Articles
Ripe for Rediscovery: Mary Lee Bendolph
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...
Christopher Rico
Although they are not overtly religious, Christopher Rico hopes his subtly explosive black and white paintings convey a spiritual quality—“whatever that means,” the soft-spoken painter hastens to add in conversation. The son of a Lieutenant Colonel in the Air Force,...
Fantasy Curating: Memory and Materiality
By Christine Aaron I respond to art that simultaneously takes me both outside myself and more deeply inward. Though I respect work that is intellectually stimulating alone, the art that most engages me occurs at a physical level and insistently penetrates through the...
Where Is the Me in #MeToo?
Searching for a younger self When all the evidence of men misbehaving (Weinstein, Rose, Lauer, Close, and countless others) began spilling into the press last year, sexual harassment and sexual assault became a prime topic of discussion among women friends. I listened...
Art Coaching, Part Two
Doing It One-on-One When I set out to survey the field of art coaching, I had no idea it was such a huge and varied terrain. There are full-service ventures that cover all aspects of building an art career, such as Alyson Stanfield’s “Art Biz Coach” and Crista...
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...
Carole D’Inverno
In the 18th and 19th centuries, history painting was considered the loftiest genre to which a European or American artist could aspire. High drama from ancient and contemporary events—battle scenes or coronations, for instance—inspired painters to produce grandiose...
Jackie Skrzynski
Like many kids, Jackie Skrzynski (pronounced skrin-ski) was an ardent draftswoman from a very young age. “The idea of moving lines around the page, and then having them turn into something recognizable, was just magic to me,” she says. These days, as her work has...
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...
A Progress Report
Where are we, what are we doing, where are we going? I can remember when and where I first conceived the idea for Vasari21. I was staying in my friend Barbara Rachko’s apartment over the holidays in December 2015, while she was traveling in South America, and though...
Still More Residencies….
Located in the Chiang Mai province of northern Thailand, ComPeung offers residencies from two weeks to three months on spectacular grounds comprising 2.8 acres of fishing lakes, forests, and mountains as part of what the website calls the country’s “first...
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...
Patricia Moss-Vreeland
Patricia Moss-Vreeland launched her career producing that most traditional of genres—still life. After pursuing studies at Washington University in St. Louis, MO, and the Philadelphia College of Art, she ended up in Rome as part of Tyler School of Art’s program...
Making Book
Why and How a Catalogue Adds Cachet In an era when vivid high-quality images can be accessed in a nanosecond on almost any available screen, why bother with something as cumbersome as a hard-copy catalogue with glossy images and real pages? Because the tangible can...
Painting with Big Mama
By Phillis Ideal I still see Big Mama leaning over her garden to pick a zinnia to put in her still life. Her old pink slip hung diagonally, a foot below her hiked-up stained dress, half-covered by her paint smock, which matched her white faux-fur bedroom slippers,...
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