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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

Artists and Critics: Part 3

When I first started working on staff at ARTnews, a little more than 20 years ago, I was on the brink of a divorce after several years of freelancing and corporate wifedom (at which I was not very good). The magazine represented both….

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...

Cheryl Gross and Marta Wapiennik Choose Each Other

Artistic collaborations are nothing new in the annals of contemporary art—think of Janet Cardiff and George Bures Miller, Gilbert and George, or even Tim Rollins and his “at-risk” students, known as the Kids of Survival. But edgy illustrator…

In the Beginning (Nonbiblical Version)

By Ed Haddaway In many ways my lifetime has been spent in what was our backyard. Far from being chained like our first collie, Lassie (in the1950s there was no other possible dog anyone, anywhere, could have), I have roamed freely for these past 68 years. In fact,...

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...

Me, Myself, and I

Adventures in self-portraiture Self-portraiture enjoys a long and illustrious lineage, probably reaching its peak in Western art with Rembrandt, who not only reveled in chronicling his changing fortunes—from ambitious youth to successful dandy to impoverished...

Advise and Select

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...

Plein-Air Painting Today

Thirteen Who Head for the Open Air...in Spite of the Challenges Artists in significant numbers first took to the great outdoors to work in natural surroundings and more accurately transcribe the effects of light nearly 200 years ago, following the example of landscape...

Hot Wax Happiness

In which your intrepid reporter takes a class in encaustic monotypes with Paula Roland Given the number of Vasari21 members who work in encaustic (see Anna Wagner-Ott’s report from last summer), I thought it might be fun to get a firsthand look at why the medium is so...

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...

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...

read more

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