“Rotten Romance” and “Eat My Memoir” are moving to Substack, a newsletter platform that will allow me to reach a larger audience. If you are interested in seeing the archive and subscribing,
click HERE.

UNDER THE RADAR

A spotlight for members.

Cindy Blakeslee

Recent Feature

Ripe for Rediscovery: Peter Miller

Ripe for Rediscovery: Peter Miller

Talk about “Surrealism” in conversation with artists and art lovers you are most likely to think of works by Dalí, Magritte, Tanguy, Ernst, or possibly Paul Delvaux. Mention “American Surrealism,” and the terrain gets tricky. Didn’t Adolph Gottlieb, Mark Rothko, and...

read more

Recent Feature

L.A. Confidential

L.A. Confidential

The first in a series of reports on the art world.  In May, it seemed like we were almost entirely out of the woods with Covid-19, and then along came the Delta variant and the post-pandemic euphoria rapidly dissipated. Still, as long-time observers of the Los Angeles...

read more

From the Vasari21 Archives

First Encounters

The art that made artists want to be artists In almost every artist’s life there are inevitably one or more works that ignite a spark or at least plant a seed, provoking the notion that art could be a dedicated calling, or at least a subject of serious study....

Three Summer Reads, Not All New

Traditionally summer is the time when you tackle those big door-stoppers you skimmed in college: War and Peace, The Magic Mountain, Middlemarch. Or you turn to thrillers and mysteries, escapist fiction that doesn’t tax the brain too much and is as digestible (and...

The ABC’s of Social Media

By Barbra Drizin Most clients who come to me have at least a passing familiarity with the major social media platforms—Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, and Twitter. You may be posting, updating, and tweeting regularly, but until you understand how to maximize their...

Good-Bye to All That

A dedicated teacher looks back on three decades in the classroom In December of this year, I will retire from teaching painting, a job I’ve loved for 30 years. Although I am looking forward to a new phase in my life, I will miss this role. I’ve had a good run and feel...

Me, Myself, and I Part 3

It’s curious to me that more women than men responded to the call for a third round-up of self-portraits on Vasari21. That’s possibly because there are more female members than male (though I can’t tell you the exact ratio), possibly because women traditionally spend...

Artists Respond to the Pandemic

In newsletters, I’ve touched on the way artists respond to catastrophe—specifically war and widespread disease—from the Middle Ages to the present. Some, like Gerhard Richter and Anselm Kiefer, may take decades for the horror of their times to percolate into their...

What Is a Drawing? Part Three

Far from disappearing from an artist's regular practice, as many critics have complained, the possibilities for drawing have only expanded in the last century, limited only by the imaginations of their creators. Picasso made drawings with a small electric light in a...

Grants and Financial Resources for Artists during Covid19

I spent about three days scouring available sources (Artnet, The Art Newspaper, the Internet) to see what sorts of funds are available for artists impacted by the Covid19 pandemic. The bad news is how little is out there, and many of the significant grants are only...

Another Opening, Another Show

The opening, duration, and end of a gallery or museum show can be cause for anxiety, depression, obsession, elation, relief, and any number of other emotional reactions that occur when you…

The Fate of the Art at the Four Seasons

Photo credits: bottom of pageOver the holidays, I learned from a friend that the venerable Four Seasons  Restaurant in the landmark Seagram Building on Park Avenue would be closing this summer. I was a little late to that news, and it is not technically about to be...

Archived Feature

Fantasy Curating: Hands-On and Lush

Fantasy Curating: Hands-On and Lush

 By Lee Albert Hill As a painter myself I am drawn to the work of other painters first and foremost.  Especially those who demonstrate a dedication to a lush, hands-on, painterly approach and an emphasis on refined craft and detail.  For this curation I have chosen...

read more

Archived Feature

Suggestions for Summer Reading

Suggestions for Summer Reading

Get a jump on the season with a beach-bag full of memoirs Perhaps because I’ve been working on one of my own (“Rotten Romance,” dispatched via Substack every Sunday), memoirs have been much on my mind. For purely recreational reading, I often prefer first-person...

read more

Archived Feature

Meghan Wilbar: The Long Road

Meghan Wilbar: The Long Road

It’s a brave artist who attempts to say something new about landscape. The genre has been around since ancient times, when frescoes of Arcadian vistas adorned the walls of upscale villas, and its popularity has waxed and waned according to the talents and interests of...

read more

Archived Under the Radar

Marietta Patricia Leis

Marietta Patricia Leis

Like many little girls, Marietta Patricia Leis first set her sights on becoming a ballerina. “At the age of seven I was entranced with wanting to be a ballet dancer,” she says. As a child in suburban East Orange, NJ, she studied dance every day after school, and...

read more

Archived Under the Radar

Susan English

Susan English

When Susan English was three or four years old, she lived in Belgium with her family for a couple of years. Years later she still remembers a babysitter named Hele placing a candle inside a child’s play igloo. “It made a big impression on me,” English says. “The light...

read more

 Archived Podcast

Alice Robb: Why We Dream

Alice Robb: Why We Dream

In the summer of 2011, science writer Alice Robb discovered a book called Exploring the World of Lucid Dreaming, which promised readers that they could control the plots of their dreams.

read more