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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

Grants and Financial Resources for Artists during Covid19

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

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.

Alex Meets Ada

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

Sanctioned Spaces

Robert Motherwell, my father, purchased our home the year I was born. My earliest recollection of entering his studio is when I was a toddler. We lived in a…

So Long at the Fair?

Love ‘em or hate ‘em, the art fair appears to be the major marketing phenomenon of our times. Artsy.com, a site primarily for collectors, lists 60 top fairs worldwide, with ballpark estimates for maintaining a booth at one ranging from…

Art Advisers Redux

Almost five years ago I published a post about art advisers, those hard-working middlemen and women who match up artists with corporate clients, budding collectors, or homeowners in the throes of renovation. Enough has changed since that time that the subject seemed...

Dabbling in Dura-Lar

Your fearless correspondent takes another class It’s always seemed to me that a big part of the fun of art-making lies in the endless amounts of seductive stuff to play with—paints and brushes, pencils and charcoal and pastels, clay and plaster and all kinds of goo,...

Ripe for Rediscovery: Berthe Morisot

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

A Visit to “Willa”

In the high desert of northern New Mexico, sculptor and photographer Paul O'Connor takes in his friend Debbie Long's immersive installation. "Trippy" barely begins to describe the experience. By Paul O'Connor   Several months have passed since my visit to Debbie...

When Apparel Meets Art

The results can be ravishing, brutal, and downright mesmerizing Fashion has been colliding with art at least since Tristan Tzara and other Dada provocateurs took to the stage of Zurich’s Cabaret Voltaire a century ago, wearing outlandish costumes created in the same...

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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