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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...

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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...

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From the Vasari21 Archives

The Fine Art of Recycling: Part Two

In looking over the images from Part One of this post, and from those below, it occurred to me how often art made from found objects and random detritus has a childlike quality about it, even though the trained eye knows there’s a sophisticated vision behind the...

Art in Embassies

    Ask not what your art can do for you, but what your art can do for your country   Among the many forward-minded initiatives launched by the all-too-brief administration of President John F. Kennedy, the Art in Embassies program is one that has...

Summer Reads: Two Feisty Women and a Bromance in Poetry and Paint

A few weeks ago my neighbor and Vasari21 member TJ Mabrey asked me why I didn’t suggest some books for the warm-weather season, when supposedly we all head for the country or the beach armed with a Kindle or a stack of paperbacks. Since I am always reading biographies...

So You Want To Learn How To Draw?

In which a writer and critic goes back to class Please note that this story is reprinted from the ARTnews issue of October, 1995. But 20 years later, the New York Studio School "drawing marathons" still continue along the same lines, under the expert guidance of the...

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...

Artist’s Block and How To Beat It

Feeling stymied? In a slump? Disconnected from your work? You’re not alone. We’re all familiar with writer’s block from the many cinematic clichés. The author sits at his typewriter or word processor, smoking and drinking and muttering profanities. The author fills a...

Fantasy Curating: Fantastical Threads

By Adria Arch Lately, I have been especially drawn to both two- and three-dimensional artwork that uses fabrics and fibers. The vibrant colors and patterns, sculptural shapes, and thumbing-the-nose at the traditional stone-and-steel crowd are all part of what I find...

Ripe for Rediscovery: Berthe Morisot

Having It All in the 19th Century Berthe Morisot’s subjects now seem among the tamest and most ingratiating imaginable: sun-drenched land- and seascapes, women and children casually posed in the garden or cozy domestic interiors, stylish Parisian beauties at their...

Alex Meets Ada

Alex Katz first met his wife, Ada, at an opening at the Tangier Gallery in 1958. She immediately became one of his favorite models. “I’d been painting these all-over landscapes, and then I decided to paint details like eyes and noses…

My Blockhead Adventures with Blockchain Art, Part Three

Red Bishop (detail) from Filippucci's NFT Chess Series Collection NOTE: If you’re just seeing Part Three of my Blockhead Adventures, it might prove helpful to back up to Part One and Part Two first. MY FIRST NFT THAT IS NOT FOR SALE (yet). This animation will be set...

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...

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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...

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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...

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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...

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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...

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 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.

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