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Welcome to Vasari21. A community for working artists, a place to connect, find information, read about the new and the unknown, listen to podcasts, and learn about how the art world really works.

UNDER THE RADAR

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A spotlight for members.

This Week's Artist

Notable Podcast

David S. Rubin

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David S. Rubin Salvador Dalí’s “Stairway to Heaven” Photo credits: bottom of page Salvador Dalí is perhaps best known for his...

Recent Feature

The Value of an MFA

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The degree has come under attack in recent years, but many say it's worth the investment. Just know what you're looking for—and consider a few alternatives. “MFA stands for yet another Mother-Fucking Artist,” declares one of the disgruntled students in a CalArts...

From the Vasari21 Archives

So You Want to Be in Pictures?

by Ann Landi | March 5, 2018 | Features | 0 Comments

If you catch a set decorator's eye, it just might happen As readers know, I have developed a peculiar fascination with the art featured in shows on the big and small screens—who chooses this work? where do they find the art? what are the guiding factors behind the...

So Long at the Fair?

by Ann Landi | April 11, 2016 | Features | 3 Comments

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…

The “Aha!” Moment, Part Two

by Ann Landi | July 22, 2016 | Features | 3 Comments

More Tales of Accidental Discovery and Enlightenment Legend has it that the great early 20th-century painter Wassily Kandinsky discovered abstraction when he left one of his landscapes positioned upside-down in his studio. He returned the next day and loved the almost...

Open Studios: Part One

by Ann Landi | June 4, 2017 | Features | 5 Comments

The ins and outs of making your life and work a public affair When I first broached the topic of open studios to several Vasari 21 members, some said, “No way. I don’t want a lot of lookee-loos traipsing through my private spaces.” Or “I’m at the point where I have...

By the Book

by Ann Landi | May 2, 2016 | Features | 3 Comments

The very first art books I remember reading (or perhaps just looking at with awe and wonder) were part of the series called “Metropolitan Seminars in Art,” written by the critic John Canaday. Each slender gray volume…

Critical Reversals

by Ann Landi | April 30, 2017 | Features | 0 Comments

Even the Most Respected Critics Change Their Minds When a politician flip-flops on a position, the public and press alike are quick to cry foul, hurling accusations of bad faith or pandering. But when an art critic changes his or her mind, the ripple effect is likely...

Selling on Instagram

by Ann Landi | February 3, 2018 | Features | 8 Comments

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...

Josef Albers: Beyond Light and Shade

by Ann Landi | December 21, 2015 | Artist Essays | 0 Comments

Most of Josef Albers’s paintings are very unusual and far more complex than they initially appear; they are not about Op art, color theory, or Minimalism. They are about paying attention. Just as his famous book on color theory…

The Price Is Right

by Ann Landi | February 13, 2017 | Features | 5 Comments

How Dealers Decide What Your Artwork Should Cost As you might expect in a business that is guided by ineffable factors like talent, taste, trends, and individual potential for growth, galleries don’t have any one set system for determining what to charge for a work of...

Me, Myself, and I

by Ann Landi | July 16, 2017 | Features | 3 Comments

Adventures in self-portraiture Self-portraiture enjoys a long and illustrious lineage, probably reaching its peak in Western art with Rembrandt, who not only reveled in chronicling his changing fortunes—from ambitious youth to successful dandy to impoverished...

Archived Feature

So You Want to Be in Pictures?

Mar 5, 2018 | Features | 0 Comments

If you catch a set decorator's eye, it just might happen As readers know, I have developed a peculiar fascination with the art featured in shows on the big and small screens—who chooses this work? where do they find the art? what are the guiding factors behind the...

Archived Feature

Ripe for Rediscovery: Mary Lee Bendolph

May 13, 2018 | Features | 1 Comment

One of the most radical abstract artists of the last 50 years is scarcely a household name, or even well known outside a small group of collectors, connoisseurs, and art historians. But Mary Lee Bendolph is a standout in the group of quilters from Gee’s Bend, a tiny...

Archived Feature

What Is a Drawing? Part Three

Apr 17, 2018 | Features | 1 Comment

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...

Archived Under the Radar

Donald Martiny

Sep 25, 2017 | Under the Radar | 2 Comments

Donald Martiny’s earliest memory of being mesmerized by paint comes from kindergarten, when he lived in Schenectady, NY, and had “a teacher who was really stingy about art supplies,” he recalls. “She would give us only two jars of poster paint, and I remember being...

Archived Under the Radar

Peter Roux

Feb 26, 2018 | Under the Radar | 2 Comments

Peter Roux believes an attraction to landscape, one of the principal motifs in his work, may stem from the many upheavals of his childhood. His father was a career marine and for the first 12 years of his life the family moved on average once a year. “I think I was...

Archived Podcast

Kathleen Ferguson-Huntington: Move Over, Scheherazade

Jul 31, 2017 | Vasari21 Radio | 2 Comments

Kathleen Ferguson-Huntington Move Over, Scheherazade Photo credits: bottom of page In the year 2000, Kathleen Ferguson-Huntington...