Innholdsfortegnelse for November/December 2023 i Fine Art Connoisseur

“Art in America has always belonged to the people and has never been the property of an academy or a class… ” — President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, speaking about the Works Progress Administration (WPA) in 1939, the same year Federal Art Project artist Elizabeth Olds made this print…

A rchitect Peter Pennoyer is reluctant to cut and paste a document or fire up the CAD drawing software typical in his industry. Instead, he and his staff architects prefer to do much of their designing by hand, actually drawing the moldings and staircases, fireplace surrounds, and coffered ceilings that figure into his residential projects. “Hand drawing connects you to the human scale,” says Pennoyer from his New York office, where for decades he has been designing scores of America's most notable, traditionally styled residences. The latest are featured in his book Peter Pennoyer Architects: City/Country (Rizzoli). “You realize quickly that drawing teaches you humility, and you realize that people, architects in particular, who drew regularly in their day did it better than we can today. Some things should be…

TODAY'S MASTERS For centuries, visual artists have taken a close look at other people, and the fruits of their labors are especially intriguing when they turn their gaze to other artists. The latter might include not only other visual artists, but also musicians, dancers, and even fencers (who, after all, perform a kind of dance with their épées). Often the relationship between creator and sitter is close — this might be a mentor or pupil being painted — but other times the image suggests some emotional or physical distance. The real fizz comes, of course, from the fact that both parties are “in on” the process: the sitter already knows how challenging it is to capture the likeness, or at least the spirit, of someone else. Sometimes we can almost…

TODAY'S MASTERS Combining technical virtuosity with intuitive expressiveness, Derek Penix (b. 1980) is a force to be reckoned with. In 2020 he was ranked the most award-winning artist in the U.S. by ArtDataIntel, which undertook a statistical analysis of 10 major competitions over the past dozen years. Penix's masterful depictions of subjects ranging from fish to fruit to flamingos are sought as eagerly by collectors as his teaching and mentorship are by students. A fiercely independent thinker, Penix has beaten a path to prominence as unique as his talent. After sustaining a professional art career for nearly a decade without any formal training, he took his development to the next level with guidance from gifted mentors and insights from his taking of the Myers-Briggs personality test. Through a journey that…

BEHIND THE SCENES When Esther Bell, chief curator of the Clark Art Institute in Williamstown, Massachusetts, wants to see one of her favorite works in the museum's collection, she doesn't head to a gallery to view it on a wall. Rather, like any visitor who also wants to see it, she makes an appointment with the on-site Manton Study Center for Works on Paper and then walks over to that facility. A curatorial assistant there retrieves a Solander box, a container specially designed to hold fragile prints and drawings, opens it, and places the artwork in front of Bell. And, so, there it is for Bell to admire — a penand-ink Albrecht Dürer drawing from 1521 that depicts feral and fantastical animals in various poses, some backdropped by Renaissance cityscapes.…

INSIDE TRACK Rev. Theodore M. Hesburgh, C.S.C., longtime president of the University of Notre Dame, in Notre Dame, Indiana, was reportedly fond of saying that you can't have a world-class university without a world-class art museum. When the Raclin Murphy Museum of Art opens on December 1, the university will indeed have a brand-new, state-of-the-art, world-class museum to house its world-class collection of art. The project began late in 2017 with a naming gift from Ernestine “Ernie” Raclin and her daughter and son-in-law, Carmen and Chris Murphy. Raclin, who died this July at age 95, lived most of her life in South Bend, Indiana, and was among the first female members of the university's board of trustees. A noted philanthropist, she was also a collector of French, Italian, and British…

EVENTS PREVIEW 20 YEARS AND COUNTING AMERICAN LEGACY FINE ARTS Celebrating a Legacy of Excellence Pasadena americanlegacyfinearts.com November 11–December 16 American Legacy Fine Arts (ALFA) is marking its 20th anniversary with the exhibition Celebrating a Legacy of Excellence. On view this season will be more than 40 new paintings and sculptures created by over 30 artists the gallery represents, including Peter Adams, Béla Bácsi, Peter Brooke, Nikita Budkov, Steve Curry, Karl Dempwolf, Kathleen Dunphy, Michael Godfrey, Richard Humphrey, Chuck Kovacic, Jean LeGassick, Calvin Liang, Jim McVicker, Stephen Mirich, Jennifer Moses, Charles Muench, Michael Obermeyer, Tony Peters, Daniel W. Pinkham, Dan Schultz, Kevin Short, Amy Sidrane, Mian Situ, Michael Situ, W. Jason Situ, Christopher Slatoff, Alexey Steele, William Stout, Jove Wang, and Mary Kay West. All of these talents reflect the superb…

“Call me when you've been in business for 20 years,” said one prominent art dealer. “I won't even consider advertising until you've proved you can survive that long.” “I've watched magazines come and go,” said another gallery owner. “Your chances of making it through the first year are slim. You're better off investing in something else.” I'm not easily discouraged. I guess I'm determined, stubborn, or foolish to have ignored the naysayers who predicted the quick demise of this magazine. With this issue, we are wrapping up our 20th year of publishing, in spite of a series of recessions, an ever-weakening magazine industry, and an overall shift away from print media. (Fortunately, market research shows that print will remain strongest in the arena of arts and shelter magazines.) The ability…

Although the editorial team at Fine Art Connoisseur loves all kinds of art — from landscape to still life, from the Old Masters to the still-wet — we hold a special place in our hearts for figurative works and portraiture. People are at the center of what we do, and so images in which artists depict other people — be they models, strangers, or commissioning clients — carry a special fascination. Capturing a face or human body is incredibly challenging. We all have them, so we can see immediately when something is “not right” in a painting or sculpture. We may not be able to articulate what's wrong, but we sure do spot it. This makes figurative and portrait artists all the more extraordinary in my estimation; even if they…

TODAY'S MASTERS Wondering what to collect next? Here's a tip: ask an artist. This does sound counterintuitive — “Don't artists make enough work to fill their own homes?” — but artists are, in fact, some of the most knowledgeable, insightful, and avid (bordering on obsessive) collectors you'll ever meet. “As artists, we already love and appreciate art, and we are most likely surrounded by it in our daily lives,” oil painter Paula Holtzclaw replies when asked about her decades-long collecting journey. Sculptor Kevin Box explains it this way: “I look at my own artwork for eight to 10 hours a day at the studio. I don't want to go home and look at my work.” The painter of surreal figures Steven DaLuz adds, “Artists like to surround themselves with beauty,…

HISTORIC MASTERS One of this season's most intriguing exhibitions is The Rossettis, on view now at the Delaware Art Museum (DelArt) in Wilmington through January 28. Organized in partnership with Tate Britain in London, where it drew crowds earlier this year, the project is already “wow-ing” visitors with an array of paintings, watercolors, and design objects made by Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1828–1882), who co-founded England's Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood in the late 1840s and published a huge amount of poetry. It is surprising even his most ardent fans, however, by integrating these creations with fascinating drawings made by his wife, Elizabeth Siddal (1820–1862), and with the poetry and prose written by his gifted siblings Christina, Maria, and William Michael. Encompassing more than 150 objects, this is the first attempt to place the…

BEHIND THE SCENES Upon entering the 1851 Greek Revival house of Henry Joyce and Hope Alswang, guests are greeted by an unanticipated display of ebullient decoration. Unlike any other entrance hallway in Providence, Rhode Island, this one makes us think we've arrived at an over-the-top villa in England, or perhaps on the set of an Oscar Wilde play. Welcoming us at the entrance is a Baroque-style mirror — painted white and festooned in silver — that hangs above a white console table, its front panel laden with garlands of fruits, flowers, ships, and aquatic life. On either side are high-back William and Mary-style chairs, also painted white. As we enter the adjoining spaces — sitting room, kitchen, dining area — we might feel like Alice after she went down the…

In 1912, Father Francis Browne, S.J. (1880–1960) photographed passengers and crew aboard the RMS Titanic during the first phase of its maiden voyage from Southampton, England; he disembarked in Ireland before it sailed onward toward North America. As soon as the ship met its end, Browne's photographs were published widely and his name became recognized throughout the world. After serving as a battlefield chaplain in World War I, he continued to photograph extensively as he traveled around Ireland to preach and lecture. The first major U.S. exhibition of his work, Photographic Adventures of an Irish Priest, will be on view at the Raclin Murphy Museum of Art from August 27 to December 1, 2024.…

ARTISTS & GALLERIES New York City aaplinc.org and salmagundi.org November 6–24 The American Artists Professional League is hosting its 95th Annual Grand National Exhibition at the Salmagundi Club. Approximately 100 works have been juried in, encompassing landscapes, still lifes, figures, portraits, and sculpture — all representational and most for sale. The awards judge is painter Gary Godbee, who will distribute more than $25,000 worth of prizes. MUSEUMS Everywhere culturalheritage.org November 3 On November 3, everyone with a question about how to care for a beloved artwork is invited to Ask a Conservator. Experts nationwide are available to advise you on best practices, for free, thanks to members of the American Institute for Conservation who have volunteered their time. Visit AIC's website and use the hashtag #AskAConservator on social media platforms. Los Angeles…

TODAY'S MASTERS A new book about Edgar Jerins (b. 1958) titled Life in Charcoal has three goals. It collects the major works of two ecades of Jerins's practice as an important realist artist, it provides a searing memoir explaining the intense darkness of his imagery, and it is a memorial to his Job-like endurance. “I had total control of the book,” Jerins explains. “I wanted it to be different from an art book that you open up and it's just about the work.” Recognizing the importance of Jerins's art, Robert Cozzolino, curator at the Minneapolis Institute of Art, has written the book's foreword and helped acquire a major drawing for his museum's permanent collection. Jerins has achieved his goal. This book is not for the faint-hearted. It is not a…

BEHIND THE SCENES In Unpacking My Library (1931), Walter Benjamin wrote, “Every passion borders on the chaotic, but the collector's passion borders on the chaos of memories.” Although the German philosopher and cultural critic was expounding on his own books, his thinking also touches on the passion of the late Milwaukee collector Alfred Bader (1924–2018). An Austrian Jewish refugee and a self-made man, Bader amassed a trove of 17th-century European art that represented, in part, an effort to order the uprootings of his own life and to apprehend fully the moral and ethical structures made manifest in such paintings as Abraham's Sacrifice by Nicolaes Maes (c. 1653–54) and The Stoning of Saint Stephen of Jacob Pynas (1617). Bader's delight and discernment are now on full display at the Milwaukee Art…

INSIDE TRACK Contemporary artworks can be confusing or aggravating, but at least we know who made them. Today's artists put their names on every work, document it with photographs, and create archives to make it easier for future scholars to research them. Before the mid19th century, however, most artworks were not signed or even titled, leaving future collectors, curators, historians, dealers, and auctioneers asking urgent questions about authenticity and provenance. Their ongoing research adds to our shared knowledge, and thus to the financial value, of these unsigned, undated artworks. The holy grail is finding out definitively “who did it” — through documentation (e.g., letters or contracts), physical analysis (x-rays or laboratory testing of pigments), and/or connoisseurship (spotting the same pattern of brushwork). In 2017, The Temptation of St. Anthony, a…