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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

Me, Myself, and I Part 3

It’s curious to me that more women than men responded to the call for a third round-up of self-portraits on Vasari21. That’s possibly because there are more female members than male (though I can’t tell you the exact ratio), possibly because women traditionally spend...

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...

What Turns Critics On (and Off)

When I was regularly writing reviews for ARTnews and The Wall Street Journal, two great gigs that petered out for different reasons, I was occasionally conscious of having biases toward work that rang my chimes in a big way and against art that confused me or left me...

The Curators Speak

In the world of museum exhibitions and gallery shows, the curator seems like the Wizard of Oz, the behind-the-scenes magician who pulls it all together and leads us Munchkins down a yellow brick road toward some kind of enlightenment…

Girl, Unexpectedly Interrupted

In which I try to have a romance with an older man, a real artist. But Mother knows better. During my last semester in college, I worked part time at the university store (fondly known as the “screw store” for its inflated prices on stuff like toothpaste and shampoo)....

Patti Smith Meets Picasso

“[When I was about twelve], my father took us on a rare excursion to the Museum of Art in Philadelphia. My parents worked very hard, and taking four children on a bus to…

The Fine Art of Recycling Part One

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...

My Blockhead Adventures with Blockchain Art, Part Two: “Your Move”

The Lady Bishop (detail) from Filippucci's "Chess Series" YOUR MOVE After getting acquainted with the basic elements of NFTs (see PART ONE), my next move was to purchase some Ethereum cryptocurrency to pay for the “gas” fees to have each “minted” and put up for...

Afterthoughts on the 2015 Venice Biennale

Photo credits: bottom of pageMost reviews of the 2015 Venice Biennale came down hard on the curator’s “didactic,” “glum,” “joyless,” and un-spectacular show of conceptual, socially oriented works. It also disappointed those addicted to grandiose art spectacles, the...

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...

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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