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UNDER THE RADAR

A spotlight for members.

Cindy Blakeslee

Recent Feature

My Blockhead Adventures with Blockchain Art, Part Four

My Blockhead Adventures with Blockchain Art, Part Four

Many say it’s all a bubble. I don’t agree because the world is sick producing extremes of weather and behavior, people are struggling and if creators can find a way to express themselves or promote a worthy cause AND make money then It is not going away anytime soon

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Recent Feature

The Educated Eye Part Two

The Educated Eye Part Two

I opened up an intriguing cauldron of worms when I asked a bevy of art writers (call them critics, journalists, or simply reviewers) on what it means to have an “eye.” Why did they consider their judgments superior to those of the average museumgoer or art lover? The...

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From the Vasari21 Archives

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...

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...

Instagram for Artists

Getting the Most from Your Posts When a friend urged me to start posting on Instagram a few months ago, I immediately balked. I was already uploading a Vasari21 Pic of the Day to Facebook, pinning stuff to Pinterest, sending out weekly bulletins and updates, and...

Artists Behaving Badly

A recent report in the Huffington Post alleges that “narcissistic artists were determined to have higher market prices, higher estimates from auction houses, more museum shows, and more recognition from the art…

Artists and Critics: Part One

Sometimes the best way to respond to a bad review is to take a long walk Photo credits: bottom of page About ten days after the September 2015 opening of Will Ryman’s…

Into the Woods with Dale Chihuly

By Susan Erlandson Washburn I arrived at Crystal Bridges in Bentonville, Arkansas—Walmart heiress Alice Walton’s inspired gift to flyover country—too late to see the Dale Chihuly exhibition in the gallery itself but in time to visit the “In the Forest” portion...

You Don’t Have To Say You Love Me: Part One

The artist known as Swoon, now in her late thirties, gained a reputation early in her career for evocative and beautifully crafted street art and for wacky performance pieces, like crashing the 2009 Venice Biennale in a boat made of…

Artists and Critics: Part Two

Not to sound like too much of a fogey, but there was a time when the art world abounded with publications devoted to art—Art in America, Studio International, Arts magazine, Artforum, Art News…

Ripe for Rediscovery: Dorothy Hood

A Major Abstract Artist of the 20th Century Begins To Get Her Due I first stumbled upon the paintings of Dorothy Hood about five years ago, in the home of collector and artist Dora Dillistone. It’s not too much of a stretch to say that I was completely blown away....

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...

Archived Feature

Fantasy Curating: The Contemporary Portrait

Fantasy Curating: The Contemporary Portrait

By Kate Petley Contemporary portraiture is so diverse that creating a comprehensive list of artists is futile. I selected these particular works for their power, humor, cleverness, rawness, and beauty. Reflecting a broad interpretation of what qualifies as a portrait,...

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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 Feature

Portfolio: Bob Richardson

Portfolio: Bob Richardson

There were times, when he was younger, that Bob Richardson felt a pull toward art. As a teenager in South Orange, NJ, he attended the Art Students League in New York, where he took drawing classes with a painter named Tom Fogarty, who taught him that “line has...

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Archived Under the Radar

Jeannie Motherwell

Jeannie Motherwell

First off, let’s get the famous forebears out of the way. Yes, Jeannie Motherwell is the daughter of that Motherwell, Robert, one of the titans of mid-20th-century American art. And the stepdaughter of Helen Frankenthaler, no less famous in the annals of art history...

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Archived Under the Radar

Paul O’Connor

Paul O’Connor

Paul O’Connor first fell in love with photography when he joined the navy at the tender age of 17. “My dad gave me a camera, an Olympus, and I started taking pictures—especially of clouds out at sea," he recalls. Those big billowing skies would prove equally...

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 Archived Podcast