Voices on Art-Arts & Letters Live at the Dallas Museum of Art-Caravaggio’s Life and Art

On July 16, 2019, for our series Voices on Art, in collaboration with Arts & Letters Live at the Dallas Museum of Art, Art This Week Productions filmed these talks by Julien Domercq, the DMA’s Lillian and James H. Clark Assistant Curator of European Art, and Andrew Graham-Dixon, author of Caravaggio: A Life Sacred and Profane.

This talk was filmed in conjunction with the exhibition Caravaggio: Martha and Mary Magdalene on view at the Dallas Museum of Art, June 23, 2019 to September 22, 2019.

From the DMA website–“Julien Domercq, the DMA’s Lillian and James H. Clark Assistant Curator of European Art, will start by discussing Caravaggio’s painting Martha and Mary Magdalene (c. 1598), on loan from the Detroit Institute of Arts and currently on view at the DMA. With fewer than 10 paintings by Caravaggio in the United States, this is a rare opportunity to see and delve into the life and art of one of the most celebrated Old Master painters.

Andrew Graham-Dixon will then talk about his acclaimed biography Caravaggio: A Life Sacred and Profane, which was shortlisted for the Samuel Johnson Prize for nonfiction and was a New York Times Notable Book. He spent a decade piecing together the scraps of evidence left of Caravaggio’s life and answers questions that have long puzzled scholars. John Richardson said, “Graham-Dixon brings the bad-boy genius of the 17th century to life as vividly as if he were one of today’s pop stars.” Author Peter Carey praised the book as “a thrilling lesson in the art of seeing, a sensual exploration of the shadows of Caravaggio’s sometimes violent but always Christian world, a detective story with a highly satisfying ending.”

Graham-Dixon is one of the leading art critics and presenters of arts television in the English-speaking world. For more than 20 years he published a weekly column on art, first in the Independent and, more recently, in the Sunday Telegraph. He has presented six landmark series on art for the BBC, including A History of British Art, Renaissance, and Art of Eternity, as well as numerous individual documentaries on art and artists. He has written a number of books on subjects ranging from medieval painting and sculpture to the art of the present.

Thanks to Julien, Andrew, and Carolyn for allowing us to film the talk. Thanks also to the Arts & Letters Live staff and the Dallas Museum of Arts staff for their help recording these talks.

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