A new book, The Circulating Lifeblood of Ideas, looks at the expansive collection and defining criticism of the ground-breaking art critic
“Steinberg was looking at copies of famous works, and how they helped reveal the artist’s choices and intentions,” said Holly Borham, an expert in art prints and a curator at the Blanton Museum of Art in Austin. Borham spoke with me about how the art critic Leo Steinberg, who broke ground in the 1960s with his ideas about pop art and Renaissance masters, arrived at his discoveries through his giant collection of art prints.
“Those prints helped him to get new insight into artists like Michelangelo and Leonardo da Vinci,” she said. “He uncovered the intentions of the original artists by looking at prints, and that helped him become a towering figure in art history.”
