Connecting Artists

A Serious Site for Serious Artists

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.

This Week's Artist

Recent Podcast

Judith Stein on the Elusive Megadealer Dick Bellamy

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The 1960s saw a huge explosion of talent in the New York art world—Conceptualism, Pop, Op, Minimalism, Happenings, and Land Art all had their origins during this tumultuous decade…

Ripe for Rediscovery: Peter Miller

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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...

Ripe for Rediscovery: Mary Lee Bendolph

by Ann Landi | 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...

We Can Get There from Here

by Christine Taylor Patten | November 22, 2020 | Features | 6 Comments

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...

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...

Artist and Critics: Part 4

by Ann Landi | January 14, 2016 | Features | 2 Comments

There was a time, not so long ago, when physical assaults were almost a routine art-world ritual, between artists and critics, artists and artists, and occasionally even critics and critics. The titanic 20th-century art czar…

Fun and Games

by Ann Landi | October 1, 2017 | Features | 0 Comments

When is a prank a work of art? And when is it just a one-liner? During a panel on the “Art of Pranks” at a convention of the College Art Association a few years back, a participant identified as Clark Stoeckley, “Artivist,” maintained a totally impassive, even bored,...

Dora and Carl Dillistone

by Ann Landi | April 23, 2017 | Collector Spotlight | 0 Comments

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...

The Fine Art of Recycling Part One

by Ann Landi | February 8, 2020 | Features | 3 Comments

The whole notion of recycling seems a very up-to-the-minute politically correct attitude for art in this day and age. And yet the tradition of integrating all manner of stuff from the real world into sculpture and onto two-dimensional surfaces begins more than a...

Confessions of a Closet Painter

by Ann Landi | September 18, 2017 | Features | 6 Comments

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...

Advise and Select

by Ann Landi | July 29, 2018 | Features | 2 Comments

Artists reveal their secrets for smart editing and smooth studio visits Not too long ago, I paid a call on an artist who shall remain nameless, whose studio was such a shambles I was itching to get out of there within ten minutes. It seemed there were works from every...

Good-Bye to All That

by Teresa Stanley | August 23, 2020 | Artist Essays | 18 Comments

A dedicated teacher looks back on three decades in the classroom In December of this year, I will retire from teaching painting, a job I’ve loved for 30 years. Although I am looking forward to a new phase in my life, I will miss this role. I’ve had a good run and feel...

Archived Feature

Fantasy Curating: Hands-On and Lush

Feb 28, 2021 | Features | 2 Comments

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...

The Monuments Contest: Part Two

Oct 3, 2020 | Features | 0 Comments

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...

Archived Feature

Meghan Wilbar: The Long Road

Apr 18, 2021 | Features | 1 Comment

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...

Archived Under the Radar

Marietta Patricia Leis

Aug 26, 2018 | Under the Radar | 4 Comments

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...

Archived Under the Radar

Susan English

Apr 8, 2019 | Under the Radar | 1 Comment

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...

Liliana Bloch: Texas Strong

Nov 24, 2018 | Vasari21 Radio | 1 Comment

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…

Connecting Artists

A Serious Site for Serious Artists

UNDER THE RADAR

Grace DeGennaro

Recent Podcast

Judith Stein on the Elusive Megadealer Dick Bellamy

Recent Feature

Ripe for Rediscovery: Peter Miller

From the Vasari21 Archives

Ripe for Rediscovery: Mary Lee Bendolph

We Can Get There from Here

Critical Reversals

Artist and Critics: Part 4

Fun and Games

Dora and Carl Dillistone

The Fine Art of Recycling Part One

Confessions of a Closet Painter

Advise and Select

Good-Bye to All That

Fantasy Curating: Hands-On and Lush

Archived Feature

The Monuments Contest: Part Two

Meghan Wilbar: The Long Road

Marietta Patricia Leis

Susan English

Archived Podcast

Liliana Bloch: Texas Strong