Innholdsfortegnelse for March/April 2022 i Fine Art Connoisseur

Like any entrepreneur, my “to do” list tends to run my life. Some days it’s long, other days less so, but there are always projects that get kicked down the road. And though most organizational gurus would suggest I rethink how I’m organizing my time, it seems like there are days, sometimes weeks, when that list is controlling me. My merry-go-round tends to run around 75 mph; I don’t dare jump off or major disruption might take place. But jump off I did for a Christmas break, then for a couple of weeks under the weather, sleeping most of the time. Typically, after a vacation or some time away, I tell my assistant, Ali, that I’m going to work less, focus more, and do more of the things I want…

Christian Keesee moves frequently among his art-filled homes and offices in New York City, Oklahoma City, and Green Mountain Falls, Colorado. Though he enjoys his work as an investor and chairman of Oklahoma’s Kirkpatrick Bank, it is philanthropy that lies closer to his heart, particularly in the arts, education, animal well-being, conservation, and preservation. “But at the very center of everything I do is arts education,” Chris explains. “I truly believe that if you can draw, you have a certain kind of power over your life. Plus, as they say, ‘There is no harm in a little beauty.’” Chris grew up in Oklahoma City, where he “came by art naturally because it was discussed by my family over dinner — not just how it’s made, but also collecting and how…

NEW ART BY WOMEN BREAKING THROUGH: THE RISE OF AMERICAN WOMEN ARTISTS Customs House Museum & Cultural Center Clarksville, Tennessee americanwomenartists.org  customshousemuseum.org March 5–May 29 The Customs House Museum & Cultural Center is set to host a juried selling exhibition of 124 paintings and sculptures created by members of American Women Artists (AWA). This nonprofit organization has members throughout the U.S. and (increasingly) Canada, and this is the sixth show in its campaign to have 25 museum shows over 25 years. More than 940 entries were received, from which 99 two-dimensional pieces and 25 three-dimensional ones were selected, ranging in approach from representational to abstract. Customs House exhibitions curator Terri Jordan is busy preparing the accompanying catalogue, which will contain an introduction by Prof. Amy Von Lintel (West Texas…

Based in New York’s Hudson Valley, where artists have basked in the beauty of nature for centuries, JORDAN BAKER (b. 1981) is an emerging artist with a discerning eye focused on the world around her. Her classic still lifes, painted with keen attention to detail in the trompe l’oeil tradition, may initially look like odes to everyday objects. But beneath the surface, they started out as philosophical ruminations on important issues the artist feels compelled to explore and share. Take, for instance, her recent Too Much Is Never Enough series, in which food in great quantities challenges our notion of excess. “I have used the visual language of traditionally composed still life painting to explore the subjective concept of good taste and the wavering line between abundance and excess,” Baker…

From April 9 through July 31, all art routes will lead to London’s National Gallery, where an exhibition of 90 works by Raphael, including 30 paintings, will span the Renaissance master’s brief yet astonishingly high-achieving and wide-ranging life. Born in 1483, he died in 1520 at just 37, having changed Western art forever. His influence endures today. This year’s show is rare in being devoted to Raphael’s whole life and to his entire production, focusing tightly on him alone with little deviation toward influencers, colleagues, or pupils. The aim is for maximum penetration into his works, minimum dilution. All of the exhibits are by Raphael himself, even if some are designs that would then be executed by others. This exceptional gathering of star pieces is possible thanks to the rich…

David Gulley and Kenneth J. Paul, Jr. live in downtown Indianapolis, where David works in real estate and Ken in the airline industry. Their personal journeys to becoming art collectors were very different but now have converged to bring them much joy. David enjoyed making art in his youth. At home his parents displayed artworks, yet the act of collecting did not become “real” until he accompanied his father to an auction around the age of 12. Previously David had not considered where art comes from, and so perhaps it’s not surprising that he started acquiring it while earning a B.F.A. degree in interior design alongside ceramists, printmakers, and other creative types. He fondly recalls “dipping into my grocery money to buy art from my equally poor friends,” pieces he…

Robert C. Kennedy of Norfolk, Virginia, has assembled a significant collection of representational paintings, most of them figurative. He recalls, “From an early age, I was attracted to beauty in the visual and decorative arts. My older sister, Bev, was an amateur artist and showed me how to paint a few leaves on one of her still life scenes, but I never developed the skill further. Being from a small town in the rural Midwest, I did not even visit an art museum until I was in college.” (That was the great Art Institute of Chicago, which he still admires.) Robert says that during college he started buying art posters, then visiting local art shows. Those experiences refined his eye, which surely also benefitted from the professional career he ultimately…

ARTISTS & GALLERIES Chicago artsy.net/show/ 33-contemporary-the-breath-between-bites/info March 1–April 1 33 Contemporary is presenting a show of Amanda Greive’s latest paintings, which she has titled The Breath Between Bites. The artist writes, “When I look back at the past two years, I feel like the words ‘consume’ and ‘consummate’ aptly describe how we spent our time. We became consumed by a myriad of things — media streaming services, books, houseplants, the news, etc. But we also took part in consummation … We completed projects, we ended relationships, and we yearned for an ending to the pandemic. These paintings look at how we as individuals are changing, but also how our environments are changing as a result of our choices.” Long interested in the complex interconnections between women and nature, Greive is…

Tug Rice draws New Yorkers of a certain ilk engaged in the life of their city — milling at art openings, dining in private clubs, shopping on snowy days, attending costume balls. Though he is much in demand on the very cultural scene he illustrates for magazines, books, and even lines of china, Rice has never actually depicted himself. Yet the circumstances of his finding and purchasing this circa 1732 painting by Jean-Baptiste Pater could make for an engaging series of illustrations. Rice recalls having moved into a new Manhattan apartment, and while visiting the Kips Bay Showhouse resale shop in search of some chairs and a lamp, he found this unsigned painting for a reasonable price. “I knew the moment I saw it that it was something special,” he…

Although his trompe l’oeil (“trick the eye”) still life paintings are owned by major museums nationwide, and although famous talents like Jasper Johns and Roy Lichtenstein have paid homage to him in their own work, John F. Peto (1854–1907) has remained relatively obscure in accounts of American art history. Perhaps that’s due, at least in part, to the fact that he avoided both the spotlight and chasing commercial trends, preferring instead the family time, artistic reflection, and spiritual replenishment he enjoyed at his year-round cottage home in Island Heights, New Jersey. Another factor contributing to Peto’s posthumous obscurity was the wrongful attribution of many of his paintings to William M. Harnett (1848–1892), whom Peto befriended while they were studying at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts. Peto admired Harnett’s…

Pamela and David Hornik are based in Palo Alto, where David is a tech venture capitalist and Pamela serves on the boards of Stanford University’s Cantor Arts Center and Anderson Collection, as well as the Berkeley Art Museum & Pacific Film Archive. David is a commissioner of the Smithsonian American Art Museum, and they both are founding members of the Institute of Contemporary Art, San Francisco. Although they both enjoyed art in childhood and later explored New York City’s museums while living there, it wasn’t until Pamela began volunteering at the Cantor that they got “hooked” on art. For the last 15 years, they have collected contemporary figurative art and are truly enjoying the blossoming of this field, which they continue to advance through their own acquisitions, loans, and donations.…

Samuel and Alice Peralta were born in the Philippines but have long resided in Toronto, where Samuel has made his name as a physicist, entrepreneur, film producer, and editor of the Future Chronicles anthologies of speculative fiction. Samuel has always loved art, as his mother, Rosario Bitanga, was their homeland’s leading female abstractionist, and his father, Jesus Peralta, a critic and playwright. Samuel and Alice met in university and soon began attending his mother’s exhibitions. Samuel’s first acquisition was a gouache landscape by Mauro “Malang” Santos, bought during his first year of university with part of his scholarship funds. “Amazingly, and fortunately,” he laughs, “my parents were proud of me and made up the amount I had spent.” Samuel and Alice’s first serious purchase together was a Chagall lithograph they…