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Vasari21 https://vasari21.com Connecting Artists Now Thu, 07 Jul 2022 15:44:56 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://vasari21.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/cropped-Favicon21c-32x32.png Vasari21 https://vasari21.com 32 32 Ripe for Rediscovery: Peter Miller https://vasari21.com/ripe-for-rediscovery-peter-miller/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=ripe-for-rediscovery-peter-miller https://vasari21.com/ripe-for-rediscovery-peter-miller/#comments Sun, 10 Oct 2021 15:13:34 +0000 https://vasari21.com/?p=42995

Peter Miller in her studio, ca. 1945

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 Jackson Pollock all have their surrealist moments on the way to their more memorable achievements? And then try “female American surrealist,” and see if you can name anyone other than Dorothea Tanning who garnered significant attention in the last century.

So it’s small wonder that a painter like Peter Miller (1913-96) has slipped through the cracks of art history. There is the business of her first name, for example, which she adopted while still studying at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts in the early 1930s—recognizing long before the Guerrilla Girls that work ostensibly by a man would be taken more seriously in the art world of her time. (She was born Henrietta Myers, and became Peter Miller after she married C. Earle Miller, a fellow student at PAFA and also an aspiring artist.)

Head (1930s), oil on canvas, 36 by 30 inches

Her obscurity might also be explained by a reluctance to promote herself in the New York art world—which was the art world in the United States as she was launching her career. Her eventual physical distance from that milieu was also not conducive to cultivating the right dealers and collectors. By 1935, she was dividing her time between a farm in Brandywine, PA, and a ranch in Espanola, NM, about half an hour north of Santa Fe (for a pair of young artists, the Millers seemed to have had considerable financial independence).

Toro Bravo (1940s), oil on canvas, 30 by 25 inches

Nonetheless, Miller did show in New York, at the prestigious Julien Levy Gallery in the mid-1940s, and her first exhibition included a catalogue with an essay by Robert Goldwater—now probably better known as the husband of Louise Bourgeois, but in his day a pioneer art historian, the author of the groundbreaking Primitivism in Modern Art. Starting in 1935, the Millers made frequent trips to Europe, armed with letters of introduction from a former teacher to Picasso, Matisse, and Miró. Not surprisingly, echoes of those masters—along with Paul Klee—turn up in her canvases. But critics also noticed the influences of the Native Americans of the Southwest, which the Millers considered their spiritual home. In Espanola, they were neighbors of the Tewa Pueblo, “indigenous people whose crafts and religious beliefs fascinated her,” writes Francis Naumann in his catalogue essay for a show of her paintings at Peyton Wright in Santa Fe, NM, now at the gallery through November 15. “The reliance of Native Americans upon the land and the animals who occupied it permeated her work for the remaining years of her career.”

The Offerings (1950s), oil on canvas, 30 by 40 inches

By the time of her second show at Julian Levy, the ethnic subject matter was even more pronounced. “The Indian symbols become a kind of vocabulary to be amalgamated with the sophisticated symbol-language of Miró and Klee,” noted an anonymous contemporary reviewer quoted in Nauman’s essay.  “Especially salient is the lesson she has learned from Indian painting of relationships to shape in strange, undefined space.”

The Story of the Hunt (1940s), oil on canvas, 30 by 40 inches

Throughout her long life, Miller’s imagery conjured with the symbols, pictographs, pottery, and other components of a culture then still so readily apparent in the Southwest (now it’s mostly reduced to jewelry and tchotchkes marketed to tourists). She absorbed the spiritual values of the Tewa and melded them with the Surrealist vein that throbs in her biomorphs and bright colors. As conservator Paul Gratz, who found a trove of Miller paintings from her estate, notes in the Peyton-Wright catalogue: “Miller’s technique was unique. In some of her paintings, she textured the ground to mimic canyon walls. In others, she used sgraffito and applied thin veils of color that she would then rub with cloth. One small area of the canvas can contain six to eight different colors….The compositions are deliberate, and she had a sophisticated knowledge of color. There are paintings within the painting, layers upon layers.”

Architectural Abstract (1960s), oil on canvas, 30.125 by 42.125 inches

She adopted as her personal totem the turtle. “There is no way to know for certain whether Peter selected the turtle herself or whether it was bestowed on her by the Tewa-speaking Pueblo Indians,” writes Bill Richards, an artist friend later in her life, in the Peyton-Wright catalogue. “My guess is that it was divined for her by a Tewa Shaman. She and Earle, a printmaker and sculptor, [maintained] a life-long relationship with the Pueblos, cherished for its depth of knowledge and friendship, including the adoption of Tilano (a Pueblo) and his partner Edith Warner (a Southwest writer originally from Philadelphia) as godparents and mentors.”

Four Birds (1960s), oil on canvas, 35 by 20 inches

Old myths and prehistoric civilizations continued to fascinate her in her later years—“a  number of her paintings from the 1960s and 1970s illustrate tools and various artifacts that appear to have been unearthed from an archaeological dig,” says Naumann. One painting Naumann studied closely seems to refer to the legend of a Polish princess, Kunegunda, who, to avoid marriage, set up a series of impossible tasks for all those who sought her hand. When one brave knight accomplished a tricky circuit along her castle’s walls on horseback, in armor, he rejected her. In despair, the princess jumped to her death. A strange subject for a woman steeped in Pueblo civilization, but other references make their way into her works—matadors and bullfights, symbols derived from Egyptian art and hieroglyphs, unidentified goddesses, and mysterious “bird women.”

Never much concerned with the pre-eminent movements of her mature years—Abstract Expressionism, Minimalism, Color Field painting—she adhered to a resolutely personal vision. One still sees the Miró-like shapes and the abstract geometric patterning of Paul Klee in her later works—so much so that if you looked at some, like Architectural Abstract from the 1960s, you might easily guess it was by Klee. But Miller never really feels derivative. Her voice remained her own—searching, fiercely individual, and both gentle and brave—throughout her life.

Top: Hawksnake (1950s), oil on canvas, 16 by 22 inches

 

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Cindy Blakeslee https://vasari21.com/cindy-blakeslee/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=cindy-blakeslee https://vasari21.com/cindy-blakeslee/#comments Sun, 10 Oct 2021 14:59:48 +0000 https://vasari21.com/?p=43027  

#165 (2019), found wood, wheels, metal, paint, 9 by 5.5 by 7.5 inches

Cindy Blakeslee’s sculptures startle with unexpected collisions of found objects: Nails bristle, almost angrily, from shapely chunks of wood. Papier-mâché eggs lie cradled in a nest of shredded maps, suspended from delicate chains. A marbled rock supports a pewter-colored lightbulb, cast in concrete from a real bulb, which is gracefully encircled by a bracelet of steel. Some of her source materials are obviously industrial, but it’s difficult to name precisely what they are, and though there are intimations of the figure (could that be a red penis protruding from #165?  does #154 remind you of PacMan?), most of the work is resolutely abstract. “People sometimes ask me what a particular sculpture means,” says the artist. “For me, the medium is the message, so the meaning is inherent in the piece.”

#132 (2015), concrete, steel, rock, 11.5 by 6 by 8 inches

Like many members of this site, Blakeslee is a late bloomer, coming into her own about 17 years ago, after years of pursuing other paths. But an interest in the environment and what our culture tosses aside as trash has been with her since she was a child. As a pre-teen, growing up in Baltimore, she cruised the alleys behind neighborhood houses to collect newspapers set out on top of garbage cans. After the papers had piled up in the garage, she and her father took them to a broker downtown who bought them by the pound. From an early age, she developed an entrepreneurial streak. “When I was 12, I started a business called Bristol Household Services—Bristol being my middle name—and turned index cards into business cards to advertise the venture,” she recalls. “I put them around the neighborhood and did errands for people, raking leaves, mowing lawns, going to the store for those who couldn’t get out of the house.”

#154 (2018), wood, paint, nails, 9 by 10 by 6 inches

When it came time for college, she went to Smith, the exclusive women’s school in Northampton, MA. But it wasn’t a good fit. “I came from an integrated high school with 3,000 students in the heart of a city to an isolated place in the wilds of Massachusetts, where I didn’t have a car and had no way to get around.” She quit after two years, moved to Washington, DC, and soon went to work for Common Cause, an organization that fights for an accountable government. Eventually she ended up as executive director for a newly formed study group with the Maryland legislature, which evolved into a writing job with the Institute for Highway Safety (the organization that tests crash dummies). “I knew at that point that if I didn’t return to school to finish my degree, I wouldn’t, so I moved back to Baltimore to study at Johns Hopkins.”

#130 (2015), iron, steel, wood, 6 by 15 by 21 inches

By the late ‘70s, she was in Washington again, primarily as a technical editor, which entails turning complicated jargon, such as economic studies or computer manuals, into lay language. Art was a sometime interest, particularly photography; she took classes at night and built a dark room in a bathroom. But a real love of tactile materials kicked in when she got a job outside the city at what was considered the second-largest fabric store in the country. “I enjoyed walking up and down the aisles and getting acquainted with the fabrics. They offered me a full-time position, but I turned it down because managing a store just wasn’t for me,” she recalls.

#182 (2021), found wooden mold, brush, metals, 13 by 16 by 7.5 inches

Over time she “got tired of hearing that D.C. was the center of the world.” Her sister had been living in Vermont for decades, and on visits to the small towns and rural areas of the Green State, she fell in love with the slower pace and natural surroundings. For four years, after moving to Burlington and then Montpelier, she was executive director of the Vermont Trial Lawyers Association, but a passion for the environment—and for discarded materials—kicked in when she worked for a nonprofit that collected industrial scrap and sold it to the public. “My job was to go around to manufacturers in the state and look in their trash cans,” she says. “I would bring back all kinds of cool stuff—scrap fabric, scrap leather, scrap plastic and metal. Bits and bobs, odds and ends.” Teachers bought the materials to use in the classroom, and Blakeslee began to do what she describes as “crafty things.”

From 1997 to 2001, she created and managed the Center for Sustainable Building. As a sideline, an interest in food and her accomplishments as a chef led her to enter a cooking competition on PBS, one of the earliest reality shows on television. “I went to New York, became the Northeast winner, and then was sent to Hollywood, where I made it as far as the quarter finals.” After that she wrote for online blogs and a respected alternative publication called Seven Days, contributing the first restaurant review for a newspaper in northern Vermont.

#141 (2017), found nails, wood, 25 by 24 by 5 inches

Blakeslee has suffered from bouts of lifelong depression, and she is upfront about its impact on her career. “It explains the fits and starts of my work, art and otherwise,” she says. “Art actually suits my situation because I can come and go from it at will, and it is still there when I return.” After launching a website called Eat Vermont.com, which was designed to be consumer-centric but never got off the ground, she turned full-time to sculpture.

All the years of collecting discards have paid off throughout her many ventures, but there have been mishaps, one of the most memorable of which occurred in the mid-‘90s “I learned of a nearby dumpster in Montpelier that was full of cool stuff from an office-supply store,” she recalls. “I always carried a step stool in my truck to get in and out, so I easily made it inside the container. As I gleefully tossed many things out onto the ground several people passed by, half of them smiling, half glaring. But my glee was short-lived because I forgot a cardinal rule of dumpster diving: when you lower the level of the stuff in a dumpster, your exit may not be as easy as your entry. Sure enough, I got stuck. A woman passing by came to my rescue. I forget the actual maneuver, but whatever it was worked. Lesson learned.”

Since 2006, Blakeslee has been living in Bradford, VT, on the eastern border on the state, a conservative place politically but home to a nationally known and respected furniture maker, Copeland Furniture. “I haunt the bins of scrap they put out for the public to take—most burn it but it’s lovely hardwood. I wish I had more woodworking skills so that I could manipulate the wood better, but I can’t resist collecting it. I just got a router which I think will open up many possibilities. I’m still seeking a woodworking mentor to help me with table and band-saw skills.”

Cindy Blakeslee

She also occasionally goes to metal scrap-yards, and friends bring her random bits of metal and wood they think she might find interesting. “I crowd-source items from the local community,” she adds. “I did this with stringed instruments and with VCR tape, both of which I’ve used as materials.” Wood chunks to use as bases often come from a large timber-frame company. “They offered me a sideways pallet to get into their dumpsters, but that seemed dicey, so I now bring my own ladder. What I can’t use in art I have used to create raised garden beds.”

Blakeslee says she is inspired by the materials she collects but has no preconceived ideas about what she’s going to make. “My overarching goal is to elevate materials into fine art rather than craft and to change the way people view that which they discard.”

 

Top: #110 (2005), plaster, mung beans, glass bowl, concrete, 12 by 12 inches. Cindy Blakeslee’s studio in Bradford, VT, is on the homepage of Vasari21 for the next couple of weeks.

 

 

 

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L.A. Confidential https://vasari21.com/l-a-confidential/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=l-a-confidential https://vasari21.com/l-a-confidential/#respond Sun, 26 Sep 2021 15:54:20 +0000 https://vasari21.com/?p=42966 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 scene observe, a mood of cautious optimism prevails. “I’ve been getting to the city regularly, going to shows and lectures, sometimes once a week,” says artist Virginia Katz, who lives in Orange County, about an hour south of L.A. “But because we’re still in the throes of a pandemic and the case numbers have been going up again, the guidelines have changed. Now they’re requiring masks indoors, and even at some outdoor events, like baseball games. It’s a week-by-week thing, but for right now things seem to be open and on track.”

Virginia Katz

Because the city enjoys temperate, usually sunny weather, there have been numerous pop-ups and opportunities to visit art in outdoor spaces, even shows you could see only from the safety of your car, such as the Drive-By-Art exhibition organized by Warren Neidich more than a year ago. But most galleries and museums remained closed or open only by appointment. “Then in May, L.A. County announced that museums were re-opening at 75 percent capacity, though some chose a smaller percentage,” reports artist Susan Chorpenning. “Everyone got very excited, and many galleries re-opened.” But there are nonetheless restrictions. “The Hammer and LACMA require masks again, and they are mandatory at all indoor public spaces. The Broad has timed entry, no walk-ins.”

Susan Chorpenning

Still, she adds, “people are not staying in, as during earlier surges.” Great shows abound, including Pipilotti Rist’s 30-year retrospective at MoCA and Lorna Simpson at Hauser & Wirth. “I decided to go ahead with my show at Loiter Galleries, which opens October 2. Like everyone else, I am simply unwilling to wait another year and a half without doing an actual physical show.”

Reports gallerist Tarrah von Lintel: “I moved the gallery to an easily accessible location in response to the pandemic from downtown Los Angeles. At the end of May, I had my first opening at Bergamot Station, Santa Monica, where parking is easy and ample. I have been nothing but astounded at the sheer number of people coming through to look at art since then. Everyone is so happy to be seeing art in person again after having spent most of their time at home for the past 15 months or so. I am also noticing that visitors are not on their phones while they are looking at the art.  Before the pandemic it was hard to get people to look up and appreciate what’s in the gallery. This no longer seems to be an issue. I think most people have realized that digital is a great tool, but it is not a replacement for the object itself.”

Tarrah von Lintel

“A lot of alt spaces are run by artists with young families, so we all stay masked up and make sure anyone attending an event or show keeps their masks on,” says Carl Baratta, co-director of the nonprofit space Tiger Strikes Asteroid in L.A. “Everyone I know in the alt and commercial gallery scene is keeping a close eye on the evolving safety policies as we move forward.

“We have moved a lot of events outside and are currently working on a two-day pop-up on the roof of our gallery building at the Bendix,” he adds. “The Torrance Museum recently organized the Nomad art show, with more than 450 artists in 87,000 square feet of raw commercial space. We had 4,000 visitors come by—not too shabby for our first big outing during a pandemic.”

Jamie Hamilton

The galleries may be enjoying a post-Covid resurgence, but the quality leaves much to be desired, in the eyes of some. “I’ve gone out only a little bit, but for the most part I’ve been really turned off by what I’ve seen at the higher-end galleries here,” says an artist who asked to remain anonymous. “It’s bad artwork by minorities and others who have been excluded from the system for so long. But you can’t say that because it’s not politically correct.” Another artist noted that places like Gagosian and Hauser & Wirth are showing nothing other than blue-chip contemporary and modern: Jean Arp, Alice Neel, Nancy Rubins, Bridget Riley, Albert Oehlen, Henry Moore, et al. But when was that ever not the case?

What deters many from heading into Los Angeles, or being out and about, is the homeless problem, which grows ever more dire. “The homeless situation is falling off the map right now,” observes Linda Vallejo, an artist who lives in Santa Monica and Malibu. “There are more and more people living in their cars. Garbage keeps piling up. I see this at my doorstep every morning,” says Jamie Hamilton, who lives in downtown L.A. “The answer the City Council has come up with is they’re now criminalizing homelessness. You can’t camp on the streets anymore, and there’s concerted effort to get the homeless out of the richer neighborhoods. The scale of it is so vast that they’re talking about building internment camps for the homeless.”

Linda Vallejo

As for personal safety, Vallejo says that “many people have policies about who they will allow in their homes. I’m basically spending time with my husband and my home and my kids and grandkids.”  David Rubin, a curator, critic, and artist, agrees. “Even though LA has pockets of anti-vaxxers and Trumpers—in Orange County, for example, people are for the most part following protocol.”

“I think the best we can do right now is plan exhibitions to happen and set dates and stay flexible as we slog through flu season,” says Baratta. “We have to remember that everyone has realistic expectations, and these days sometimes things have to be pushed back. It’s not great, but it’s better than full-on lockdown.”

Top: An installation shot of the recent show “Hybrid” at Tiger Strikes Asteroid

 

 

 

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The Immortal Mona Lisa https://vasari21.com/the-immortal-mona-lisa/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=the-immortal-mona-lisa https://vasari21.com/the-immortal-mona-lisa/#respond Sun, 26 Sep 2021 15:36:46 +0000 https://vasari21.com/?p=42942 A new novel recalls a famous heist.

I’ve just finished reading Jonathan Santlofer’s hugely entertaining thriller The Last Mona Lisa, a lively yarn that taps into our present-day fascination with all things Leonardo and takes the reader into the sometimes violent underworld of art theft. The dark mystery at its heart raises the provocative question: Could the Mona Lisa in the Louvre possibly be a fake?

Santlofer’s fictional hero, Luke Perrone, an artist and amateur art historian, is the great-grandson of a real-life thief, Vincenzo Peruggia, who had helped construct the painting’s glass case and did indeed make off with the notorious lady hidden under his workman’s smock. In the course of reading his ancestor’s journal, Perrone sets off on a chase that brings him into close encounters with shifty collectors, an ambitious INTERPOL agent, and a beautiful blonde with a hidden agenda. The story slips back and forth in time, laced with generous doses of art-history and a sprightly cast of shady characters.

A presumed self0portrait of Leonardo late in life

After finishing the book, I became curious as to what was real and what was fiction and took to the Internet to sort out what I could. The online excavation unearthed lots of interesting factoids, beginning the with identity of the sitter herself.  Mona Lisa was by no means a woman of great interest in her day, nor did her portrait begin to attract all that much attention until early in the 20th century. She was the third wife of a prosperous silk merchant, Francesco del Giocondo. (The work is occasionally referred to as La Gioconda, meaning “the happy one,” but also a pun on her married name). She bore him five children, and the union was, according to all available accounts, a successful one. Lisa’s marriage may have increased her social status because her husband’s family was more  prosperous than her own. (She is known as “Mona,” a common contraction of “Madonna,” meaning “my lady,” or “madam.”) In his will, Francesco returned her dowry to her and provided for her future, writing “Given the affection and love of the testator towards Mona Lisa, his beloved wife; in consideration of the fact that Lisa has always acted with a novel spirit and as a faithful wife….”

Leonardo was commissioned to paint her likeness in 1503 but most likely had to delay work when he received a tidy sum to begin work on the long-lost heroic history painting The Battle of Anghiari. In 1506, he considered the portrait unfinished and never delivered it to his client. Online accounts claim he traveled with it throughout his life, perhaps completing the portrait many years later in France (somewhere in the dusty regions of my memory, I seem to recall that he strapped the canvas to a mule—presumably safely wrapped—when he made his final journey to Clos Lucé in France, where he spent his last three years as the guest of François I). The eminent art historian Carmen Bambach concluded that Leonardo probably continued refining the work until 1516 or 1517. “Leonardo’s right hand was paralytic circa 1517, which may indicate why he left the Mona Lisa unfinished,” says Wikipedia).

A mug shot of Vincenzo Peruggia at the time of his arrest

The painting went to the Louvre after the French Revolution, but spent a brief period in Napoleon’s bedroom at the Tuileries Palace. Curiously, few outside a narrow circle of the French intelligentsia paid it much attention until Peruggia, disguised as a workman, prised it loose from the walls of the museum, hid in a broom closet, and walked out with the portrait wrapped in his smock after the museum had closed.

And then the story gets really weird.

A painter visiting the Louvre noticed it missing the next day; the museum closed for a week of investigation and detectives closely searched the museum (the picture’s empty frame was found on a staircase); the ports and eastern borders of France were closed until all departing traffic could be inspected. Lacking very little real evidence, the police set their sights on Guillaume Apollinaire, described in Roger Shattuck’s The Banquet Years as “an art critic, a witty chroniqueur…, a successful story writer, and a man of unconventional brilliance and mysteriously attractive personality.” An acquaintance of Apollinaire named Géry Pieret, who had worked briefly as his secretary, had stolen small statuettes from the Louvre “out of pure bravado.” He sold some to another bright light of the Parisian avant-garde, Pablo Picasso, and left others with Apollinaire. After the theft of the Mona Lisa made headlines all over the world, Pieret “proceeded to sell one of the stolen statuettes to the Paris-Journal, which used it for publicity purposes to taunt Louvre officials about the laxness of precautions against theft,” Shattuck reported. Apollinaire and Picasso, worried about deportation, turned “all the goods over to the Paris-Journal for anonymous restitution.” In the course of their investigations, the police uncovered Apollinaire’s name, searched his apartment, and arrested him a few weeks after the theft of the painting. Convinced they had the real thief, the sûreté put him in solitary confinement for nine miserable days. To compound the humiliation, his cher ami Pablo, “under questioning, denied having any part in the affair and finally even denied knowing his friend.”

So where was the painting during all this hubbub?

Guillaume Apollinaire

Peruggia kept it hidden in his apartment in Paris for two years and then returned to his hometown of Florence, where he eventually approached an art dealer, who contacted the director of the Uffizi for authentication. Peruggia apparently hoped for a reward for returning the painting to Italy, not realizing that the portrait’s history had landed it legitimately in France and eventually in the collection of the Louvre. He expected a reward but instead ended up under arrest. After its recovery, the painting was exhibited all over Italy with banner headlines celebrating its return. The Mona Lisa was then handed over to the Louvre in 1913. The notoriety it received in the press helped the artwork become one of the best known in the world, ensuring a reputation that has made it the most famous Renaissance painting of all time (though not, of course, in the eyes of many art historians). Mona Lisa’s iconic status has made her the the brunt of several parodies, such as Duchamp’s cheeky LHOOQ (which pronounced phonetically sounds like “elle a chaud au cul” and translates roughly as “she’s got a hot pussy”).

Marcel Duchamp, L.H.O.O.Q (1919)

But there are further strange twists to the tale.

In 1932, The Saturday Evening Post, in its heyday one of the most popular magazines in America, gave a whole different account of the affair by journalist Karl Decker. “According to Decker, an Argentinian con man calling himself Eduardo, Marqués de Valfierno, had told him that it was he who had masterminded Peruggia’s theft of the Mona Lisa,” wrote Ian Tattersall and Peter Névraumont in their 2018 book Hoax: A History of Deception. “And that he had sold the painting six times!”

“Valfierno’s plan had been a pretty elaborate one, and it had involved employing the services of a skilled forger who could exactly replicate any stolen painting—in the Mona Lisa’s case, right down to the many layers of surface glaze its creator had used. By Decker’s account,” according to Hoax. “Valfierno not only sold such fakes on multiple occasions, but used them to increase the confidence of potential buyers, ahead of the heist, that they would be getting the real thing after the theft…. Those copies had been smuggled into America prior to the heist at the Louvre, when nobody was on the lookout for them, and the well-publicized theft itself served to validate their apparent authenticity when they were delivered to the marks in return for hefty sums in cash.”

Titian, Man with a Glove (1520-22)

The problem is that no one has ever been able to track down Valfierno or verify any parts of Decker’s story in The Saturday Evening Post (where were the fact checkers? one asks.) So, in all likelihood, the Mona Lisa in the Louvre is the real deal. She is now serenely and securely behind glass, visited by something like a pre-pandemic estimate of 30,000 visitors a day, who are allowed barely a minute to snap a selfie with the enigmatically smiling icon of Renaissance womanhood.

Out of these tantalizing strands of facts and fiction, Santlofer has woven a rousing tale. Check it out, enjoy the read, and the next time you’re in the Louvre, go visit Titian’s Man with a Glove. A far sexier portrait, in this writer’s opinion.

 

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My Blockhead Adventures with Blockchain Art, Part Four https://vasari21.com/my-blockhead-adventures-with-blockchain-art-part-four/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=my-blockhead-adventures-with-blockchain-art-part-four https://vasari21.com/my-blockhead-adventures-with-blockchain-art-part-four/#comments Mon, 13 Sep 2021 17:27:37 +0000 https://vasari21.com/?p=42874 Reminder to those unfamiliar with what a non-fungible token or NFT is: NFTs are stamped with a unique bit of code that marks their authenticity and stored on a blockchain, the distributed ledger system that underlies Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies like Ethereum. If you’re just seeing Part Four of my Blockhead Adventures, it should prove helpful to start with Part One.

Sandra Filippucci's renovation of her industrial bakery studio in Connecticut

(Corner detail) Sandra Filippucci’s renovation of her studio in Connecticut, a former industrial bakery.

 

INTERRUPTUS HORRIBILUS
Part Three was supposed to be about my finally getting on an NFT platform and selling. It wasn’t. Part Four is supposed to be about my finally getting on an NFT platform and selling. It isn’t. The real problem here is not just that there hasn’t been a response from my preferred NFT platform, Nifty Gateway, since I submitted on July 3rd nor was it punishment because I didn’t engage in Twitterville (more about that later) but rather that I’ve been fully occupied and somewhat berserk with converting a former industrial bakery barn into a live/work space before winter arrives. I would like very much not to be popsicle.

I now live by a river in a town where everyone sells worms. I hear horses in the distance, a goat nearby and the rustle of New Yorkers in all the towns around me. In The Age of Covid, what was easy is hard and what was hard is close to impossible. Plumbers for example, are very apologetic that they can’t install your shower for another month. “Lotta new folks in town.” With winter so close, it’s more important for me to hound electricians to finish their work than it is to hit the sky with NFT pies.

HOWEVER. I’m here to report that I’ve not lost interest in creating NFTs and that, as I previously predicted, the NFT world continues to morph and grow and try to repair the broken parts (like energy consumption). Many say it’s all a bubble. I don’t agree because the world is sick, producing extremes of weather and behavior, people are struggling, and if creators can find a way to express themselves or promote a worthy cause AND make money then It is not going away anytime soon. Same with crypto currency. The 500 bucks I spent on Ethereum is now worth $1200 (with a high of $1400). It’s not going away either. It all plunges and soars in real time like a newly minted behemoth in a virtual ocean full of anxiety and expectation, despair, and hope.

Also. The broken parts. A good overview on the problem was submitted by the Communications Manager over at Chooseenergy.com: https://www.chooseenergy.com/news/article/bitcoin-mining-energy-consumption

The environmental downside of so much NFT computer processing is now being addressed, albeit not as quickly as it should. But here’s a good update about that: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-08-14/bye-bye-miners-how-ethereum-s-big-change-will-work-quicktake

Meanwhile, connecting the dots.

Any artist will tell you that a disruption in the work – for whatever reason – tends to create horrible anxiety and affect the work when resumed. The energy shifts. Most of us have spent our lives managing interruptions. I’ve had so many recently that the prudent course was to just surrender to the onslaught. After a lifetime of resistance though, I finally realized that interruptions don’t necessarily chase the Muse out of the studio…she just becomes peripheral whilst the world spins in and out of focus within deep layers of subtext. Nothing is wasted. It’s up to me to connect the dots. I love the chess pieces I made for my NFTs and know that chess in some form will somehow appear in new studio work, which I’m happy to report, is imminent.

Chess Queen - Filippucci 2021

Chess Queen – Sketch & 3d render- Filippucci 2021

And while I’ve been occupied with plumbers, electricians and contractors, emails dinged in, all having to do with NFTs: artists I followed, recent “burns” (NFT releases) from artists I SHOULD follow, links that were sent to me that might be of interest, articles, reports, Zoom Workshops for the NFT Impaired, and crypto summaries, not to mention NFT Instagram posts. Whole industries have emerged around NFTs and cryptocurrency – advisers, strategists, authors, lawyers, workshop gurus, influencers all trying to ride on the back of the virtual behemoth and shaping it as they go. I sorted through it all as best I could, often leaving plaster on my keyboard until one email yanked my attention. In Part Three, I explained that the 3 top platforms I was interested in (Nifty Gateway, Foundation and Rariable) were all curated (you submitted, they saw, then let you know) but because of the insane scale of the submissions, all three became by Invitation Only.

TWIDDLE DEE TWITTER
Nifty Gateway now states in an email from last week that very soon it will be opening its platform up to “verified” NFT creators who are not on their invited platform. Hallelujah! Now I have a shot, along with others like me still awaiting a response.

“Through our drops, and countless other services and experiences, we’ve been able to introduce millions of people from around the world to the excitement of collecting Nifties and establish NFT digital art as a respected and highly valued artistic medium. Our community is everything to us, and over the past few months, we’ve heard your requests — for us to host outside projects — loud and clear. There are amazing NFT projects launching across the ecosystem and we want to bring them to you, our collectors. In the very near future, you will start to see both the curated drops you know and love, as well as projects that originated outside of Nifty — “verified” NFT projects — offered on our platform.” Go read for yourself: https://medium.com/nifty-gateway/nifty-gateway-announces-the-opening-of-our-curated-platform-to-external-nft-projects-92abbdcb538a

So what does “Verified” mean? That you are who you say you are and that the NFT is yours (I referred to this in Part Three because of NFT theft…creeps who purloin art and pretend it’s theirs). Cool! I have a way into Nifty after all but (here it comes) I will have to embrace the bluebird of vapidness because what happens on social media, especially Twitter, makes a difference. My original connection to NFTs – Gavin Shapiro, my charming penguin guy friend who is now exhibiting his collaborative NFTs in galleries like Untiled Space – did tell me Twitter was important to NFT creators but I thought that was advice I could ignore. While I will not let it crush too much time, I have to acknowledge social media helps document and verify who you are with respect to what you create. It also introduces your work to collectors who DO pay attention to Twitter. To quickly see what creators are up to: https://twitter.com/niftygateway

I leave you with this. At some point I will get on my chosen NFT platform, sell my NFTs and report back either here, on Instagram, or on my website. Or all three. It’s easy to dismiss this NFT hysteria as polluting the waters of art, but this is a cultural movement. The best inventions work because they answer a need. There is great need. We are also in an Age of Stupidity but there is much light and heart and insight coming from creators all over the world. All is not dark.

NFTs THAT INCLUDE PHYSICAL PIECES
Here are a few of the numerous things that landed in my in-box. There are many great individual and collaborative projects out there that now offer a “physical piece” along with the NFT, as Damien Hurst recently did however he did it with a twist, as he always does (he offered the choice of either the NFT or a physical piece. You choose one, he destroys the other). Collectors are loving this new addition of physical pieces but usually when you win an NFT auction, you get both. So numerous NFT projects funnel money into worthy causes now and stimulate dialog among the ignorant or those who have decided that science is fiction. The mentions below however, have more to do with beauty. Not everything has to have a political agenda and being reminded of nature helps us want to protect it.

Joe Horner NFT from Flowerblocks

Joe Horner NFT from the “Flowerblocks” series on Foundation

The #Flowerblocks Collection by Joe Horner – a UK based award-winning photographer with a degree in fine art – is a series of frozen water-block photographs taken to preserve the beauty of the flowers in high detail.

Sold on the Foundation platform, and described as “a 1/1 artwork,” meaning you will own a 100 percent unique collector’s item that nobody else in the world will ever have. With the NFT, you will receive a physical A2 Print of the work after purchase.”

https://foundation.app/@joehorner

I can easily see the Santa Fe photographer Tasha Ostrander creating NFTs. Her highly detailed pieces are powerful and beautiful.

Joe Horner NFT from Flowerblocks

Joe Horner – NFT from “Flowerblocks” on Foundation


 

Seductive and calming, this is a simple idea of a complex process beautifully expressed. NFTs from the “Eternal Garden” series were created by Maggie West, using a custom time-lapse photography process.

Flowers from the artist’s garden were photographed using a spectrum of colored lights, allowing West to change the color of each plant while capturing the natural growth process. All coloration was done with in-camera lighting, rather than post-production. CLICK LINK THEN ENLARGE THE IMAGE TO SEE IT IN ACTION: https://niftygateway.com/itemdetail/primary/0xeb41690074c75fc0aed633c3c661689203e3fa12/1

Maggie West - Eternal Garden Series NFT

Maggie West – “Eternal Garden” series NFT on Nifty Gateway


 

Robot Artists 

Roboticists have been tinkering with this idea since the 1940s. The robots developed at MIT are astonishing but not sentient. It’s software. This software with a body was made by Hansen Robotics, then “interpreted” by the robots’ programming. The result is total poop in my opinion, but it is a first.

Robot Sofia - First robot NFTs

Robot Sofia, the “artist” behind the first robot NFTs

Brainard Carey from the Praxis Center for Aesthetics wrote about Sophia the Robot, who has interviewed Germany’s chancellor, appeared at New York Fashion Week, and performed on the Tonight show. Now Sophia has made a splash in the art world by auctioning off an NFT self-portrait for $688,888. Yes folks: $688,888. According to Carey, “Sophia collaborated with Italian artist Andrea Bonaceto, whose work she processed via neural networks and used as inspiration to make her own art.” The NFT was a 12-second video that showed Bonaceto’s portrait of Sophia evolving into her digital painting. The sale also came with the physical artwork painted by Sophia herself.

I think the art is negligible but damn…it is the first robot art NFT and firsts are a big deal. A very big deal.

THE ACTUAL NFTS: https://niftygateway.com/collections/sophiarobot
THE ARTICLE: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/25/arts/sophia-robot-nft.html


The Biosphere Project.

Alexis Christodoulou - The Biosphere Project NFTs

Alexis Christodoulou – The Biosphere Project

According to its creator, Alexis Christodoulou, “these NFTs are a collection of ideas for the future sustenance of mankind.” While that is an admirable basis for any project, the simple animation edition of one said to me that less is not exactly more and yet someone won the 11-day auction at $9,300.00. Still… thoughtful and philosophical pieces are much needed in the often looney tunes world of NFTs.

https://niftygateway.com/collections/alexisbiosphere

Thank you all for your interest now go out and create some NFTs. We are shaping this. We are. Add your point of view.  Don’t be a blockhead.

 


Contemporary American artist Sandra Filippucci returned to Connecticut to build out her three-dimensional porcelain work, “Sisters of the Cloth,” in a former bakery on three acres. Mostly however, she’s been building out the bakery. She is part of a group of New York artists working with technology since the 1980s, and was the first artist to have a digitally based solo exhibition at the Museum of American Illustration in Manhattan.

WEBSITE | https://sandrafilippucci.com
INSTAGRAM | https://instagram.com/filippucciart
LINKEDIN | Art Blogs

 

 

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Timothy Nero https://vasari21.com/timothy-nero/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=timothy-nero https://vasari21.com/timothy-nero/#comments Sun, 12 Sep 2021 16:01:30 +0000 https://vasari21.com/?p=42828 Timothy Nero works in three different mediums—sculpture, painting, and drawing—reflecting a broad spectrum of moods and mental states. In paintings on canvas or panels, lines and ribbon-like tendrils can appear to be spiraling out of control, willfully taking off in different directions like graffiti realized under the influence. Sculptures are awkward shapes bristling with stubby spikes or vaguely anthropomorphic appendages. And drawings composed of thousands of tight circles convey a deeply meditative calm, or perhaps an obsessive need to exert control.

Standing Thub (2001), wood, acrylic, 58 by 13 by 15

The titles are clues to their origins: Mental Chew ToyObjects in ConsciousnessShape for AnxietyConflicted ThoughtsMind Lard. Though the average viewer will see these as nonobjective, Nero is adamant in asserting that he is not necessarily an abstract artist. “For years I’ve been interested in the mind, in thinking and consciousness. Thinking is like gears turning, like a watch. And when I talk about consciousness, I’m talking about spirituality as well.” If anything, they are portraits of the way the mind operates, or the way this particular artist’s brain processes experience, whether it’s through meditation or memory.

500,000 Thoughts, 500,000 Circles (2004), ink on paper, 30 by 22 inches

A certain formal logic holds it all together, as he moves from one workspace to another in his airy two-story studio outside Santa Fe, NM. And though there is little in his background that would presage a career as an artist, he is still moved by the memories of an older sister who died seven years ago. She was born severely mentally handicapped and blind and lived in institutions from the age of ten. “When I did see her, I could intuit sensations of what her life was like,” he says. “I would ask myself, What is the sensation of thought and existence about for her? What is the mind? Mind is nothing but a bundle of thoughts. The drawing 500,000 Thoughts emerged out of all that.”

Set and Setting 1 (2017), acrylic on panel, 60 by 48 inches

Nero grew up in suburban Cleveland, “primarily in a flea market,” he notes. His father was a realtor who bought Ohio’s oldest and largest outdoor emporium, where Nero started working on weekends when he was about ten, arriving at 6.30 in the morning and staying till seven at night. “I would pick up acres of trash the day after the market.” Though everything from junk to antiques was for sale, the artist early developed an eye and found a few original Maxfield Parrish prints when he was a teenager. But more importantly, he says, “that flea market experience really informed my sensibilities. I realized that people were not always as they appeared to be.”

Planet Head Flied the Air Waves (1985), acrylic on canvas, 50 by 90 inches

Planet Head Flies the Air Waves (1985), acrylic on canvas, 50 by 90 inches

His parents also started a high-end furniture store and hoped Nero would get a degree in interior design so he could take over the business. He went to Kent State, where he studied both design and architecture, but in his heart, he always knew he wanted to be an artist. After graduation he went to work at Howard Pimm Interiors in Cleveland. “We’d go to these mansions and help with interior decoration,” he recalls. “I could have cared less about wallpaper and furniture and carpets. What I cared about in going to these very wealthy clients was the art on the walls. I saw paintings by Rothko and original Rauschenbergs and Arakawas. I was holding Picassos in my hands.”

Nero married in 1979 and moved to Tampa, FL, where he made a living hanging wallpaper because “there was no timeclock to punch. I didn’t work for anyone, and I could pick my hours.” Eventually he relocated to Tallahassee and enrolled at Florida State to pursue a master’s degree in art. There he studied with Trevor Bell, the British-born artist renowned for his shaped and exuberant color-field paintings, and “talked his way” into a job as his studio assistant. Bell was not so much a direct influence on the young artist’s work as an example of how a contemporary painter conducts a studio practice. “It was a beautiful template for me.” Nero’s student efforts were a far cry from the elegant, oversized canvases of his teacher. His chaotic, wildly expressionist imagery incorporated howling dogs, aviators on toilet seats, an airplane, and television sets. “The Reagan era and all the saber-rattling threats of nuclear war really colored my subject matter. The work reflected that particular time of madness,” he says.

Unearthed Thub (2011), acrylic, rust, wood and steel, 23 by 17 by 15 inches

After getting his degree, he moved back to Cleveland briefly, and then in November of 1991 relocated to Taos, NM. He worked primarily as a sculptor and quickly found representation with the now-defunct Fenix Gallery, attracting collectors from as far away as Los Angeles, New York, Chicago, and Paris, cities in which he also found gallery representation. (As an aside, he adds that he also found a few celebrity collectors.)

The tiny mountain enclave in those days could boast an ambitious museum and significant shows, but he soon realized that “anybody who cared about looking at ambitious art wouldn’t spend a lot of time in Taos.”

Interference in the Kali Yuga (for Sue), 2021, acrylic on wood panel, 60 by 40 inches

After 13 years, Nero moved south to Santa Fe, which offered more opportunities for exhibition, along with proximity to two airports and Amtrak. He has been there ever since, finding inspiration from both within the mind’s labyrinth and, occasionally, from trips to far-flung spots, like Rome, which he visited in 2017. A series called “Mithraium” directly references the warm reds and inky blacks of frescoes from Ostia Antica, an archeological site that was once the harbor city of ancient Rome.

Timothy Nero in his studio near Santa Fe, NM

 

 

“When I look over the scope of my work from grad school in the ‘80s till now, there’s an interest in extremes,” he says. There’s also a remarkable fluidity among mediums. “I slide back and forth freely between drawings, paintings, and sculpture. It’s not like there’s a specific linear path.” As one reviewer noted, Nero makes work that “moves beyond the frontiers of the space-time-mind continuum. [His] meta-hybrids explore the point at which a painting becomes an object, and vice-versa.” They might also be seen as vivid illustrations of poet Allen Ginsberg’s famous pronouncement: “Mind is shapely. Art is shapely.”

Top: Mithrea Ostia 8 (2019), acrylic on wood, 7.75 by 6 inches

 

 

 

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The Educated Eye Part Two https://vasari21.com/the-educated-eye-part-two/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=the-educated-eye-part-two https://vasari21.com/the-educated-eye-part-two/#comments Mon, 02 Aug 2021 15:12:37 +0000 https://vasari21.com/?p=42779 I opened up an intriguing cauldron of worms when I asked a bevy of art writers (call them critics, journalists, or simply reviewers) on what it means to have an “eye.” Why did they consider their judgments superior to those of the average museumgoer or art lover? The catalyst was my ill-considered reaction on Facebook to a painting by and a photograph of Amy Sherald in Vanity Fair (see Part One for the whole story, which proved impetus for critic/artist Franklin Einspruch to initiate an hour-plus discussion on the smartphone app Clubhouse).

The range of answers is astonishingly varied and thoughtful, from Laurie Fendrich’s citation of the 18th-century philosopher David Hume to David S. Rubin’s recollections of a course in art history to the assertions of Edith Newhall and Christopher Benson that practicing art is a huge boon in judging art.

What was not touched on in this discussion, perhaps because it’s tangential to it, is the quality of writing that undergirds the professional’s judgment. I’m a great fan of clarity and the well-turned metaphor that might bring about new ways of seeing, and so I can get especially irate, say, when Peter Schjeldahl of The New Yorker decides to throw in eight or nine words I’ve never seen before in my life and thus sends me scurrying to the dictionary. Or when Dave Hickey goes off the rails in a sentence like this: “Today, for some reason, we remain content to slither through this flatland of Baudelairean modernity, trapped like cocker spaniels in the eternal, positive presentness of a terrain so visually impoverished that we cannot even lie to any effect in its language of images….”  (See my earlier Vasari21 post on the subject, Blather and Bloat).

But that’s probably a topic for another day. Herewith, for the nonce, are some ruminations on that vexed critical apparatus known as “the eye.”

Eric Gibson of The Wall Street Journal, The New Criterion, and other publications

Eric Gibson: If there’s anything to be learned from the example of Amazon.com and other commercial websites, it’s that everyone  has the right to pass judgment and submit reviews. But what makes a good art critic is the accumulated knowledge and experience, the depth and originality of insight, that he or she brings to the process. The analogy I would use is this: If you’re not feeling well, would you rather see a doctor who’s been to medical school, or someone who regularly surfs WebMD?

No critic claims omniscience. Instead, to paraphrase Clement Greenberg, a critic is someone who is regularly educating himself in public. You’re always asking yourself, What is this artist doing? Why is this work better than that one? That’s what separates the critic from the layperson. It’s this act of self-education and improvement.

As an example, back in the 1980s, when the Whitney had a Donald Judd retrospective, I reviewed it for The New Criterion and afterwards realized I was baffled by the work; I was using the templates of Minimalism and impersonality to understand his approach, and I realized I hadn’t arrived at my own place vis à vis his aesthetic and his achievements. I knew that I’d be writing about him again in the future, and so I made it a point to study every Judd I came across in a museum or gallery. By the time of the recent retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art, two huge anthologies of writings and interviews had come out, and so I just sat down and read them cover to cover. One of his signature refrains, repeated throughout the two volumes, was denying that he was a sculptor or that the work he produced was sculpture, and this used to drive all the critics and interviewers crazy. But when I walked into MoMA’s galleries and saw all the early work in the first room, all of it painted a pulsing acid red, I had this flash: You know, he’s right, He’s not a sculptor. He’s a painter. And that was my starting point for a subsequent review. But it took a certain amount of looking and study to arrive at that conclusion. And that’s what critics do: It’s a continual process of self-education and self-questioning.

Edith Newhall: To me, “having an eye” immediately brings to mind art dealers and collectors of an earlier time—say, from the late 19th-century to before the 1990s. They were risk takers, brilliant promoters, and some of them were both gallery owners and artists, such as Betty Parsons. I doubt many younger collectors have the old-fashioned “eye” that their predecessors had and believe that the buying is more investment oriented.

That said, artists probably have the best eyes. The art critics I’ve known are generally more analytical and I actually think very few of them have the “eye,” except for a few who are/were artists. And I don’t think it’s something they would cultivate.

I’m thinking the average museumgoer might have a more open approach to new art than I do. I’m drawn to work that fits into a continuum of art I’ve liked over the years and I recognize all the appropriators right away.

My writing about art has been enormously helped by having been an artist and knowing how things are made and by reading others’ art criticism for so many years.

A drawing by LA-based critic, curator, and artist David S. Rubin: Pearls of Wisdom (2021), color pens on Bristol vellum, 19 by 24 inches

David S. Rubin:   I first heard the term “having an eye” when I was told that I have one by UCLA professor Donald F. McCallum.  As an undergraduate, I was a philosophy major, but I took art history because it was fun. When a friend asked me to join her in taking McCallum’s Chinese art-history class, I said “Sure!” as I loved the slide comparison method of learning.  Among the objects that we studied were ancient Shang and Chou bronzes. McCallum was a formalist and he taught us how Chinese art scholar Max Loehr had been able to date them based on stylistic evolution. On the midterm exam, McCallum projected a single slide of an unknown object. His exam question was, “You are the museum curator. Should the museum purchase this or not? Write a defense of your answer.” In an instant, I knew that the unknown was a fake, and for two significant reasons.  First, the taotie mask on the vessel’s lid was right side up when it was supposed to be upside down. Second, and perhaps more importantly, I described the contours (which McCallum had referred to as “elastic”) as being “as rigid as a milk carton.” In other words, I noted that someone had merely incised the pattern on the surface without replicating its undulating style or understanding its meaning. In that I was the only student in a class of 150 or so who identified why the piece was a fake, McCallum read my answer and called me into his office. There he told me that I had “an eye,” and that is what set me on my career as an art historian, curator, and critic.

In addition to spotting details that are normally overlooked by others, I believe that having an eye is also related to empathy, something that another of my UCLA professors, Lester D. Longman, defined as “feeling like the thing that you are looking at.”  I know that when I install an exhibition, I am not only observing the visual relationships among the objects, but I am feeling their weights as I move them about until I know that the room is in balance.

Laurie Fendrich, painter and frequent contributor to “Two Coats of Paint”

Laurie Fendrich: Asking what it means to have an “eye” means asking whether some people have better judgment about art than others. An enormous question, a difficult question, a rabbit-hole question—around in Western culture since the time of the ancient Greeks and Romans, but nowadays mostly dismissed out of hand. Arguing that one person’s judgment about art is better than another’s is considered elitist, and elitists have no place in an egalitarian age. It’s far better simply to embrace the old Roman adage, “de gustibus non est disputandum” (matters of taste aren’t subject to dispute) than to get dragged down into unwinnable arguments about the relative merits of people’s subjective judgments about art.

Yet the fact that judgment or taste in art is subjective is, at the same time, a terribly inadequate explanation of what’s going on in looking at and judging art. Or to paraphrase David Hume in his brilliant 1757 essay, “Of the Standard of Taste,” the old adage has some mighty big holes in it. For starters, not everyone has equal visual abilities. We don’t have equally strong eyesight, or equal ability to see color or distinguish among the relative values of darker and lighter hues. And just as some people are tone deaf or suffer from anosmia, some people are color blind. No one in their right mind would argue that someone with any of these constraints would make a good judge of art.

There are also other important differences among us. Our habits of perception, for example, are molded by such things as our health, gender identity, race and ethnicity, technology, religion, education in general, education in the visual arts in particular, and even climate—all which vary enormously over time, from culture to culture, and from individual to individual. With so many standards of aesthetic taste—so many “eyes” looking at and judging art—who’s to say who’s got “an eye”?

In the end, despite problems with Hume’s essay, I take my cue from him. As Hume declares, it’s true we can never be objective in matters of art and must live with the impossibility of defining, or being certain, about what’s a “good eye.” But that’s not the whole story. Not being objectively able to prove what’s aesthetically bad, good or best doesn’t imply there’s no such thing as good and bad art. The merits of judgments about art are there, but they depend a whole lot on who’s doing the judging. The best judges of art are those who, for starters, work with unimpaired vision. Their perception, especially of the smallest details, is acute, and they possess a long history of looking at and thinking about art. In other words, while judgments in art are subjective, they’re nestled into the structure of physical judge’s bodies and their perception-based, rational explanations for why something is good or bad.

In Western art, the modern notion that there are universal visual truths about beauty permeating all cultures (lurking in such things as shape, color, form, composition and all the rest) has gone almost entirely out of fashion. Yet there remain true believers. Dave Hickey, for example, argues something of this sort about music—that if a Westerner speaking no Chinese were to watch five Chinese operas, something about the opera form itself would come through and he or she would be able to distinguish which are the best two.

While no one can prove who has or doesn’t have “an eye,” if one looks at the judge, the evidence is always in plain sight. As Eddie Izzard says about guns, guns don’t kill people, but they sure do help. Experience in looking at art and acute perceptual abilities don’t make someone a good judge of art, but they sure do help.

Santa Fe-based writer and painter Christopher Benson

Christopher Benson: The “fine arts”—once mainly limited to painting and sculpture—today comprise an array of art objects, actions and methods, both handmade and mechanical, that would have been unrecognizable as such to our grandparents. Almost any practice executed with care and skill (as well as a great many things that are not at all skillfully conceived or made) are now comfortably accepted by the public as “important” works of ART. In this anything-goes atmosphere, critique—a discipline inextricably bound to traditions of educated discernment and connoisseurship—is becoming increasingly irrelevant, if not condemned outright as an emblem of the art historical canon of old, dead white men. “It’s art ‘cause I say it is” could be the motto of a self-credentialing ethos now establishing itself across a wide range of so-called “creatives,” from the YouTube influencer, to the makers of today’s NFTs. How any carefully honed instrument of critical judgment could be meaningfully deployed in such a fluid atmosphere rather begs the question of its ongoing relevance.

But then, critique was ever a subjective enterprise masquerading as a hard science. There are very few serious professional disciplines that would accept the judgment of non-practitioners. Expertise is, by definition, a reflection of direct experience, and peer review is the rightfully expected standard in fields as diverse as the law, medicine, economics and physics. Even professional athletes are generally assessed for the public’s edification by former athletes. The scholarly mythos of critics’ knowledge of art therefore deftly obscures the reality that the only topics on which they are legitimately authoritative are the content and relative importance of theirs, and their colleagues’ opinions.

This is not to say that works of art can have no objectively measurable quality, or that there are not good or bad examples of their kind which can be critically assessed as such. But in order to have any plausible accuracy, all such assessments should relate to that kind, and be sharply qualified by a deep and direct knowledge of it. As the economist/philosopher E.F. Schumacher wrote in A Guide for the Perplexed:

“What enables man to know anything at all about the world . . .?  Nothing can be known without there being an appropriate ‘instrument’ in the makeup of the knower. This is the Great Truth of ‘adaequatio’ (adequateness), which defines knowledge as adaequatio rei et intellectus — the understanding of the knower must be adequate to the thing to be known.”

It is a rarely acknowledged truth that no one is as comprehensively adequate to the understanding of any kind of art as the people who actually make that kind of art themselves. Outside that direct experience of making, the next best way to know art’s real quality is not to seek an expert’s opinion about it, but to become an expert oneself. Yes, critics can do us a great service by teaching us how to appreciate art, but it is a grave mistake to believe that they can appreciate it for us.

I passionately believe in the importance of the critical faculty itself, but have little interest in the critical profession. Like most artists, the experts whose opinions I value most highly are my fellow practitioners. And while I can, and certainly do, enjoy the analysis of the most thoughtful, nonpractitioner writers on art, I do so with a clear understanding that they are ultimately amateurs. Perhaps that sounds like an insult, but it is meant in a good way: the amateur—from the Latin amator, meaning a lover—is a person who studies a subject from the springboard of a genuine affection for it, as opposed to doing it either for a fee or for some other form of self-advancement. Despite its near universal contemporary monetization, the experience of art remains a profoundly direct, personal and noncommercial phenomenon. Anyone seeking the stuff out with a sincere hunger to know just what the hell it’s all about should therefore train themselves to be no less astute, educated and insightful a connoisseur—no less a real amateur—than the most erudite critic. Without that internal adequateness, all we will ever see are the dim reflections emanating from the opinions of others.

 

Top: Odilon Redon, The Eye (Vision), 1881, drawing, 16.5 by 14.5 inches

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The Educated Eye, Part One https://vasari21.com/the-educated-eye-part-one/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=the-educated-eye-part-one https://vasari21.com/the-educated-eye-part-one/#comments Sun, 18 Jul 2021 15:10:19 +0000 https://vasari21.com/?p=42752 Why is an art critic’s judgment better than yours—or maybe not?

A few months back I did a stupid thing on Facebook and opined that I did not think Amy Sherald’s portrait of Breonna Taylor was very good (check out the hands and drapery), and that I found her pose in a photo in Vanity Fair (on a ladder, beautiful bare legs fully exposed) problematic, wondering why a serious artist tackling a serious subject would present herself in that way.

Amy Sherald in Vanity Fair with her portrait of Breonna Taylor

Of course, I unleashed the hounds of hell, with Facebook “friends” wondering how I could call myself a critic. And I kind of wondered the same thing myself. Did two Ivy degrees in art history count? Did writing for ARTnews and the Wall Street Journal and other art publications for more than 20 years mean I had a better eye than others?

For answers I’m turned to my writer and critic friends, asking, What does it mean to have an “eye,” and why is your judgment better than the average museumgoer’s? Can you give examples of the way your critical faculties may have sharpened over the years?

Their responses were as varied as their personalities, and because I received quite a few, I am publishing this in two parts.

Eleanor Heartney, portrait by Phong Bui

Eleanor Heartney: In a 1967 essay titled “Complaints of an Art Critic,” the late, not lamented Clement Greenberg maintained that aesthetic judgments were an involuntary response to the quality or lack thereof inherent in a work of art. He maintained “you can no more choose whether or not to like a work of art than you can choose to have sugar taste sweet or lemons sour.” That certainly doesn’t seem right, but then neither do the contrary ideas that taste is personal, subjective and essentially arbitrary or that judgments are elitist and the product of cultural imperialism. A more useful perspective is the reminder that criticism is an art, not a science and that it is informed by exposure to a wide range of art and artists, a decent grounding in art history and dialogue with other equally committed people. Arthur Danto used to say that judgments emerge within the context of a community. Our current discomfort with critique may stem from the fact that today the art community is as splintered as every other part of society. Can the rifts be healed? Until we have shared values again, criticism as we used to know it just may not be possible.

Franklin Einspruch: My policy is not to critique work that I haven’t seen in person, but come on. That Amy Sherald portrait, with Breonna Taylor all but floating in a gentle sea of hygienic blues, looks like an advertisement for menstrual pads. Vanity Fair commissioned Sherald to paint a subject that she would not have chosen on her own, and it shows – this is not a good Sherald.

Franklin Einspruch’s homage to Amy Sherald

Meanwhile, the magazine employs some of the world’s foremost experts on photographing women. For some reason the photographer put her in an outfit that suggests that she’s wearing nothing but the summer breeze between her work shirt and her sandals, then sat her down on a ladder in an awkward pose that puts her crotch at eye level.

Nothing about this works. The photo editor should have spiked the shoot. The managing editor should have spiked the feature. Sherald should have spiked the painting.

So, as they asked you, who am I to say so? The short answer is, Try to fucking stop me. The longer answer is, as I once wrote: “A critic is a quintessential member of the audience for art. He is not in a class above his fellows, but at a high point within the same class. His power is to be able to hang apt and moving words upon his experiences—experiences that are often hard to describe because they take place entirely outside of language. His eyes discern nuances. He has put himself in front of art many times. He has educated himself about it, its history and its philosophies.”

The average art viewer does not trouble to do all this work. A flair for language is perhaps not so uncommon, but the ability to hook language to the art experience seems to be rare. Having an eye, as it’s called, is a real phenomenon. This shouldn’t be controversial, as having an ear for music is not, and it’s analogous. But the contemporary art crowd is so allergic to hierarchy that they don’t like hearing it. I’m one of the few critics who is willing to argue that Clement Greenberg was right when he said that taste is objective, at least if you accept the split between the subjective and objective world.

If you don’t accept the split, and I don’t, then quality is a variety of presence, in a phenomenological sense, and taste is a skill we use to achieve that presence. That skill can be better or worse adverbially, and that presence can be better or worse adjectivally. The skill can be sharpened, or go dull. Those ideas were informed by Alva Noë and worked out in an essay I wrote in 2020.

I don’t know if having an eye is so unusual, but we’re living in a profoundly dishonest time. Without fidelity to his eye, a critic has nothing. A lot of criticism gets written in a spirit of faithlessness. Because of the politics of the moment, people expect you to pretend that this train wreck with Amy Sherald is a triumph, and clamor along with them for the canonization of Taylor. On the contrary, my willingness to critique Sherald is to take her seriously as an artist. The so-called right-thinkers would have me infantilize her, to pat her on the head like a five-year-old with a fresh crayon scrawl. They can disagree with me about this Vanity Fair effort if they will, but they shouldn’t mistake their conformity for conviction.

Francis M. Naumann

Francis M. Naumann: To have “an eye” is one of the most misused metaphors in art history.  You can only have “a good brain.”  What you see with your eyes tells your brain if what you are looking at is good or bad, and good and bad are exclusively subjective positions that are purely reflections of taste.  What one person likes is not necessarily (or even remotely) what someone else likes.  Of course, you can argue that “an eye” is an aspect of connoisseurship, but what exactly does that mean?  It only means that when a person sees something they like or don’t like, it channels into a spot in their brain that is already educated and predisposed to understand what they are looking at.  If you should wish to secure an attribution for a work of art, you can be taught what to look for.  As the art historian Giovanni Morelli pointed out at the end of the 19th  century, various artists in the 15th century painted ears a certain way, and if you know what that design is, then it can help you to attribute a painting.  It’s not the person’s eye that is doing the heavy lifting.  It’s his or her brain.

It’s for that reason that liking or disliking the work of Amy Sherald is meaningless, except of course for yourself and the people who trust in your judgement.  An opinion is only a reflection of the person making it, no universal guide exists to determine if something is bad or good. You may not like the way she renders hands or drapery, but that means nothing, since it is only a subjective opinion, yours and those who agree with you. There are far bigger factors at play in judging her work, and technical proficiency is not necessarily among them.

Peter Frank

Peter Frank: Why is my judgment better than the average museumgoer’s? Putting aside the slipperiness of terms like “judgment” and “better,” I’ll claim that my response to art is more complex than the average museumgoer’s because it’s my professional responsibility—and passion—to be as well informed as I can about what I’m looking at (and where, when, and why I’m looking at it). It’s my job, and it’s one of my greatest delights, to know as much as I can about, and around, the things I write about; to write about them as informatively, judiciously, and persuasively as I can; and to maintain such authority by sharing my knowledge and discretion effectively and dependably, through well-measured prose. I respect my subject matter and my readership (whether or not I like either at any particular time) and recognize that the respect due me in turn must be earned constantly.

Top: Odilon Redon, Eye Balloon, 1878

 

 

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My Blockhead Adventures with Blockchain Art, Part Three https://vasari21.com/my-blockhead-adventures-with-blockchain-art-part-three/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=my-blockhead-adventures-with-blockchain-art-part-three https://vasari21.com/my-blockhead-adventures-with-blockchain-art-part-three/#comments Sun, 18 Jul 2021 15:00:07 +0000 https://vasari21.com/?p=42643 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 to infinity loop when it becomes an NFT and the music can be muted.

Red Bishop from Chess Collection ©Filippucci 2021.

On the morning of July 3, 2021, I finally completed the submission process on NiftyGateway.com. Why the hold-up? Not realizing the NFTs themselves (although it took a bit of time to render different views in three dimensions, and then learn to animate them) but rather the video required. I balked, diddled, and pouted over making a video selfie explaining myself. The deeper I got into the NFT world, the more it started to resemble a video game: open this chest to retrieve the scroll then slay the monster at the end of the hall.

After working so hard on the NFTs, I realized that I had to finish the Nifty Gateway submission process and make the damn video. I did not realize until finishing this article that the video was part of their vetting process designed to establish me as the original creator of the art I would eventually be submitting once accepted by them. Here are some of the questions I needed to answer:

-What kind/style of project are you aiming to release with Nifty Gateway?
-What are your short-term goals for your art career?
-What are your long-term goals for your art career?
-Please provide links to both your social media handles AND your portfolio.
-Please provide a link (Google Drive or YouTube) to a video introducing yourself personally and as an artist.

Ah yes, that infernal video. Off I went to Best Buy and purchased a $50 “Vlogging” set (round light plus a Bluetooth clicker that connects to your phone and a phone tripod). Took five tries. All awkward. I tend to avoid Zooming and even video chats on my iPhone. I was indignant, like an experienced actor having to do an audition tape. Can’t you just judge me by my work? What does it matter what I say? Egos are rarely helpful, so I finally managed five takes all the while thinking ok, so I submit the link to my privately published video on YouTube, and then the next question will be…”show us some of your NFT collection.” Nope. However I answered the questions, whatever I said on my selfie video would have to suffice. Maybe they would look at my social media and website. Maybe they wouldn’t.

This is my screen capture of their auto response after submitting:

Nifty Gateway Submission process

Sound familiar? Much like the form emails we’ve all gotten from galleries or agents or publishing firms over the years, isn’t it? In truth, I was warned. Nifty was not gonna be swifty.

Back in Part One, I referred to Gavin Shapiro, a successful NFT creator who tried to help me understand it all, except that I was a blockhead, not understanding anything. I do remember him saying, 6 months ago, that there was “probably” a backlog of submission requests to Nifty Gateway. I do not remember him saying that he was invited by Nifty Gateway to be on their platform way back in May of 2020, meaning that he never had to go through an actual submission process. So I thought he was just speculating. He wasn’t. So there’s gonna be some wait time. Waiting for Godot, I mean, Nifty, who may never arrive. This means that I’ll need to write a Part Four. Since the pandemic began, we’re all familiar with waiting however, at some point, I’ll have to consider other platforms. Being a Boomer, time is not on my side.

WHY WAIT AT ALL?

My chess pieces were developed as a collection, which is what Nifty Gateway auctions…collections. Other platforms operate differently and many present just individual NFTs, but I wanted to present a collection because I usually work that way…in a series. And being on a curated platform meant that they take the time to choose their creators, understand who they are and what’s behind their projects. For me personally, this is infinitely preferable to joining an all-you-can-eat NFT buffet platform, where repulsive NFTs keep appearing, like the one I saw of Whitney Houston with monumentally inflated breasts. Infuriating.

I suppose what I’m saying is that I want some protection from the swarms of juvenile gadflies who perpetuate misogynistic and degrading NFT fantasies. I’m not saying Nifty is always nifty but at least someone appears to be minding the store.

HOW’D YOU DO DAT?

While not a requirement for NFTs, many are, in fact, animated. They jump, jiggle, twinkle, twist, flutter, or explode in perpetual loops. Some are very short, some are minutes long. But what do you do when you’re not an animator nor a motion graphics designer? Apps. Many of us on social media use apps to add movement to an image because humans are wired to notice things that move. It’s just flying cinders, but here’s one of my actual animations on Instagram using the phone app, StoryZ:

 

Dr. Doolittle Pushmi-Pullyu

1967 publicity still from Disney Films

So learning to use those various phone apps prepared me for Plotaverse. Why Plotaverse? Because I needed to do this work on my computer not my phone and Plotaverse allows that. Now paying $19.95 per month for a computer app sounds extravagant, but my objective was to reveal different views of each three-dimensional chess piece. A professional motion-graphics designer I will never be, nor do I aspire to that. I needed a shortcut. Like everything else attached to NFTs, I was yet again a blockhead even with Plotaverse, which does not require a degree from NYU Film School. Methinks I am rather like Dr. Doolittle’s Pushmi-Pullyu creature going forward and backwards simultaneously and only making progress sideways. I am a sideways blockhead coming to terms with the inherent chaos of learning curves. Eventually I get there. That’s what we need to remember. We do eventually get there if we don’t walk away. It’s ok to spew expletives but don’t walk away.

COLLABORATIONS

Remember when I told you in Part One that one of the attractions of NFTs is that you can collaborate? If we’ve learned anything in this Age of Covid, it’s that cooperation and collaboration are good ideas. My studio practice very, very rarely involved collaboration but because of NFTs, I’m much more open to it going forward. Example: I’d like to help WomenAgainstViolence.org with money from my NFTs but once things get underway, I’d also like to work with them on an NFT. Another example. My son, a graduate of Cal Arts, with a major in film scoring (and a lucky break for me), provided the original music for my chess collection. Music, like animation, is not required for NFTs, but I wanted an ethereal quality to the work. He will be credited in each auction for the music, and paid in a two-way “split.” And I will set up secondary royalties for us both should my NFTs be resold by the original collector. Collaborations are involving more and more people and that brings me to an interesting email received from ceramics artist, Hank Saxe:

Collaborations can become an unequal sharing of effort. A division of labor between artist and fabricator can become lopsided over a period of time, if, say the greater share of the appreciation in value of the work accrues to the benefit only of the artist, and not the collaborating parties….fabricators, preparatory staff, office staff, curators, all of the behind the scenes and unrecognized parts of a production team who don’t end up with an equity position in the work…by tracking the history of an artwork through its various phases and through the inputs of various individuals and workshops that collaborate to make complex processes complete, blockchain records could actually be a help. For one thing, the artist who is at the top of the pyramid of collaborators is often the only one who benefits from the appreciation of the work. This is a problem: it is inequitable and discourages collaboration by those who do not share in the benefits. And so the artist at the top of the pyramid often loses out because at the time of the work was created, they couldn’t finance it and because of lack of trust or verifiability of arrangements, they could not get collaborators to contribute in an atmosphere of trust.”

My response to this thoughtful query? “To create an extensive list of collaborators would require an infrastructure that is not in place yet. If you think of the American Society of Composers (ASCAP), founded in 1914, they responded over many decades to a need–namely, multiple collaborations on a single piece of music. ASCAP is highly organized, with teams of lawyers to uphold royalty law. I envision that soon there will be NFT lawyers! The NFT marketplace is evolving as we speak, so thoughtful questions like this are important to the dialog as to how it will all develop in favor of creators everywhere.” 

©Filippucci - Red Queen NFT still

Detail from Red Queen NFT ©Sandra Filippucci 2021

MONEY + GREED = THEFT

As this new marketplace develops, there have been reports of thievery. It’s not just Old Masters that are prime targets, but also online art, which gets recycled as merchandise like tee shirts. The difference is that now, purloined images can also be converted into NFTs. To be clear: the bad guys are not stealing minted NFTs. They are stealing images, claiming ownership, and “minting” them into NFTs. Appropriation is commonplace from images on the internet, but NFT platforms are now highly motivated to protect their collectors from buying stolen art. In addition, according to an article from Coindesk.com, “Users who believe their art is being appropriated can file Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) Takedown Notices against the sites selling these NFTs. The DMCA was passed in 1998 for the specific issue of addressing the dissemination of copyrighted material online.”  As a result, platforms like SuperRare have developed a strong vetting process and the number one requirement is:

Be able to prove your identity as original artist.

“Our goal is to make SuperRare the place with the best collector experience in digital art. One key factor in doing this is to make sure we are protecting our collectors by ensuring all artworks tokenized on the platform were actually created by the artist that tokenized it. Once an artist is approved they are given complete access to tokenize any artworks they want, so the vetting process has become very important.”

Over time, more NFT platforms will probably develop and enforce stricter standards for ownership, and this may very well be one of the reasons Nifty Gateway has the submission process that it does – it puts you in context with your work. I found it reassuring that YouTube immediately placed a copyright notice on one of my Instagram videos on my new YouTube channel, even though I was using music from a purchased phone app. The restriction prevented me from monetizing my video with that music, even though I had no intention of doing so. This is why it’s important that all components of your NFT are original, your collaborators identified, and that you have permission to monetize the content.

ALL VERY INTERESTING BUT WHERE ARE THE WOMEN?

“Although the decentralized NFT marketplace gives artists equal and direct access to collectors, most of the artists making the biggest sales on the market are predominantly male.” – March 30, 2021, Vogue & NFT Women

Why aren’t there more NFT women and of those that I do see, why are so few making the auction sums one might expect. According to Vogue magazine, only 15% of crypto artists are women. This especially shocks me since I see amazing work by women in the fashion industry using 3D printed fabrics. More women in fine art are employing technology. In 2017, one of Hyperallergic’s senior editors, Jill Steinhauer, noted that women make up 60 to 75 percent of those studying art at a university level, yet a report on gender disparity in the arts compiled by the National Museum of Women in the Arts showed that female artists rarely comprise more than 30 percent of the artists shown in museums and galleries. And only 20 percent are in computer science. In writing these posts, I had to accept that although I imagined that Millennial and Gen X women would be all over the NFT boom, my assumptions were incorrect.

In my own experience, I know only a few female fine artists who work with technology. Of course, many more are out there, like the exceptional Danit Peleg who 3d prints clothing with incredible mastery, has made 3d-printed clothing for the ParaOlympics, and is now offering NFTs on Rariable. The New Mexico-based sculptor Paula Castillo uses cad cam software to visualize some of her work and, to my delight, we sometimes have “nerdy” conversations.

Paula Castillo's, "The Tunnel," Computer visualization

Paula Castillo’s, The Tunnel, computer visualization

 

Barbara Nessim - Hand Memory (1986)

Barbara Nessim – Hand Memory (1986) NFT on Rarible

Then there’s Barbara Nessim, who is not only an advocate of actual sketchbooks, but was  also was one of the original artists using technology. The chairperson of Illustration at Parsons, The New School for Design, from 1992-2004, and before that a professor in the MFA computer art department at the School of Visual Arts. During her tenure at Parsons, she brought the school into the digital age. We showed together in New York in the early days of computer art, but for us, it was all based on the observable world. We just loved technology as an exciting new tool. Pre-Covid, I met with her in her New York studio but we did not discuss NFTs. Now we’re both doing them.

“Hand Memory” is for sale on Rarible.com for 3 Ethereum (almost
$7,000as of this writing). At 82, Nessim may be one of the oldest NFT’ers out there.

REASONS FOR OPTIMISM

As more artists transition into the NFT marketplace, women are creating communities to advocate for gender inclusivity by amplifying and promoting art by artists who identify as women. One such community is Women of Crypto Art (WOCA), which was formed in 2020 by NFT artists and collectors Etta Tottie, Angie Taylor, Stina Jones, Gisel X Florez, and Sparrow.

NFT by Gisele X. Florez, one of the founders of Women of Crypto Art (WOCA)

CONTROLLING YOUR OWN FUTURE

NFTs represent a future of possibilities where you can sell your original work to collectors independently and realize royalties for future resales. Galleries and museums more and more are beginning to sell and display NFTs. With the efforts of communities like WOCA and Heal the Deal, more female artists can be encouraged to sell their work digitally and become part of the movement to eliminate gender disparities in the marketplace. Heal The Deal is crypto’s first ever emotional support club founded by French graphic designer and digital artist, Maalavidaa on January 28, 2021.

This movement does not signal an end to painting or creating physical pieces. It is, as I’ve said in previous posts, a global opportunity, one that did not exist before, to extend your practice as a fine artist or as a creator, and to build a following of collectors that might otherwise not be possible. In a way, it’s all a chess game. Make your move…you just might end up owning the board.

For those interested. The Inside.com event ‘Mastering NFTs’ was July 8th but you should subscribe to Inside.com for future events.

When: Thursday, July 8 – 11:00 AM PST / 2:00 PM EST
Where: ZOOM (please click here)
Inside.com/Live

 


In PART FOUR, Filippucci will write about finally getting her NFTs on a platform for sale with all the details attached to that. 

Contemporary American artist Sandra Filippucci has recently returned to Connecticut to build out her three-dimensional porcelain work, “Sisters of the Cloth,” in a former bakery on three acres. She is part of a group of New York artists working with technology since the 1980s, and was the first artist to have a digitally based solo exhibition at the Museum of American Illustration in Manhattan.

WEBSITE | https://sandrafilippucci.com
INSTAGRAM | https://instagram.com/filippucciart
LINKEDIN | Art Blogs


LINKS TO LEARN MORE

How Women Artists Have Been Marginalized in the Blockchain
https://cointelegraph.com/news/100-artist-nft-collaboration-sells-out-in-minutes-increases-7x-in-price-in-24-hours–https://womenofcrypto.art
https://www.vogue.com/article/nft-art-women
https://www.abc.net.au/news/science/2021-03-16/nfts-artists-report-their-work-is-being-stolen-and-sold/13249408
https://womenofcrypto.art


 

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More Instagram Insights https://vasari21.com/more-instagram-insights/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=more-instagram-insights https://vasari21.com/more-instagram-insights/#comments Sun, 27 Jun 2021 15:32:35 +0000 https://vasari21.com/?p=42584 Investing a little time and energy can mean more followers, more sales, and more shows

By Valeri Larko

A little more than a year ago, I declared myself totally done with posts about Instagram. I’d written three on the subject of how to use this addictive tool, and I thought that was enough. Then I started noticing that a number of Vasari21 members had hundreds of followers, which sounds like a very desirable thing, and I wondered how they got those numbers and what it all meant in the larger scheme of things: Did all those “likes” translate into sales or shows? A few wrote back, but by far the most enlightening exchange was with Valeri Larko, who has 10,000-plus followers, and posts about once or twice a week. So I will let her explain how she gets the most out of Instagram, in her own words.

Telling Stories

I figured out something without even knowing it. Apparently the algorithm on Instagram likes long-format stuff—it likes a lot of words, and it likes a story. I consider myself a visual storyteller, which is one of the reasons I paint on location rather than from photographs. I want to find out the stories behind the places I am painting, and it turns out Instagram is perfect for that.

One of Larko’s “storytelling” posts

Every now and then the algorithm would pick up an image and it would be shared; people would start liking it, and my audience would grow. I remember the first time one of images went viral; it was super exciting because more people liked my image then were following me! But that was just luck, I didn’t really know what I was doing—I was just fumbling about, telling stories about the paintings, the places I chose, the people I met in the course of a working day. And Instagram turned out the be the perfect place to share those stories.

The algorithm has no idea what the story is about. All it knows is that people spend a lot of time on your post, and that’s one reason multiple images are better than one image. The algorithm wants the audience to stop and read what you’ve written. If people are just scrolling through quickly, the algorithm will decide that this is not interesting and then limits the number who see your post. The algorithm also likes to see if your audience is engaging within the first ten minutes after you put up a post.

So if you can figure out how to work the algorithm to your benefit, you’re going to get a lot more followers.

What Does It Mean to Have More Followers?

In 2019, right before the pandemic, I took a workshop with Dina Brodsky [whose services are mentioned here]. She’s the one who told me all about the algorithm and which images work best in a small format. Dina is herself an artist who has more than 400,000 followers.

Now why is having more followers important? As I grew my audience, more and more good things started happening for me. I sold work, I acquired collectors, and I landed a one-woman museum show at the Susquehanna Art Museum.

When I had a solo show at the Lyons Wier Gallery, which sadly closed during the pandemic, Lauren Nye, a curator from the museum, saw my work and posted an image on Instagram and tagged me in her post. I saw it, and I thanked her, and she wrote back in the comments: “Please contact me.” If I had not said “Thanks for sharing,” that exchange would not have happened and we might never have connected. You can’t be passive. If someone is kind enough to post your art, thank that person! Never fail to follow up.

One of Dina’s other bits of advice: Don’t post pictures of your dinner, your dog, your kids, your backyard. And even if people think it’s clever and you do get a few likes, the lower numbers will drag down your next post. If one post gets 300 likes and 95 comments, and the next garners only 30 likes, and 12 comments, you are narrowing your audience by posting something that doesn’t get as much engagement. It’s a numbers game, and you need to find the formula that works best for you. Another interesting tip Dina shared was to use vertical images rather then horizontal images. Vertical images take up more real estate when people scroll IG and therefore they spend more time looking at those images. So vertical is best and square images second best.

I always try to think of what will be inspiring, entertaining, or educational—or all three. You want really good pictures and good stories, and multiple pictures will help tell that story. Recently Instagram started prioritizing reels over static posts (you’ll find a way to do reels under insights, once you switch to professional and creator status on Instagram—see more below). Instagram wants to beat TikTok at their game, so it has started paying more attention to reels.

A progress shot of pilings along the Harlem River Bridge

 

The finished painting

To put together a reel, you make a series of short videos—two or three, because the whole thing can’t be more than 60 seconds. Then when you go to reels on your Instagram profile page, the system will let you stitch those together and you can add either a voiceover or one of a selection of songs. The very first reel I made had a song called “This Is the Way We Do It” and offered a demonstration of my painting. My first reel didn’t get that much engagement (which means likes, comments, shares, visits to my profile). It did OK, and the second time I posted a reel, the algorithm let twice as many people see it. There was more interest, but I noticed that my audience prefers multiple images along with the short videos I include in one post. While the algorithm may not let as many people see my posts because it prefers reels, I get a lot more engagement. which is what I prefer. Each artist has to decide what works best. Being able to see how people interact with your post via the insights is extremely valuable and has helped me make my posts better. (You can check out one of my Instagram reels here.)

Hashtags

Depending on the size of your audience, you need to pick hashtags that will match the numbers. If you use a hashtag that millions of people are using—like #contemporaryart—no one’s going to see your posts. You have to find the right hashtags for the right number of followers. I want to use a hashtag that attracts, say, 10,000 to 50,000 people because that’s my audience. If I have hundreds of thousands of followers, I can use a bigger hashtag. Since I’m in between a beginner and a rock star, I need to use hashtags that correlate with the numbers.

Because I have 10,000-plus followers, I don’t want a hashtag that hundreds of thousands of people using it because my audience isn’t big enough. At the same time, if I use a hashtag that has fewer than 100 users, that’s not enough for my following. I can’t tell you exactly why this works, but it’s something I learned from Dina. I use #urbanpleinair a lot, and #nycbridges was a good one for me, also #artandarchitecture. Ones that don’t work for me are big categories like #oilpainting or #contemporaryart or #contemporarypainting. (When you type in a hashtag, as you may have noticed, Instagram will tell you how many people are following it.)

Another storytelling post

Switch to a Professional Account and Add Linktr.ee

When you go to your profile page on Instagram, you’ll find the option to switch to a professional account, which will allow you to access Insights and learn about your followers (go to “edit profile”). You will then choose a category—such as artist, writer, blogger, entrepreneur—and be asked to click on “creator.” And when you go to Insights, you’ll be able to create reels and videos and other promotions. This will let you know what people like and how many people shared your post.

Dina Brodsky

Instagram allows you to post only one link in your profile, but I’ve expanded the kinds of information people can access by downloading Linktr.ee. When you click on that option on my profile, you’ll find a video from my Bronx Museum show, a Valeri Larko shop of works for sale, an interview for Thirsty magazine, and my works on Artsy. (Google linktree or click here to see how this works.)

Influencers

Find people who are what they call art influencers—those who have 50,000, 100,000 followers or more. See what they’re doing and what you can learn from them. One of the things I discovered is that people like to see a post that shows the hand of an artist on her paintbrush, and that’s where I got the idea of posting progress shots showing how a work develops over time, through different stages, from a sketch to a final painting. Remember that it’s best to post multiple images, and Instagram will allow you to publish up to ten.

One way to find art influences is to do a search using words like art or another general term. It takes a bit of research to see which ones are best for you. On Instagram, as on many sites, search is the icon for a magnifying glass, at the bottom of the IG page. You hit the icon and a window comes up where you can type in what you’re looking for. You’ll also find images that the algorithm thinks you would like based on your past likes and searches. You can see which people and organizations have a lot of followers. Some influencer options for artists include Dina Brodsky, Blue Review, and Creative Uprising. Art influencers like Blue Review are always looking for new artists; mostly discovering people on their own, but you can sometimes pay a fee to get influencers to repost your content. Because they have hundreds of thousands of followers, a post on one of these art influences can help boost your audience significantly. Not all art influencers are right for all artists. You have to do your research for your type of art. Some influencers, like Tax Collection, like photography and quirky images that lean toward surrealism.  Individual artists like Dina won’t repost your art. The reason to follow artists with a huge following is to see how they promote their art and to learn from them. I highly recommend taking one of Dina’s workshops!

If you like an arts writer or critic, or you are eying a particular gallery, then following and engaging with them (commenting on their posts and/or sharing information about in your posts) is a way to get their attention.

Larko working on site

I’ve done a fair amount of homework about Instagram, taken a couple of workshops to help me understand the system, and figured out what works best for me. It’s not rocket science, but if you’re willing to put in the time and effort, the rewards may surprise you. (You can check out more of her posts on her Instagram account here.)

Top: This is the image that went viral for Valeri Larko in the summer of 2016, back when IG showed square format only. “This one got more than 2,000 likes and was shared multiple times when I had only a few hundred people following me,” she says.

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