Fine Art Connoisseur May/Jun 2017

RUSSIA was the centerpiece of the first art cruise Fine Art Connoisseur ever organized (through the Baltic Sea in 2010). It was amazing, even though our stay in Russia entailed only three days in St. Petersburg. Since then, those who took that cruise, and many who did not, have asked us to return to Russia. Editor-in-Chief Peter Trippi and I are therefore thrilled that Fine Art Connoisseur’s next adventure abroad — this coming September 10–20 — will be in Russia. But this time it will not be a cruise at all. There is so much culture in Moscow and St. Petersburg that we have decided to do a land-based trip, with five days in each city and a high-speed train between. The elephant in the room is that Russia is very…

2017 is flying along, so I am already looking forward to November, when Fine Art Connoisseur will host the first convention devoted to the figure in contemporary realist art. The Figurative Art Convention & Expo (FACE) will be held at Miami’s lovely Biltmore Hotel November 8–11, offering a fully immersive experience for everyone who wants to learn (and talk) about figurative painting with world-class artists and colleagues in this thriving field. Paintings of the human figure take many forms, from the academic and classical to the expressively brushy and nearly abstract. Publisher Eric Rhoads and I believe it’s time for figure painting to have its own convention, a gathering place where museum-quality masters, and those striving to be, can exchange ideas, improve their skills, and form a community that advances…

Daniel Boulud, America’s best-known chef and restaurateur, has a taste for truffles that matches his appetite for good art. One of his artist friends, Chuck Close, enjoys truffles as much as he does. “Although I invite Chuck to the restaurant all the time, I always make sure to do so when the black and white truffles are in season together for a short time, beginning in early January,” says Boulud from his office overlooking the kitchen of his flagship restaurant on Park Avenue — a windowed perch he refers to as the “kitchen cockpit.” “I’ve learned that artists usually have good palates,” a remark that might confuse some people into thinking that Boulud also means palette. “They have good taste in wine and in food, but they’re not always good…

JOSHUA KOFFMAN (b. 1972) is a sculptor whose large, often lifesize bronzes are simultaneously dynamic and graceful. Raised in Southern California, Koffman became fascinated with Greek and Renaissance art as a youngster. Having earned his B.F.A. at the University of California, Santa Cruz, he came east to earn a certificate at Philadelphia’s Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts (PAFA), where he now teaches courses in figure and portrait modeling. In 2007, Koffman co-founded the Philadelphia Traction Company in a former trolley manufactory in West Philadelphia. There he and 11 other artists, all related to PAFA, maintain a workshop and individual studio spaces to pursue their own projects and also collaborative ones. When he is not in his studio modeling the human form in clay from live models, Koffman is often found…

Alexandra Tyng (b. 1954) makes oil paintings that range from enormous aerial views of landmasses to medium-sized figures to small plein air sketches. Shifting from one to the next might seem dizzyingly difficult, yet Tyng carries it off with graceful aplomb. A key skill she possesses is an ability to see the tiny, humanizing detail in a grand landscape, and the universal current pulsing through a small interior with figures. On view June 2 through July 1 at Dowling Walsh Gallery (Rockland, Maine) is a show of approximately 15 recent works with just such an intriguing mix. Their unifying theme is Tyng’s feeling about the nature of time: fascinated by how perception alters both memory and reality, she loves to play with a non-linear interpretation of time, blurring boundaries between the…

In Manhattan, Forum Gallery is about to present — for a delightfully long run (May 11–June 30) — an intriguing exhibition titled Linden Frederick: Night Stories. It will center on 15 new paintings by the Maine-based artist Linden Frederick (b. 1953), each to be accompanied by an original short story created by one of America’s greatest fiction writers. Frederick spent seven years conceptualizing this project, during which he invited 15 authors to take a close look at a specific painting and get inspired. The resulting convergence highlights the intrinsic connections between two types of storytelling — the visual and the literary — by placing them side by side, offering us new ways to view and think about art. Raised in upstate New York, Frederick studied at the Ontario College of…