The Met and the Frick have lately taken to producing no-frills micro shows from single masterpiece paintings, with results that can feel a trifle lazy and underdone.
Exhibitions of Vermeer and van Gogh at the Metropolitan and the Modern have shown that the "mini-blockbuster," an intimate exhibition focused on a single masterpiece, is a viable option.
And while there is always a certain amount of grumbling — "I've been here for four whole days, and I haven't seen a single masterpiece" — there is also, always, enough art to keep cynicism at bay, as long as you avoid the parties.
And in each case, the legacy comes down to a single twee masterpiece of 1967.
"I feel that when I come to London, it will be to perform a single, gigantic masterpiece in 37 movements".
For that reason, it was hard to create a single perfect masterpiece, which had been the aim of many of his peers and predecessors, especially Cartier-Bresson.
It is perhaps this babble and ruckus - the polite word is diversity - that breeds the impulse of which Sam Tanenhaus's question is an expression: the urge to isolate, in the midst of it all, a single, comprehensive masterpiece.
No doubt he picked up the habit from Hegel; but Hegel was quite explicit about treating the philosophical canon not as a collection of strange books by idiosyncratic authors but as a single unified masterpiece composed by "the one living spirit".
The skyline looks like a single multi-faceted masterpiece when observed from a distance on the water.
The Los Angeles and Chicago-based filmmaker has compiled five-plus years worth of footage, shot in 42 unique locations, into a single three-minute masterpiece.
