Fine Art Connoisseur Mar/Apr 2017

The United States formally entered World War I on April 6, 1917. To mark this centenary, several major exhibitions of art related to that “war to end all wars” are now on view across America. Also in 1917, the British artist C.R.W. Nevinson used the machine aesthetic of futurism and the influence of cubism to compelling effect in prints like this one, though he found modernist styles increasingly inadequate for describing the horrors of modern warfare. Thus his art became more and more realistic over time.…

You and I are reading this magazine because some brave artists spat in the face of conformity. For several decades in the mid- to late 20th century, they faced ridicule and had trouble selling their work in a world enamored with modernism. These women and men refused to follow the money, to give in to pressures from people who accused them of living in the past. They knew that their methods, passed down from generation to generation, were hanging on by a thread; if not protected and passed along, the knowledge and achievements of historical artists would be lost forever. These lone voices knew that modernism would ultimately lose its shine, that collectors would finally see the emperor wore no clothes — that little skill was required to create the…

I’m an inveterate traveler, but have been home in New York City for six weeks now. It’s hardly a dull place, but as we all turn the calendar to March, I wish I could cancel some appointments and head to two distinctive places. Coming up first is the Plein Air Curaçao International Art Festival (March 9–18, plein aircuracao.com/en). Floating in the Caribbean Sea just north of Venezuela, the island of Curaçao offers the perfect combination of stunning geography, rich culture, and colorful architecture evoking its Dutch colonial heritage. The capital of Willemstad, indeed the entire island, offer compelling subjects for painters to capture on canvas; some of them even venture into the extraordinarily clear water to record what they see below (“plein eau”). I really enjoyed my experiences at the…

Some artists need to work — and can only work — where they are appreciated. Although the Belgian-born artist Georges Brasseur (1880–1950) was alive when continental Europe was inventing modernism and abstraction, he felt an outsider in his own land. “Brasseur was a very strong representational artist,” says Erin-Marie Wallace, CEO and auctioneer of Rare-Era, a Florida-based online auction house that will soon hold a sale of several of his paintings, his personal library, and a sketchbook, portions of which date to his adolescence. “He was not a huge fan of modernism and shortly after World War I he moved to South America, where he flourished and proved able to paint anything well — except abstraction,” Wallace adds. “He was more artistically at home in South America than in Europe.”…

American playwright John Pielmeier likes to tell stories, ones that he makes up and that affect his audiences. In his Tony Award-winning Broadway play, Agnes of God, he told the tale of a nun who gives birth to a child she claims was the result of an immaculate conception. In his forthcoming London — and later Broadway — adaptation of The Exorcist, he tells a new version of demonic possession. And in his forthcoming novel, Hook’s Tale, he has Captain Hook relate his memoirs. But the most compelling tale for Pielmeier is a true-life one concerning his late father, Leonard Pielmeier, who died in 1979. As a regional field director for the American Red Cross in France, the elder Pielmeier was assigned a grim task during World War II: to…

JOEL OSTLIND (b. 1954) makes paintings and etchings of the West born from his firsthand familiarity with Wyoming’s natural beauty, and from a lifelong connection to the region’s community and culture. This self-taught artist has actually spent most of his adult life working as a professional cowboy, herding cattle on ranches throughout Wyoming and Montana, yet he always found time for sketching. When Ostlind married and settled in Big Horn, Wyoming, he built a studio in the foothills and began drawing and painting full-time. His subject matter ranges from Western landscapes and scenes of Native American life to cattle ranching and fly-fishing. Ostlind’s influences include Adolph Menzel, Nicolae Grigorescu, John Singer Sargent, Joaquín Sorolla, and Anders Zorn, as well as his regional etching predecessor, Hans Kleiber (1887–1967). That last…