Sebastian Smee

Last updated

Sebastian Smee is an Australian-born Pulitzer Prize-winning art critic for The Washington Post . [1] [2] [3]

Contents

Education and career

Educated at St Peter's College, Adelaide, Smee graduated from the University of Sydney with an Honours degree in fine arts in 1994 and moved to Boston in 2008, having also lived in the United Kingdom between 2001 and 2004. [4] [5] Before joining The Boston Globe he was national art critic for The Australian and has also worked for The Daily Telegraph and contributed to The Guardian , The Times , The Financial Times , The Independent on Sunday , The Art Newspaper , Modern Painters , Prospect magazine and The Spectator .

He won the 2011 Pulitzer Prize for Criticism for his "vivid and exuberant writing about art, often bringing great works to life with love and appreciation". [6]

In 2015, after Smee criticized the "Renoir Sucks at Painting" protest at the Museum of Fine Arts Boston, Max Geller - the leader of the movement - challenged Smee to a duel on Boston Common. [7] [8]

Works

Smee is the author of the books Lucian Freud and Side by Side: Picasso v Matisse. In 2016, The Art of Rivalry was published. The book examines the relationships between four pairs of artists — Matisse and Picasso, de Kooning and Pollock, Freud and Bacon, and Degas and Manet. [9]

Smee is author of the 72nd issue of the Quarterly Essay titled "Net Loss: The Inner Life in the Digital Age" (2018). [10]

Publications

Related Research Articles

<i>The Boston Globe</i> American daily newspaper

The Boston Globe, also known locally as the Globe, is an American daily newspaper founded and based in Boston, Massachusetts. The newspaper has won a total of 27 Pulitzer Prizes.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Pulitzer Prize for Criticism</span> American journalism award

The Pulitzer Prize for Criticism has been presented since 1970 to a newspaper writer in the United States who has demonstrated 'distinguished criticism'. Recipients of the award are chosen by an independent board and officially administered by Columbia University. The Pulitzer Committee issues an official citation explaining the reasons for the award.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Lucian Freud</span> British painter and engraver (1922-2011)

Lucian Michael Freud was a British painter and draughtsman, specialising in figurative art, and is known as one of the foremost 20th-century English portraitists. He was born in Berlin, the son of Jewish architect Ernst L. Freud and the grandson of Sigmund Freud. Freud got his first name "Lucian" from his mother in memory of the ancient writer Lucian of Samosata. His family moved to England in 1933, when he was 10 years old, to escape the rise of Nazism. He became a British naturalized citizen in 1939. From 1942 to 1943 he attended Goldsmiths' College, London. He served at sea with the British Merchant Navy during the Second World War.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">The Phillips Collection</span> Art museum in Street NW Washington, D.C.

The Phillips Collection is an art museum founded by Duncan Phillips and Marjorie Acker Phillips in 1921 as the Phillips Memorial Gallery located in the Dupont Circle neighborhood of Washington, D.C. Phillips was the grandson of James H. Laughlin, a banker and co-founder of the Jones and Laughlin Steel Company.

<i>Luncheon of the Boating Party</i> Painting by Pierre-Auguste Renoir

Luncheon of the Boating Party French: Le Déjeuner des canotiers is an 1881 painting by French impressionist Pierre-Auguste Renoir. Included in the Salon in 1882, it was identified as the best painting in the show by three critics. It was purchased from the artist by the dealer-patron Paul Durand-Ruel and bought in 1923 from his son by industrialist Duncan Phillips, who spent a decade in pursuit of the work. It is now in The Phillips Collection in Washington, D.C. It shows a richness of form, a fluidity of brush stroke, and a flickering light.

The Pulitzer Prizes for 1995 were announced on April 18, 1995:

Caitlin Flanagan is an American writer and social critic. A contributor to The Atlantic since February 2001, she was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for Commentary in 2019.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Wesley Morris</span> American journalist

Wesley Morris is an American film critic and podcast host. He is currently critic-at-large for The New York Times, as well as co-host, with Jenna Wortham, of the New York Times podcast Still Processing. Previously, Morris wrote for The Boston Globe, then Grantland. He won the 2012 Pulitzer Prize for Criticism for his work with The Globe and the 2021 Pulitzer Prize for Criticism for his New York Times coverage of race relations in the United States, making Morris the only writer to have won the Criticism prize more than once.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Stacy Schiff</span> American biographer, editor, essayist (born 1961)

Stacy Madeleine Schiff is an American former editor, essayist, and author of five biographies. Her biography of Véra Nabokov won the 2000 Pulitzer Prize in biography. Schiff has also written biographies of French aviator and author of The Little Prince, Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, colonial American-era polymath and prime mover of America's founding, Benjamin Franklin, Franklin's fellow Founding Father Samuel Adams, ancient Egyptian queen Cleopatra, and the important figures and events of the Salem Witch Trials of 1692–93 in colonial Massachusetts.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Michael Dirda</span> American literary critic (born 1948)

Michael Dirda is an American book critic, working for the Washington Post. He has been a Fulbright Fellow and won a Pulitzer Prize in 1993.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Nagoya/Boston Museum of Fine Arts</span> Museum in Nagoya, Aichi, Japan

The Nagoya/Boston Museum of Fine Arts (N/BMFA) was an art museum in Nagoya, Japan, that operated from 1999 to 2018.

Henry Southworth Allen is an American Pulitzer Prize-winning critic, journalist, poet, and artist.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Acquavella Galleries</span>

Acquavella Galleries is an art gallery located at 18 East 79th Street between Madison and Fifth Avenues in the Upper East Side neighborhood of Manhattan, New York City.

<i>Lime Green Icicle Tower</i> Glass and steel sculpture by Dale Chihuly

Lime Green Icicle Tower is a 2011 glass and steel sculpture by American artist Dale Chihuly. Housed in the Museum of Fine Arts (MFA) in Boston, Massachusetts, it has been on display in the Ruth and Carl J. Shapiro Family Courtyard since the 2011 exhibit "Chihuly: Through the Looking Glass". The sculpture proved so popular during the exhibit that the museum launched a fundraising campaign to purchase the piece.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">2011 Pulitzer Prize</span>

The 2011 Pulitzer Prizes were announced on Monday, April 18, 2011. The Los Angeles Times won two prizes, including the highest honor for Public Service. The New York Times also won two awards. No prize was handed out in the Breaking News category. The Wall Street Journal won an award for the first time since 2007. Jennifer Egan's A Visit From the Goon Squad picked up the Fiction prize after already winning the 2010 National Book Critics Circle Award. Photographer Carol Guzy of The Washington Post became the first journalist to win four Pulitzer Prizes.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Marlborough Fine Art</span>

Marlborough Fine Art was founded in London in 1946 by Frank Lloyd and Harry Fischer. In 1963, a gallery was opened as Marlborough-Gerson in Manhattan, New York, at the Fuller Building on Madison Avenue and 57th Street, which later relocated in 1971 to its present location, 40 West 57th Street. The gallery operates another New York space on West 25th Street, which opened in 2007. It briefly opened a Lower East Side space on Broome Street.

Tyler Green is an author, historian and critic. He produces and hosts The Modern Art Notes Podcast, a weekly digital audio program that features interviews with artists and art historians. Art critic Sebastian Smee called The MAN Podcast "one of the great archives of the art of our time." The BBC's Sophia Smith Galer named the program one of the world's top 25 culture podcasts.

Philip Kennicott is the chief Art and Architecture Critic of The Washington Post.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Boston Irish Famine Memorial</span> Sculpture in Boston, Massachusetts, U.S.

The Boston Irish Famine Memorial is a memorial park located on a plaza between Washington Street and School Street in Boston, Massachusetts. The park contains two groups of statues to contrast an Irish family suffering during the Great Famine of 1845–1852 with a prosperous family that had immigrated to America. Funded by a trust led by Boston businessman Thomas Flatley, the park was opened in 1998. It has received contrasting reviews and has since been called "the most mocked and reviled public sculpture in Boston".

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Max Geller (provocateur)</span>

Max Geller is an American performance artist and human rights activist. Part of the Jewish left, Geller is an organizer and activist for Palestinian human rights, including the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement (BDS).

References

  1. "2011 Pulitzer Prizes". www.pulitzer.org. Retrieved 8 February 2018.
  2. "Globe art critic Sebastian Smee wins Pulitzer", Boston Globe website Archived 19 April 2011 at the Wayback Machine
  3. WashPostPR (8 November 2017). "Sebastian Smee joins The Post's Features team" . Retrieved 8 February 2018 via www.WashingtonPost.com.
  4. "2011 Pulitzer Prize Criticism Biography", Pulitzer Prize website
  5. "Sebastian Smee biography", Boston Globe website
  6. "2011 Pulitzer Prize Criticism Citation", Pulitzer Prize website
  7. Capps, Kriston (13 October 2015). "Why Everyone (Possibly Including God) Hates Renoir". The Atlantic. Retrieved 23 December 2019.
  8. Smee, Sebastian. "Review | More and more people loathe Renoir. Is it time for a revival?". Washington Post. Retrieved 23 December 2019.
  9. Cooke, Rachel (16 October 2016). "The Art of Rivalry by Sebastian Smee review – from shared vision to slashed canvas". The Guardian. Retrieved 26 November 2016.
  10. Smee, Sebastian (November 2018). "Net Loss: The Inner Life in the Digital Age". Quarterly Essay (72). Retrieved 11 December 2018.