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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

Portfolio: Susan Chorpenning

For most of her 40-year career, Susan Chorpenning has in one way or another been involved with light, and “with the sensual experience of looking and the perceptual experience of seeing,” as she puts it on her website.  In one of her early “Light Rooms,” a temporal...

The ABC’s of Social Media

By Barbra Drizin Most clients who come to me have at least a passing familiarity with the major social media platforms—Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, and Twitter. You may be posting, updating, and tweeting regularly, but until you understand how to maximize their...

So You Want to Be in Pictures?

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...

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...

Should You Have a Contract with Your Dealer?

Given the increasingly litigious nature of all aspects of our society, it comes as a surprise to find that many galleries and artists function happily without complicated contractual agreements. About half the people surveyed…

It’s Not What I Expected I Would Do

An Artist Opens her New Home and Studio for ArtWalk Kingston By Millicent Young I had just landed in Kingston, NY, in early July with Niko, the dog of Perpetual Joy, and the four cats, a long chapter of life in rural Virginia completed. I was moving into my 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...

The Secret of Venus

Seeing Mona Kuhn’s subtly erotic nudes in the slide show that accompanies our podcast with her this week (and especially the photo titled Morgane from 2010) made me think of a book proposal…

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…

We Can Get There from Here

An Artist Reflects on Drawing During Tumultuous Times By Christine Taylor Patten When Pennsylvania’s votes were counted and the welcome winner of the 2020 presidential election was called early the next morning, I missed the excitement at first, having finally slept a...

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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