Fine Art Connoisseur July/August 2024

Before the era of mass tourism, wealthy families sent their college graduates on the “Grand Tour” before the graduates started their careers. The main idea was to broaden their horizons and expose them to great artists and museums so they would become more interesting people. One destination considered a “must” on the Grand Tour was the Italian city of Venice, not only for its spirit of fun, unforgettable geography, and beautiful architecture, but also for its incredible art. It became the one place every artist wanted to depict, attracting virtually every important talent from Turner and Whistler to Monet and Sargent. It has remained a magnet for artists and those who love art. For 12 years now, I’ve hosted a fall Fine Art Trip along with Fine Art Connoisseur editor…

I have written before about how wary we should be of artificial intelligence (AI) getting too mixed up with the making of art. I stand by those comments, and I sense that ever more people in our field have their guards up, too. One aspect of AI that thrills me, however, is its capacity to help us better understand historic works of art. An exciting example came to light last year when it was announced that significant portions of a previously unrecognized painting of the Madonna and Child with Saints Elizabeth and John the Baptist were painted by the Italian Renaissance master Raphael (1483– 1520). This discovery rolled out in the ideal manner: some humans got the hunch first, and then the computers proved them right. To be specific, Dr.…

First, the good news. The visibility of women artists and art professionals — both historical and living — is on the rise and growing steadily. In Washington, D.C., the newly expanded National Museum for Women in the Arts has reopened to acclaim; there’s a hit show about Mary Cassatt at the Philadelphia Museum of Art this summer; the nonprofit organization American Women Artists is achieving its goal to schedule 25 shows of members’ art in 25 museums; and Guggenheim museum curator Naomi Beckwith just won the $50,000 David C. Driskell Prize for her contributions to African American art. Organizations and institutions of all kinds are busy training, encouraging, and exhibiting women artists. The talented artists highlighted in this section of the magazine reflect just some of the vitality we all…

KELLY MICCA (b. 1998) paints portraits, self-portraits, and landscapes, and she also makes sculpture. This openness to creativity in all formats surely stems in part from her upbringing in Allentown, Pennsylvania, where she recalls pursuing “any excuse to turn a school assignment into art.” She inherited that enthusiasm from her mother, who created her own greeting cards, and soon the daughter was taking art to a new level. A middle-school classmate “challenged me to draw a favorite rock musician,” Micca says. “It took me six months but came out so well I decided I should do this full-time.” Ultimately, that inspirational mother enrolled her in a series of two-week workshops in Rome: “I tried painting landscape for the first time in the Roman Forum. After that,” she laughs, “it’s hard to…

TODDAY’S MASTERS It almost goes without saying that any artwork relies - to some degree on the play of light across forms, even when the forms are abstract. Whatever the artists’ intention may be, viewers expect them to manage the relationship of light and shadow in a way that convinces us, often moving or inspiring us through the drama of a juxtaposition or transition. This skill has been explored and revisited continuously since the Renaissance, soaring to new heights in the hands of such masters as Caravaggio, Rembrandt, Francisco Goya, Auguste Rodin, Käthe Kollwitz, and Edward Hopper. Preparing this portfolio section has confirmed — to our staff’s delight — that the skillful rendering of light and shade is flourishing among artists today. We hope you will enjoy discovering how some…

TODAY’S MASTERS The myths of the American West, one-sided narratives of manly bravery and Manifest Destiny, were undone by scholars long ago. In 1991, for example, the Smithsonian American Art Museum offered its own revisionist view with The West as America: Reinterpreting Images of the American Frontier, 1820–1920. While idols have been toppled and ambitions decried, the landscape — so central to any understanding of the West — remains. It has certainly changed since Albert Bierstadt rendered the Sierra Nevada and Thomas Moran produced Shoshone Falls on the Snake River (1900), but as one of nature’s finest expressions, it continues to captivate artists. While it may be difficult for some to see nature plainly — not as the locus of conquest, but as what Willam Blake called “imagination itself” —…