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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

My Blockhead Adventures with Blockchain Art, Part Four

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

Ripe for Rediscovery: John Outterbridge

I first encountered a couple of John Outterbridge’s trippy, sexy, irresistible sculptures on a press trip to Los Angeles in 2011 for the first iteration of Pacific Standard Time, the sprawling series of exhibitions devoted to art in southern California. It was love at...

“Ninth Street Women”—a review

The Abstract Expressionist generation has gone down in history as mostly male and exceedingly macho. Jackson Pollock boozing it up and brawling at the Cedar Bar. Willem de Kooning slashing his way through that still-disturbing “Woman” series. Franz Kline bravely...

What Is a Drawing? Part Three

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

Instagram for Artists

Getting the Most from Your Posts When a friend urged me to start posting on Instagram a few months ago, I immediately balked. I was already uploading a Vasari21 Pic of the Day to Facebook, pinning stuff to Pinterest, sending out weekly bulletins and updates, and...

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.

Selling on Instagram

Eight Tips to Sharpen Your Marketing Skills A few years back, a report in the online edition of Vogue predicted that “Instagram’s arguably positive democratization of high art will see the end of many an art dealer’s career.” Well, I very much doubt that because...

Three Great Novels About Art, Artists, and the Art World

It used to be that the favored genre for fiction about art and artists was the pseudo-biography, like Irving Stone’s Lust for Life and The Agony and the Ecstasy. Or if you were in search of lighter fare, you turned to a glamorous art-world setting…

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...

Fantasy Curating: Perfectly Imperfect

By Jina Brenneman Post-disciplinary, Neo Craft, Sloppy Craft, and the Hyper Pot are all descriptors that attempt to classify the seismic shift in contemporary ceramics. Artificial in nature, these technicolor works drip with irregularities, gloppy blobs, and bulges...

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...

read more

Archived Feature

Meghan Wilbar: The Long Road

Meghan Wilbar: The Long Road

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

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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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