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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

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...

Return to Sender

Before you fire off an email to a gallery, do your homework. And don’t get your hopes up too high. Out of idle curiosity, I recently asked a dealer friend about how many email submissions or inquiries she receives per week. I don’t precisely remember the answer, but...

Absolutely, Positively My Last Post About Instagram

Why does Patti Smith feel a need to post on Instagram? Is it important to her to have nearly 600,000 followers? When she uploads a photo, does she read all the comments (which can be as many as 2,000, last I checked)? Does she ever respond? She’s already a star—what...

My Mother, My Self

Lessons and inspiration from an artist mom By Patricia Moss-Vreeland In all my years of training as an artist, both at the University of the Arts and Tyler School of Art, I can recall many gifted and inspiring teachers, but none gave me quite so solid a sense of...

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...

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...

Fantasy Curating: Big Things Have Small Beginnings

By Ed Grant "Big Things Have Small Beginnings" So many of the things around us are small, or at least start off small. Stalactites form one drop at a time. Viruses and bacteria evolve new ways around our defenses to become full-blown pandemics. Slime mold is used to...

The Death of the Gallery? Part Two

The brick-and-mortar establishment is challenged on a number of fronts. What does that mean for galleries? And for artists? As reported a few weeks ago, mid-level brick-and-mortar galleries face a multitude of pressures, so much so that the mainstream press is...

Storytelling in Three Dimensions

Installation Artists Continue the Narrative Tradition Once upon a time, storytelling was one of the most ambitious missions of painting. Panel by panel, Giotto told the lives of Christ and St. Francis. Michelangelo presented the sweeping drama of the Old and New...

Ripe for Rediscovery: Thomas Child

Rare photos from the 1870s give a glimpse into an ancient civilization on the brink of change Her face framed by an ornate tasseled headdress, the bride looks eager and expectant and maybe a little scared. Her groom seems more confident, certainly more relaxed. You...

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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