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UNDER THE RADAR

A spotlight for members.

Cindy Blakeslee

Recent Feature

Ripe for Rediscovery: Peter Miller

Ripe for Rediscovery: Peter Miller

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

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Recent Feature

L.A. Confidential

L.A. Confidential

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

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From the Vasari21 Archives

Fantasy Curating: Is It Frankenstein?

A make-believe show devoted to "hybrid objects," neither paintings nor sculptures, but definitely here and now By Robert Straight Over a long period of time, there have been artists who haven’t accepted the traditional rectangular format for their paintings....

Destructive Impulses

Even the most famous artists torch, shred, and otherwise annihilate works that don't seem up to snuff In 1967, Agnes Martin began seeking out her earlier works with the intention of destroying everything she could find. That was about ten years after she had decided...

It’s Not What I Expected I Would Do

An Artist Opens her New Home and Studio for ArtWalk Kingston By Millicent Young I had just landed in Kingston, NY, in early July with Niko, the dog of Perpetual Joy, and the four cats, a long chapter of life in rural Virginia completed. I was moving into my new...

Social Media: Defining Your Target Market

By Barbra Drizin  There are many bells and whistles on Facebook that most users know nothing about. A few tweaks, following the steps below, allow you to focus your social media efforts, so that your posts reach carefully tailored audiences—your "target market.” These...

Fun and Games

When is a prank a work of art? And when is it just a one-liner? During a panel on the “Art of Pranks” at a convention of the College Art Association a few years back, a participant identified as Clark Stoeckley, “Artivist,” maintained a totally impassive, even bored,...

A.A. for Artists (Not What You Think)

In his 2012 novel Back to Blood, Tom Wolfe devotes a chapter to the art-fair feeding frenzy that is Art Basel Miami Beach, introducing a minor presence named Marilyn Carr, who is known to her principal client as “A.A.,” short for art adviser.

Reinventing Landscape: Part One

The “genre,” if it is such these days, never really goes away Landscape painting enjoys a long and honorable history in art, going as far back as ancient times, when the Greeks and Romans made frescoes of pleasant vistas and enchanting gardens. There have been periods...

Me, Myself, and I Part 3

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

How are you? No, I mean, really, how are you?

Artists talk about altered states during the pandemic We are now about seven months into a worldwide catastrophe that has affected nearly every fiber and facet of our being. Many of us have been sheltering in place, limiting our contacts with the outside world,...

Fantasy Curating: Memory and Materiality

By Christine Aaron  I respond to art that simultaneously takes me both outside myself and more deeply inward. Though I respect work that is intellectually stimulating alone, the art that most engages me occurs at a physical level and insistently penetrates through the...

Archived Feature

Fantasy Curating: Hands-On and Lush

Fantasy Curating: Hands-On and Lush

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

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Archived Feature

Suggestions for Summer Reading

Suggestions for Summer Reading

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

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Archived Feature

Meghan Wilbar: The Long Road

Meghan Wilbar: The Long Road

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

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Archived Under the Radar

Marietta Patricia Leis

Marietta Patricia Leis

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

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Archived Under the Radar

Susan English

Susan English

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

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 Archived Podcast

Alice Robb: Why We Dream

Alice Robb: Why We Dream

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

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