Photography: Riviera Gardone, Italy

 Cultural Cocktail Hour Photography: Riviera Gardone, Italy All Photography and text © Leticia Marie Sanchez Cultural Cocktail Hour® is a registered trademark Lake Garda has long provided a wellspring of inspiration for creative-minded souls, including: Nobel Laureate Paul Heyse, Goethe, Thomas Mann, Rainer Maria Rilke, Franz Kafka, and D. H. Lawrence, who once wrote, “The lake is dark blue, purple, and clear as a jewel.”

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Moonwalking at the Piccolomini Library, Siena

In honor of World Book Day- a ThrowBack Tuesday to Moonwalking at the Piccolomini Library, Siena Photography and text © 2013 Leticia Marie Sanchez Cultural Cocktail Hour® is a registered trademark Scruffy tennis shoes tread on crescents more than five centuries old. Half-moons fade under the weight of so many soles. Has no one thought of plexiglass? The 16th century ceramic crescents on which tourists so casually trample represent the emblem of a powerful Sienese family, the Piccolomini. The Piccolomini Library honors 15th century humanist and scholar, Enea Silvio Piccolomini, also known as Pope Pius II. The ceiling and walls, with their luscious scarlets and blues, remain vibrant as ever, shockingly, when one discovers that they have neither been cleaned nor retouched. Bernardino di Betto, more commonly known as Pinturicchio, created the glorious frescoes depicting the life of Pope Pius II. If you walk closely

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Our hearts are with the people of Paris

Editor’s Note: Leticia Marie Sanchez Devastated to read about the fire at Notre Dame Remembering a peaceful morning stroll this summer with my son from Notre Dame to the bird market. CNN’s latest report is that ”The entire wooden interior of Notre Dame Cathedral has been lost.” https://www.cnn.com/…/nortre-dame-fire-oak…/index.html What a terrible artistic loss. Our hearts are with the people of Paris.    

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Badabing Badaboom: Stolen Van Gogh paintings found in Mafia den

Badabing Badaboom  Two Stolen Van Gogh paintings found in home of Naples Mafia boss In honor of Van Gogh’s birthday this week (Happy Birthday, Vincent Van Gogh!) a Flashback to a news story from 3 years ago, 2016, when 2 Pilfered Van Gogh Paintings were found! by Leticia Marie Sanchez Two Vincent Van Gogh paintings that were stolen from a museum in Amsterdam fourteen years ago have been recovered in the house of a mafia lord at Castellammare di Stabia, near Naples. The two paintings, Seafront at Scheveningen and Congregation Leaving the Reformed Church in Nuenen, were stolen from the Van Gogh museum in 2002 by thieves who climbed to the roof of the museum using a ladder and then absconded by means of a rope. One of the agile art thieves earned the alias “The Monkey,” and the FBI Art Crime Team

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Review: Oscar Rejlander and Reenactment in Contemporary Photography at the Getty Center

Oscar Rejlander: Artist Photographer Encore: Reenactment in Contemporary Photography On View March 12-June 9, 2019 By Leticia Marie Sanchez With the advent of I-phones, Instagram, and social media, photography is the artistic medium most often at people’s fingertips. Aided by the use of filters, users attempt to curate frothy artistic images out of everyday items like cups of Espresso or Pumpkin Chai. But photography was not always viewed as an artistic medium on par with Fine Arts like painting and sculpture. The Getty Center’s new exhibit Oscar Rejlander: Artist Photographer sheds light on an artist who became known as “the father of art photography.” The exhibition, curated by Lori Pauli, curator of photographs at the National Gallery of Canada, and Karen Hellman, assistant curator of photographs at the J. Paul Getty Museum, is comprised of 150 photographs and includes images

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Art and Nature

“Great art picks up where nature ends”- Marc Chagall. On a post-rain walk at the Huntington where clouds combine with Alexander Calder’s sculpture “Jerusalem Stabile“ Photography  © 2019 Leticia Marie Sanchez

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CCH Interviews the Getty’s “Miraculous Encounters” curator Davide Gasparotto, about a Pontormo art mystery!!

Cultural Cocktail Hour is a registered trademark    Giorgio Vasari is pretty much the world’s first famous art historian. He was in the circle of Michelangelo, Pontormo,  Andrea del Sarto, and other world-class artists. Vasari book Lives of the Artists, first published in 1550, lays the foundation for art historical writing. Yet despite writing extensively about Pontormo, Vasari never once mentioned Pontormo’s resplendent painting, The Visitation. Why not? Once having viewed this mesmerizing painting, it would be impossible to forget it. Yet Vasari ignored it completely. Some have speculated that since Pontormo painted it during a historic siege, there may have been political reasons for the mysterious omission. At the time Vasari’s patron, the Medici Duke was an adversary of Bartolommeo Pinadori, the patron for Pontormo’s “Visitation.” Cultural Cocktail Hour’s Editor-In-Chief Leticia Marie Sanchez asks Davide Gasparatto, Senior Curator at the

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“Pontormo: Miraculous Encounters”- A MUST SEE exhibit at the Getty Center

“Pontormo: Miraculous Encounters” A MUST SEE Exhibit at the Getty Center By Leticia Marie Sanchez Organized by the Getty Museum in conjunction with the Gallerie degli Uffizi in Florence and the Morgan Library and Museum in New York, “Pontormo: Miraculous Encounters” is curated by Getty Museum Senior Curator of Paintings, Davide Gasparotto and Bruce Edelstein, coordinator of graduate programs and advanced research at NYU Florence. The paintings and drawings presented in the exhibition were created by Jacopo Pontormo between 1528 and 1530, during an intense historical period. Battles between Florentine Republican forces and the Medici family in 1527 resulted in a siege. Incredibly, all three Pontormo paintings in the exhibit were painted during this tumultuous time, when Mannerist painter Jacopo Pontormo bravely remained in Florence to guard his home. The opportunity to see the Visitation is somewhat of a miracle, not only because it’s

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