Peter Plagens

Peter Plagens, art critic for Newsweek, is the author of Sunshine Muse:
Art on the West Coast, 1945-70 and the novel Time for Robo, among other
works. He is also a painter.

Fine ArtOctober 12, 2006

Whose Art Is It Anyway?

Two books on art controversies and arts funding in America explore how and when taxpayer money can be used to support public art.

Peter Plagens
Fine ArtMay 11, 2006

The Body Artist

Two biographies of Thomas Eakins reveal the art world’s attitudes about the painter’s bodily obsessions: Was he a curious innocent, a brilliant anatomist or a dirty old man?

Peter Plagens
Cultural Criticism and AnalysisDecember 8, 2005

The Look of Truth

Photographs are supposed to be unbiased recognitions of reality, but they’re really self-portraits of the photographer. The Ongoing Movement, a blend of biography and analysis, examines what happens when photographers create deliberately untruthful pictures.

Peter Plagens

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Peter Plagens

Fine ArtOctober 12, 2006

Two books on art controversies and arts funding in America explore how and when taxpayer money can be used to support public art.

Fine ArtMay 11, 2006

Two biographies of Thomas Eakins reveal the art world’s attitudes about the painter’s bodily obsessions: Was he a curious innocent, a brilliant anatomist or a dirty old man?

Cultural Criticism and AnalysisDecember 8, 2005

Photographs are supposed to be unbiased recognitions of reality, but they’re really self-portraits of the photographer. The Ongoing Movement, a blend of biography and analysis, examines what happens when photographers create deliberately untruthful pictures.