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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

Grace DeGennaro

A spotlight for members.

Recent Podcast

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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From the Vasari21 Archives

The Studios of Key West

Why Not Consider a Residency in the Tropics? Key West is a town unlike any other in Florida, an island city that marks the southernmost point in the United States. A stone’s throw from Cuba, it’s the end destination of U.S. Route 1, the longest north-south road in the...

Scams and Shams Part 2

About a decade ago, in the wake of yet another failed romance, I decided to visit the Florence Biennale, an art extravaganza that has been in the works since 1997. A fellow art journalist was going, meeting up with a curator friend from Texas…

Art Critics in the Time of Covid-19

What does an art critic do when the museums and galleries are closed? When classes are canceled (if you teach)? When your book spirals into limbo (if you have a publication in the works)? What does the future of art criticism look like as works migrate steadily to...

So Long at the Fair?

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…

Golden Artist Programs

Nice Work if You Can Get It When I noticed that several painters who are Vasari21 members had certification from Golden Artist Colors—a company that specializes in acrylic paints, mediums, and grounds and has officially been around since 1950—I was curious about what...

Critical Reversals

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...

The Value of an MFA

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...

Ripe for Rediscovery: Lee Lozano

  Several years ago, ARTnews ran a feature called “Ripe for Rediscovery,” polling curators, artists, and critics about which names had been unfairly lost in the shuffle of art history. Some of those who surfaced—Robert Irwin, Giovanni Boldini, and Rafael...

Jeff Baker: Urban Abstractions

When I first saw Jeff Baker’s photos, at his home and studio in Taos, NM, about five years ago, I immediately thought of Aaron Siskind, the photographer most closely associated with mid-century American abstraction. In many of his black-and-white images, Siskind...

Dora and Carl Dillistone

  When I first moved to Taos, NM, about six years ago, a friend and I went on one of those house-and-garden tours put together by a local charitable organization. It seemed a good way to get to know the territory, and I’ve always loved to snoop inside other...

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

The Monuments Contest: Part Two

The Monuments Contest: Part Two

Compared with the duration of empires past—like those of ancient Rome or Great Britain—the U.S. occupies a relatively tiny span of time, a little more 234 years as the great democratic experiment, if we date the founding of the country to 1776. And so our monuments...

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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

Liliana Bloch: Texas Strong

Liliana Bloch: Texas Strong

Gallerist Liliana Bloch has had one of the more unusual routes for an art dealer. In 1999, she fled war-torn El Salvador to forge a new life for herself in Dallas, TX…

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