Category Archives: Art

Art History Videos: “Michelangelo – Mind Of The Master” (The Getty)

Take a visual journey into the mind of Michelangelo, a painter, sculptor, architect, draftsman, and one of the most creative and influential artists in the history of Western art. See how he used drawings to create, explore, and prepare for some of his most famous works of art. Produced for the J. Paul Getty Museum’s exhibition, “Michelangelo: Mind of the Master.” https://www.getty.edu/art/exhibitions…

Art Insider: “The European Fine Art Fair” (TEFAF) – “Vetting Process” (Video)

TEFAF (The European Fine Art Fair) brings together the world’s leading experts across a multitude of disciplines to implement and adhere to TEFAF’s vetting procedures and regulations. This allows TEFAF to create a standard that applies across all of its fairs.

Established in 1988, TEFAF is widely regarded as the world’s pre-eminent organization for fine art, antiques, and design. TEFAF runs three Fairs internationally – TEFAF Maastricht, which covers 7,000 years of art history; TEFAF New York Spring, focused on modern and contemporary art & design; and TEFAF New York Fall, covering fine and decorative art from antiquity to 1920. TEFAF gives international dealers the platform to present museum-quality works of all eras and genres to a broad base of collectors and connoisseurs.

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Artist Profiles: 69-Year Old American Painter Sigrid Burton (Video)

“I draw literally and figuratively from the natural world. My drawing and mark making refer to and derive from botanical and biological anatomies, including marine life, as well as, the structures of both macro and micro cosmologies and writing systems, such as logograms.” 

Sigrid Burton is an American painter, long based in New York City, whose semi-abstract work is known for its use of expressive, atmospheric color fields and enigmatic allusions to natural and cultural realms. Burton has had solo exhibitions in New York City, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Chicago and Osaka, including at Artists Space and the Michael C. Rockefeller Arts Center, and been included in shows at A.I.R. Gallery, the John and Mable Ringling Museum of Art, and the Carnegie Art Museum, Oxnard. Her work belongs to the public collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Rockefeller Foundation, and Palm Springs Desert Museum, and has been reviewed in Arts Magazine, Arts & Antiques, Jung Journal, Chicago Tribune and LA Weekly.

Writers most frequently observe that Burton’s atmospheric works recall artists such as J.M.W. Turner, Odilon Redon, Pierre Bonnard and Mark Rothko, as well as the light of her native California. Art & Antiques described her approach as “chromatic expressionism” in which color is “her undisputed protagonist”.  Peter Frank observed, “The dialectic between color and form has always inflected, even impelled” Burton’s painting, with color the more omnipresent element, and form the more persistent. Art historian William C. Agee wrote, “The domains she explores […] meet, intersect, fuse, and then disappear, like apparitions, in liquid pools of mist and color. Her pictorial odyssey refers simultaneously to both a higher order, a timeless cosmic vastness, as well as to a private, interior world, abounding in personal histories and memories.” Burton has lived and worked in Pasadena, California since 2013.

From Wikipedia

“Watercolor In March”: Artist Thomas W. Shaller Releases New Works (2020)

The grasses up north are as blue as jade, Our mulberries here curve green-threaded branches; And at last, you think of returning home”  Li Bai

Inside - Thomas W. Schaller
“Inside” – Thomas W. Shaller (March, 2020)

“A feat, this heart’s control
Moment to moment
To scale all love down
To a cupped hand’s size”
Edith Tiempo, Bonsai

Bonsai - Thomas W. Shaller (March 2020)
“Bonzai” – Thomas W. Shaller (March 2020)

Thomas W. Schaller is an award-winning artist, architect, and author based in Los Angeles. As a renowned architectural artist, he received a Graham Foundation Grant and was a two-time recipient of the Hugh Ferris Memorial Prize. He has authored three books; the best-selling, and AIA award winner, Architecture in Watercolor (VNR – McGraw Hill) The Art of Architectural Drawing (J.Wiley and Sons)and  Thomas W. Schaller, Architect of Light : Watercolor Paintings by a Master – a retrospective of his recent artwork released by North Light Books / F+W Media and now Penguin / Random House, NYC  in 2018.

“My work is a study in contrasts: light and dark, vertical and horizontal, warm and cool tones, the real and the imagined, as well as the past, present, and future. These elements and others are designed to collide and sometimes find resolution on the surface of the paper. And by so doing, I invite you to take part in my artistic process – not to determine the stories I am telling – but hopefully, to inspire you to tell stories of your own.”

Website

 

Fine ARTS: 4K Video Tour – The VAN GOGH MUSEUM “Modern Art In Paris”

Van Gogh Museum Tour in 4K. Have you always wanted to be alone in the Van Gogh Museum? Step into Vincent’s world and enjoy the private video tour. Episode 3: Van Gogh Museum Amsterdam

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Fine Arts: 4K VIRTUAL TOUR VIDEO – VAN GOGH MUSEUM “Painter Of Peasant Life”

Van Gogh Museum Tour in 4K. Have you always wanted to be alone in the Van Gogh Museum? Step into Vincent’s world and enjoy the private video tour. Episode 2: Painter of peasant life – Van Gogh Museum Amsterdam

Arts & Culture Video: “The Future Of Japanese Craftsmanship” (Monocle)

To celebrate our forthcoming book about Japan, we are presenting a new film series that dives into the intriguing ecosystem that has preserved Japanese traditional skills over centuries. Meet the people who are future-proofing the age-old know-how.

Artist Profiles: Finnish-American Riitta Klint – “Dreamlike” Drips Of Paint With Pencil On Clay Panels

My paintings on clay panels begin with thin veils of paint that drip, pool and congeal, and like nature, move out of my control, beautifully mysterious. I work intuitively within these initial drips and pools, searching for structure. Each successive stroke of paint or pencil mark continues to build a dreamlike otherworldly place. The mood is one of nature untamed, enchanting and rife with hidden secrets.

Riitta Klint Dragonfly Dreams Triptych Acrylic and Pencil on Claybord

My paintings are my connection to the Earth, its nature and beautiful mysteries. Riitta Klint PaintingsThere is a sadness as I witness the loss of our last wild places. My paintings are an attempt to keep alive those places and offer my audience a sanctuary in which to reflect.

Riitta Klint is from Helsinki, Finland and currently lives in Fort Worth, Texas and maintains a studio in nearby Aledo. Between these two places is a lifetime spent traveling the world thanks to her father’s career with IBM. Living in her native Finland, as well as in Iran, Portugal, Indonesia, Germany, Mexico, and the United States, together with extensive travel in Asia and Europe has shaped her unique vision and palette. Her work offers the viewer a front seat to that journey, and a threshold to cross over into their own imagination.

Klint works primarily in acrylic and pencil on Claybord™, smooth kaolin clay covered panels that offer the ideal surface for her manipulation of color and medium.

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Painters Of The 1920’s & 1930’s: “Moonlight Ballad – The Art Of Martin Lewis”

 

Born in Victoria, Australia, Martin Lewis was a printmaker who is known for his scenes of urban life in New York during the 1920s and 1930s. As a youth Lewis held a variety of jobs that ranged from working on cattle ranches in the Australian Outback, in logging and mining camps, to being a sailor. In 1898, he moved to Sydney for two years where he received his only formal art training. During this period he may have been introduced to printmaking; a local radical paper, The Bulletin, published two of his drawings.

Lewis left Australia in 1900 and first settled in San Francisco. He eventually worked his way eastward to New York. Little is known about his life during the following decade except that he made a living as a commercial artist and produced his first etching in 1915. Lewis’ skill as an etcher was noticed by Edward Hopper, who became a lifelong friend. In 1920, dissatisfied with his job, Lewis used his entire savings to study art and to sketch in Japan. He returned to New York after a two-year stay and resumed his commercial art career, but also pursued his own work as a painter and printmaker.

During the Depression, Lewis moved to Newtown, Connecticut, but later returned to Manhattan, where he helped establish a school for printmakers. From 1944-1952 Lewis taught a graphics course at the Art Students League in New York.

During his thirty-year career, Lewis made about 145 drypoints and etchings. His prints, like Shadow Dance and Stoops in Snow, were much admired during the 1930s for their realistic portrayal of daily life and sensitive rendering of texture. The artist’s skill in composition and his talent in the drypoint and etching media have received renewed attention in recent years. Lewis is one of the few printmakers of this era who specialized in nocturnal scenes. Some scholars consider his print Glow of the City his most significant work because of the subtlety of handling. A minute network of dots, lines, and flecks scratched onto the plate creates the illusion of transparent garments hanging in the foreground, while the Chanin Building, an art deco skyscraper, towers over the nearby tenements.

nga.gov/collection/artist-info.4704.html

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin_Lewis_(artist)

Art & Humor Spotlight: 56-Year Old British Painter Harland Miller’s “Iconic Penguin Book Covers”

From a Maddox Gallery website (March 20, 2020):

Harland-Miller-Ill-Never-Forget-What-I-Cant-RememberMiller’s Penguin book covers and ironic titles catch the art world’s eye

These covers are closer to still life studies, rather than two-dimensional posters. Experimenting with different paper sizes and angles, he occasionally shows their spines, and the shadows they cast. It is a celebration of books as treasured objects. His drawings – in particular his studies for his large-scale oil paintings with their notes scribbled down the margins – are some of his most intimate works to date.

The ensuing images are humorous, sardonic and nostalgic at the same time, while the painting style hints at the dog-eared, scuffed covers of the Penguin classics themselves.

Starting with Jay Jopling in 1996, when Miller exhibited in a group show at London’s Institute of Contemporary Art, his works have garnered many a famous fan. Amongst which are AC/DC’s guitarist Angus Young, David Bailey, and Elton John – whose work amusingly, if a little painfully, bears the title ‘International Lonely Guy.’

George Michael, with his Harland Miller piece ‘Incurable Romantic Seeks Dirty Filthy Whore‘ commanded  £237,500 in the posthumous auction of his art collection last year.

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