Innholdsfortegnelse for Jul/Aug 2017 i Fine Art Connoisseur

B. ERIC RHOADS Chairman/Publisher bericrhoads@gmail.com 561.923.8481 facebook.com/eric.rhoads @ericrhoads You, the art enthusiast, walk into a gallery, see paintings on the wall, browse a bit, and leave. On occasion you pause before specific works you love, but then you move on. On special days, when you’re in the right mood and extremely stimulated by a piece that “speaks” to you, your rationality starts sending messages like “Where would I hang it? I can afford it, but do I really need it?” Soon you are talked out of the purchase by your non-emotional decision-making skills. On rare occasions, however, your emotions become so strong — and the conditions so right — that you take the plunge. That moment when you bring the artwork home releases “feel-good endorphins” in your brain, and they…

Born in Manchester, England, the fifth daughter of a railway contractor, Louise (née Goode) Jopling (1843–1933) ultimately became one of Victorian London’s leading female artists. Despite social and economic boundaries that limited women’s careers, she led a remarkably independent life as a versatile painter of portraits, figures, and interiors. Jopling achieved professional status by showing her art at mainstream institutions and joining a select band of female artists (including her compatriot Elizabeth Thompson Butler and the French realist Rosa Bonheur) whose activities were followed closely by the media. In 1902, she was one of the first women elected to the Royal Society of British Artists, an institution second in rank only to the Royal Academy of Arts. Yet Jopling fully realized that her gender set her apart: “I hate being…

I now live with 19 people, and a shy dog, in my one-bedroom apartment. In the distance, I spot more figures crossing Central Park and heading my way, others boarding the F train, and the shadow of a skateboarder pushing off toward me. There is also the cowboy on horseback heading to his Dakota farmstead. These are painted figures, all of whom stare at me from my walls. Every one of these men and women is handsome or pretty. I choose my roommates carefully. The newest face and torso to come reside with me almost didn’t make it. But as of a day ago, he now occupies the last remaining free space on my white living room walls; if I were to squeeze in, salon-style, any more paintings or photographs,…

In May, the White House released details on its proposed Fiscal Year 2018 “skinny budget,” which will, among other things, give the 52-year-old National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) just enough money to wind down its activities and close permanently ($29 million vs. its previous allocation of $150 million). For now, let’s overlook the fact that the resultant savings are paltry when measured against the government’s $1.1 trillion annual budget. And let’s overlook the fact that NEA grants support arts events in every state, usually at organizations unable to replace that funding with private dollars because their communities are poor or sparsely populated. Instead, let’s focus on something you may not know: closing the NEA will kill off almost all of our country’s temporary museum exhibitions of high-value masterpieces. Why?…

Although the tradition of painting and drawing plants can be traced back to antiquity, it reached its zenith in western Europe between the 17th and 19th centuries. This area of artmaking is not nearly as widespread today, yet the quality of work being made is still extremely high, and its quantity is growing steadily. As ever, botanical art combines aspects of science and art, requiring the artist to understand the physical structure of plants and to communicate this knowledge in an aesthetically pleasing manner. Botanical works are made for pleasure, for sale in galleries, and also for study, much as parts of the human body are illustrated to help scientists and doctors understand anatomy. Without having sought it, the field of botanical art has acquired an “eco-warrior” aspect because many…

The art of portraiture is thriving. As superficial proof, one has only to consider the seemingly ubiquitous phenomenon of the selfie or the popularity of SkyArt’s recent television series Portrait Artist of the Year. Less obvious, but surely more compelling, is the vitality of the market for traditional portraiture — a genre that remains somewhat under the media radar owing largely to the frequently private circumstances governing commissions and to the fact that the resulting works are usually unique objects that often remain out of public view. A case in point is the work of the British portrait specialist Paul Brason (b. 1952). Brason’s recent portrait of Eric Widing now hangs in the historic Union Club of the City of New York, where Widing serves as president. Widing’s face is…

Art lovers worldwide are starting to plan their visits to the 96th annual Santa Fe Indian Market, set for the weekend of August 19–20. The capital of New Mexico has been a trading hub for centuries, so it was no surprise back in 1922 when some Indian artisans were invited to sell their creations during the Santa Fe Fiesta. That small show has blossomed into the world’s oldest and best juried Indian art market, which draws more than 120,000 visitors during the third week of August to this atmospheric city’s central plaza and the walkable streets surrounding it. Sheltered from sun and (less likely) rain by sturdy, open-sided tents, more than 900 Native artists come from across the U.S. and Canada to exhibit their latest works. Approximately 70 percent of…

In January 1928, typing on engraved stationery from Harlem’s Walker Studios, Sari Price Patton wrote to the African American activist and sociologist W.E.B. Du Bois, confirming his request to rent a room there for his daughter’s wedding party. Patton served as social secretary to A’Lelia Walker, daughter of the African American beauty-products entrepreneur and philanthropist Madam C.J. Walker, and also as hostess at The Dark Tower, A’Lelia’s cultural salon, where such Harlem Renaissance luminaries as Zora Neale Hurston, Alain Locke, and Langston Hughes gathered. A fashionable portrait of Patton, painted by Winold Reiss (1886–1953), appears this summer in a pioneering exhibition that traces the pivotal role that New York artists, designers, and architects played in making their state the epicenter of American Modernism. In Reiss’s portrait, Patton’s alert comportment, drop-waist…

It’s always cause for celebration when a private collection of important artworks is published for the wide world to admire and consult. This is usually done when a museum borrows these treasures for a temporary exhibition, so it’s unusual — and impressive — when the private collector creates a book on his or her own steam (and dime). This is the case with the handsome new 136-page book Toward a New 19th-Century Art: Selections from the Radichel Collection. Released this May, the volume opens with an intriguing essay by Brad Radichel (b. 1962), a businessman based in Mankato, Minnesota. Titled “Reflections of a Budding Collector, or, Why I Collect Art,” his contribution is both informative and inspiring, which is why key sections from it are excerpted here. Radichel and his…

Readers of Fine Art Connoisseur should keep an eye open for the U.S. release of Loving Vincent, the world’s first fully handpainted biographical animated film. This project is of interest not only for its subject — the life and death of Vincent Van Gogh (1853–1890) as told by the characters in his paintings — but also for the fascinating method by which it was created. Written and directed by Dorota Kobiela and Hugh Welchman (Welchman won an Academy Award for producing the 2006 animated short Peter and the Wolf), Loving Vincent stars Douglas Booth, Chris O’Dowd, Jerome Flynn (Game of Thrones), Robert Gularczyk, Helen McCrory, Saoirse Ronan (Brooklyn), and Aidan Turner (Poldark). Dena Peterson is a gifted plein air painter based in Colorado Springs, but last year she headed east…

ISAAC MIZRAHI Designer and entertainer Photo: Jason Frank Rothenberg “?et me get right to it,” says Isaac Mizrahi when asked why he responds so viscerally to the paintings of Florine Stettheimer (1871–1944). “Color! It’s the first thing I’m drawn to in her canvases. Her intensive use of color pulls me in. They are like candy or ice cream — colors that are delicious.” Mizrahi — a fashion designer, actor, cabaret singer, writer, comedian, filmmaker, and entertainer — does not shy from expressing his passions, in private or in public. “When I was looking at her paintings at the Jewish Museum, I was losing my mind in the galleries, I was so excited,” he says, referring to a major exhibition there of the artist’s works, Florine Stettheimer: Painting Poetry. It runs through…

One of the happiest phenomena of contemporary realist art has been the durability of Richard Estes (b. 1932). Having escaped his career as an advertising illustrator, he came to worldwide attention in the 1960s as a pioneer of Photorealism with acutely observed, technically masterful depictions of modern life. He has produced primarily cityscapes and landscapes with a precision that would seem sterile in the hands of lesser artists. In Estes’s scenes, a rational objectivity is infused with firsthand knowledge — a feeling of having lived in, as opposed to merely observed, a place. His influence is seen among many younger artists, including Robert Neffson, Charles Jarboe, Tad Suzuki, and others. Now in his mid-80s, Estes is still making paintings as strong as the ones that brought him fame As a…

?his spring, Florence’s renowned Uffizi Gallery highlighted the paintings of Suor (Sister) Plautilla Nelli (1524–1588), the first in its series of exhibitions planned to celebrate female artists. The choice of Nelli to launch this series makes perfect sense. Described as the first significant female painter of the Italian Renaissance, Suor Plautilla, a nun at the Dominican convent of Santa Caterina da Siena in Florence, embodies everything one could wish for in the story of an early female artist: brilliantly talented, largely self-taught, expressive, intelligent, devout, yet worldly enough to manage not only her convent (she served as its prioress three times), but also its business of making and selling art The way Suor Plautilla became the focus of such an exhibition is largely down to the philanthropist Jane Fortune and…

WONDER WOMEN WOMAN AS WARRIOR Zhou B Art Center 1029 West 35th Street Chicago, IL 60609 773.523.0200, zhoubartcenter.com and poetsandartists.com/waw August 18–October 13 The latest exhibition organized by Poets- Artists focuses on women as warriors. Curators Sergio Gomez and Didi Menendez have gathered works by 28 artists, both male and female. “Our first experience with warriors,” the organizers explain, “may have started in the home. For others, encounters with warriors may have been through schools, the work force, homeland, government, and/or fighting battles either personal or out in the field. We are dedicating this exhibition to the woman who symbolizes a hero among champions.” THE NATURE OF AMERICAN ART FLORA/FAUNA: THE NATURALIST IMPULSE IN AMERICAN ART Florence Griswold Museum 96 Lyme Street Old Lyme, CT 06371 860.434.5542, flogris.org June 3–September 17…

?ast autumn the National Art Museum of China (NAMOC) in Beijing hosted The 2016 National Art of Sketch Exhibition.1 This project gathered nearly 300 drawings produced over the past six decades by teachers and students from nine leading institutions, including the Central Fine Arts, and Sichuan Academy of Fine Arts. The exhibition was an eye-opener for those unfamiliar with Chinese practices: it revealed not only that academic drawing remains a cornerstone of art teaching, but also that it has reached levels that exceed historical and present-day norms in both technical ability and subtlety of interpretation Li ZhiYu’s Torso is a useful example. It depicts a plaster cast of a lost Hellenistic masterwork that has long been a staple in academic ateliers worldwide: over the centuries, the Torso Belvedere has been…

ARTISTS & GALLERIES Santa Fe July 7–21 Manitou Galleries is exhibiting new works by the painters William Haskell and Bryan Haynes, who complement one another beautifully. Using drybrush watercolors and acrylics, Haskell depicts the landscapes and villages of the Southwest, transcending mere description to offer an authentic sense of place. Historical figures, Native Americans, and local characters dominate the oil paintings of Haynes, who also captures the valleys and mesas of New Mexico. Drawing upon the WPA and Regionalist modes of the 1930s, Haynes makes images that are luminous and seemingly timeless. INFORMATION: 123 W. Palace Avenue, Santa Fe, NM 87501, 505.986.0440, manitougalleries.com Milwaukee July 7–September 9 Tory Folliard Gallery is gathering nearly 50 nationally known artists for its annual Salon Show. Featuring paintings, sculptures, and photography, it encompasses a…