Fine Art Connoisseur Nov/Dec 2017

bericrhoads@gmail.com 561.923.8481 facebook.com/eric.rhoads @ericrhoads It’s November 1. In a few days, I will fly to Miami to host the first Figurative Art Convention & Expo (FACE, November 8–11). I could not be more excited. Even if you are unable to join us this month, you — as a reader of Fine Art Connoisseur — are automatically part of the extraordinary blossoming of contemporary figurative art today, and, for that, I thank you. After launching the Plein Air Convention & Expo (PACE), I realized that it was such a wonderful experience that we needed to do something similar for the representational art world. Peter Trippi and I started planning it and even held an advisory meeting. Soon afterward, Michael Pearce and his colleagues at California Lutheran University launched The Representational Art…

On Saturday, November 25, I will be in Virginia recovering from Thanksgiving feasting, but if I could reach Santa Fe that day, I would gladly help celebrate the centenary of the New Mexico Museum of Art. Exactly 100 years before, on November 25, 1917, this handsome Pueblo Revival building facing the city’s historic plaza officially opened to the public, welcoming a crowd of 1,200. It’s likely even more people will show up this time as the museum launches a series of 100 events with a free daylong celebration. It has recently been closed for restoration, and for the installing of three new exhibitions, including the promising-sounding Horizons: People & Place in 20th-Century New Mexican Art. New Mexico had been a U.S. state for only five years when the museum opened,…

LAZYBONES Norman Rockwell (1894–1978) 1919, oil on canvas, 26 x 24 in. Heritage Auctions, Dallas, November 3 Estimate: $1 million–$1.5 million AVIVA LEHMANN Director of American Art, Heritage Auctions While young Robert Grant was playing pool at a friend’s house in 1954, he made a mistake that cost roughly a million dollars. His mistake, far worse than sinking the 8 ball, was damaging a painting hanging on the wall behind him by pulling back his cue stick too far and too fast. He was required to buy the damaged work for about $100 from his friend’s family, but soon this piece will cost someone else a lot more. Grant punctured a canvas that the great Norman Rockwell had painted as an illustration for the September 6, 1919 cover of The…

IESTYN DAVIES Countertenor England’s medieval cathedrals are holy places for the Grammy- and Gramophone- winning countertenor Iestyn Davies. Apart from their overt ecclesiastical functions, the cathedrals of York, Wells, Lincoln, and other cities in his native Britain represent for Davies a link between the ethereal music he sings and the vigorous architecture of the structures themselves. “I was brought up singing in a chapel choir in Cambridge,” says the 38-year-old Davies, who has been honored by HM Queen Elizabeth II with membership in the Order of the British Empire. “The English choral tradition is very mixed up with the architecture of our God-fearing ancestors. The power and beauty of medieval cathedrals are matched in much of the music we sing, and there seems to me to be endless wonder in the…

ODILE RICHER (b. 1978) makes paintings that read like giant, gorgeous pages in a surreally romantic yet strangely realistic storybook. Metaphors, myths, allegories, allusions — all can be found in this Canadian artist’s highly detailed creations. Trained as a museum technician, Richer is primarily self-taught. She also studied at the Saidye Bronfman School of Fine Arts (Montreal) and the Academy of Realist Art (Toronto). Richer’s paintings are feasts for the eye that make us pause and ponder. They contain both overt and hidden symbols, and trying to solve the puzzle — or surmise what the artist was after — is only half our reward for close observation. In a painting such as Dandelion, for instance, several interpretations might apply. “This painting actually represents spring, hope, and youth in a romantic world,”…

“Realism” is a virtually meaningless term as far as art criticism goes. Primitive man in the caves at Lascaux was striving for realism, as were Holbein and Dürer in the 16th century, and Ingres and the Pre-Raphaelites in the 19th. Each period has its own nuanced approach as to what constitutes reality and how to interpret it. This year British museum visitors have enjoyed extraordinary encounters with 1920s and 1930s realism. First came America After the Fall, with great works by Edward Hopper, Charles Sheeler, and others, including Grant Wood’s masterpiece, American Gothic. It was presented at London’s Royal Academy of Art, as was Revolution: Russian Art 1917–1932, while Portraying a Nation: Germany 1919–1933, which included a major showing of works by Otto Dix, appeared at Tate Liverpool. These three…