Christina’s Reviews > Keeping an Eye Open: Essays on Art > Status Update
Christina
is on page 60 of 288
'Courbet—who was born in Ornans in 1819, came to Paris at the age of twenty and had his first picture accepted by the Salon five years later—created, or adapted to his use, the persona of the boisterous, belligerent, subversive, shit-kicking provincial; then, like some contemporary TV personality, he found that this public image had become indistinguishable from his true nature.'
— Mar 05, 2026 01:33PM
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Christina’s Previous Updates
Christina
is on page 269 of 288
'H.H. [Hodgkin] has always been a difficult interviewee, not least because he doesn't want to talk about his own pictures, let alone "explain" them. In later years, his refusal to play the game has become extreme. Interviewers have received monosyllabic answers and long pauses; there was a famous onstage disaster with Simon Schama at a literary festival.'
— Mar 13, 2026 03:37PM
Christina
is on page 193 of 288
'Then there are the exterior nudes [of Vallotton]: female bathers up to the knee and thigh in the sea; a chunky Europa hitching a ride in the shallows from a very farmyard bull; a modern Andromeda with a blonde bob tied by the wrists to a rock and responding to her predicament as if it is all terribly, terribly inconvenient...'
— Mar 12, 2026 05:52PM
Christina
is on page 156 of 288
'The first time I visited the Phillips Collection in Washington I saw a painting which instantly entered my top ten and has remained there ever since. (In fact, I saw several others that did the same—a Courbet, a Degas and a Bonnard—but then I've never counted up my top ten, which runs to well over a hundred by now.)'
— Mar 11, 2026 03:44PM
