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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

Open Studios: Part Two

Make it a social event “I went through a depressing period when I thought I was all alone in my part of the world,” says Diane Di Bernardino Sanborn, who lives in Scottsdale, AZ, and makes largely abstract work. “There are no galleries in my area for contemporary art....

The Curators Speak

In the world of museum exhibitions and gallery shows, the curator seems like the Wizard of Oz, the behind-the-scenes magician who pulls it all together and leads us Munchkins down a yellow brick road toward some kind of enlightenment…

ART AND TECHNOLOGY: The Soul of the New Machines, Part 2

Throughout the history of art there have been innovations that have entirely revolutionized the way work is made, looked at, and thought about. Painting with oils, the technique invented and perfected by Early Netherlandish artists, meant that a higher degree of...

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...

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...

The Other Art Fair

A Report from the Front Lines By Adria Arch A few weeks ago, for the first time, I exhibited my work at The Other Art Fair, a marathon exhibition that runs biannually in spring and fall in the creative heart of New York City at Greenpoint's Brooklyn Expo Center....

Say It with Flowers: Part Two

More of nature’s bounty from the garden As mentioned in Part One, flowers simply never go out of fashion. Here are a dozen more artists who have found ways to put a fresh spin on a centuries-old subject. Peggy Klineman: “Living in New York City, I longed to be in...

Ripe for Rediscovery: Maggi Hambling

By Jane Barthes  Maggi Hambling’s paintings and sculpture are not entirely new to me, but many outside the U.K. probably have little knowledge of this quintessentially British artist. I discovered Hambling’s work in the early 1990s, five years before I left London,...

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....

Confessions of a Closet Painter

Coming to Grips with “Makee-Doo” I suppose it all begins with the “Sandy Becker Show,” which Boomers may remember watching on little black-and-white TVs in the 1950s and ‘60s. The genial host of this children’s variety program regularly showed drawings sent in by his...

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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