LOTS OF FAMOUS people have turned to painting in their later years: Ringo Starr, Jim Carrey, George W. Bush. So it’s not unusual that Nell Painter, an accomplished historian and Princeton professor with six books and a string of honors to her name, took up art in her 60s. What’s surprising is that she went all the way back to art school.
The disadvantages of age are legion. The advantages are also considerable: respect, self-knowledge, mastery of a skill. Painter discards all of them, along with her “20th century eyes,” as she writes in her new memoir, Old in Art School. In fact, her training in historical rigor and clarity prove to be handicaps in art, a discipline that requires, she finds, “letting go of coherence.”
Painter, most…