Wednesday, October 31, 2007
Dive into Seurat slideshows
This past week, the first exhibit in more than 25 years to focus exclusively on the drawings of Georges Seurat opened at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. Though he's best known as the father of Neo-impressionism and pointillism, his studies in Conté crayon have been described as "the most beautiful painter's drawings in existence."

You can get a sneak peek at the work in an online slideshow from MoMA and a slideshow from Slate.com. The MoMA slideshow (which requires Adobe Flash and Acrobat) focuses on his sketchbooks, subjects and conservation. The Slate slideshow looks at his relationship with art critic and anarchist Félix Fénéon, who championed Seurat's work and helped get it in the public eye.

Georges Seurat: The Drawings is on display at MoMA until January 7, 2008, with many related lectures and talks in the coming month.


By Grace Dobush | Notable Artists | Exhibits
10/31/2007 1:47:52 PM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)  #  Comments [0] 
 Tuesday, October 30, 2007
The cure for "one of those days"

Instant remedy for what ails you: a free, big ol' desktop picture of Bob Ross. Click here to get it.

(Via HOW)


By Grace Dobush | Cool Web sites | Downloads | Random Thoughts
10/30/2007 1:36:53 PM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)  #  Comments [0] 
 Monday, October 29, 2007
2006 Annual CD on sale now!
We're excited to announce that our 2006 Annual CD is on sale now!

We've put all 11 issues from 2006 in a digital format that is fully searchable and easy to navigate. All you need to open the files is the free Adobe Reader (available for download here if you don't already have it). Pop the CD into your computer, and you can browse through issues, search for a specific medium or artist, or print out articles to share with a friend! Web links in the issues are activated, giving you one-click access to helpful resources.

To learn more and order your own copy, click here.


By Grace Dobush | News
10/29/2007 10:43:21 AM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)  #  Comments [0] 
 Friday, October 26, 2007
A look at the latest Joseph Raffael exhibition

Our sister magazine, Watercolor Magic, recently put up a video tour of Joseph Raffael's latest exhibition at the Nancy Hoffman Gallery in New York City.

Nancy Hoffman offers insight into the show she describes as "a window to new artistic terrain," and the artist opens his journals to reveal the painting process that brought the work on display into fruition. You can watch the video here.


By Grace Dobush | Notable Artists | Videos
10/26/2007 3:01:25 PM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)  #  Comments [0] 
 Thursday, October 25, 2007
Taming Howard Finster's garden
It's such a cliché to call an artist prolific, but it's difficult to come up with someone who better fits the bill than Howard Finster, a folk artist, preacher and one-time bicycle repairman.

Finster, at 60, felt he was called by God to create art and set a goal of creating 5,000 pieces. By the time he died, he had created more than 47,000. Though Finster died in 2001, his northwest Georgia home—which opened last month as a public museum—still sits in what he called a garden of paradise. There's some dispute over the state of the land, as the New York Times reports.

My first exposure to Finster was through his commissioned cover art for rock albums such as R.E.M.'s Reckoning and the Talking Heads' Little Creatures. There's just something lively and manic about his work that attracts me—and a lot of people. Have a look at this great slide show from the Times about the artist and his work here.


By Grace Dobush | Notable Artists
10/25/2007 5:54:03 PM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)  #  Comments [0] 
 Wednesday, October 24, 2007
Trash turns out to be $1M stolen treasure
Four years ago, Elizabeth Gibson saw a painting in the trash on a Manhattan street. She took the abstract tableau home because it "had a strange power."

After three years, it came to light that the painting she found was Three People, a 1970 work by Mexican artist Rufino Tamayo that was stolen 20 years ago, the New York Times reports. She hid the painting behind a false wall in her apartment until she could get an art expert to confirm what the painting was.

Gibson will get a $15,000 finder's reward, and the original owner of the painting is putting Three People up for auction Nov. 20 at Sotheby's, where it's expected to fetch $1 million.


By Grace Dobush | News | Notable Artists
10/24/2007 9:33:42 AM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)  #  Comments [1] 
 Monday, October 22, 2007
Photos reveal Mona Lisa "secrets"

A series of very high-res photos of the Mona Lisa reveal 25 "secrets" such as its original colors, the reason for the positioning of her hand, and a trace of an eyebrow, a Parisian engineer says.

Among other things, he uncovered a bigger smile that might have been an abandoned draft of the portrait. Pascal Cotte spent 3,000 hours analyzing his photos, which included infrared and ultraviolet information "usually apparent only to insects," according to InsideBayArea.com.

The photos are on display in a larger exhibit about Da Vinci until Dec. 31 at Metreon in San Francisco.

P.S.—Thanks to the faithful readers who sent in links about this story today!


By Grace Dobush | News | Shows and Events
10/22/2007 1:55:50 PM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)  #  Comments [0] 
 Friday, October 19, 2007
Film tracks scrutiny over "pint-size Pollock"
A new documentary, My Kid Could Paint That, tracks the rise and fall of Marla Olmstead, a child who had her first gallery show at age 4 and whose work is surrounded by suspicion of its origins.

The girl's work raises all sorts of questions about abstract art, and her father's been accused of coaching her and even finishing or altering her paintings. Is she a prodigy or a hoax? I'm hoping the film opens near me soon.

Want to know more? A Slate article explores the whole story. Los Angeles Times columnist Meghan Daum also weighs in. L.A. Weekly's article about Marla includes some pictures of her work.


By Grace Dobush | News
10/19/2007 1:06:43 PM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)  #  Comments [2] 
 Thursday, October 18, 2007
Free art materials health and safety guide
Every once in a while, we get questions from artists about the safety of the materials they use. The Artist's Magazine's publisher, David Pyle (who's also the author of What Every Artist Needs to Know about Paints and Colors and is our go-to guy when it comes to the art materials industry), wrote an article addressing 15 frequently-asked questions on health and safety in our May 2007 issue. We've created a downloadable PDF of this article to further share this valuable information with all of you blog readers.

Some questions that are answered in the article:
• If a product smells bad, does that mean it's toxic?
• Can I paint with oils without using solvents?
• What's that "AP" seal that shows up on lots of paint tubes?

Download the PDF of "The Top Questions on Health & Safety" by clicking here.

P.S. If you don't already have it, you'll need Adobe Reader to open the PDF document. (Most computers already have it installed.) You can get Reader for free here.


By Grace Dobush | Downloads
10/18/2007 11:53:21 AM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)  #  Comments [0] 
 Wednesday, October 17, 2007
Brother, can you spare $35 million?
The keeper of the inn where Van Gogh died has his heart set on acquiring one of the master painter's final works to display in the inn's attic, the New York Times reports. It's not entirely impossible, as the painting, The Fields (Wheat Fields) is on the auction block Nov. 7.

The hitch is that the work is predicted to sell for $28 million to $35 million, and it's likely to go for more. So the innkeeper decided to try to crowdsource the funding to purchase it. He's started a website, Van Gogh's Dream and is soliciting donations to try to purchase the painting and display it in "the smallest museum in the world." If you donate more than $5,000 you get your own key to the attic. (It would take 7,000 people donating $5,000 each to get to $35 million. I imagine the attic could get kind of crowded on weekends.)

He refused to say how much money's been raised so far, but I am very curious to see what happens in three weeks.


By Grace Dobush | News | Notable Artists
10/17/2007 2:03:25 PM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)  #  Comments [3] 
 Tuesday, October 16, 2007
Artists over 60 update!
For everyone interested in the progress of our March 2008 feature on artists over 60, we have exciting news: We have made our selections and are contacting the artists. 

Everyone who mailed in slides, prints or other material will soon see their return. (A special note to those of you who included self-addressed, stamped envelopes: We love you.)

If you e-mailed us a nomination, we hope you will be understanding that we are contacting only the winners. (Mailing back the snail mail entries—of which there were 240!—was more than enough work.) We are simply unable to write back to everyone who e-mailed us. (There are more than 500 of you!)

Looking at all of your work was incredible, and deciding who made the cut was excruciating at times. We were excited to see so much quality work from artists over 60, 70, and even 80 years old.

Heading into the final lap here, we kindly ask that you don't call or e-mail asking if you are going to be in the feature. All will be revealed in the March 2008 issue of The Artist's Magazine, on newsstands February 5!


By Grace Dobush | News
10/16/2007 3:54:01 PM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)  #  Comments [3] 
 Monday, October 15, 2007
If da Vinci had been a ticket-taker...

More from the Department of Art Made from Unusual Objects:
Employees at a department store in Osaka used 320,000 black and white train tickets as "pixels" to depict the Mona Lisa for an in-store display. In addition to the da Vinci homage, reproductions of the Birth of Venus and Renoir's Dance at the Moulin de la Galette are on display.

Via Pink Tentacle.


By Grace Dobush | Cool Web sites | Random Thoughts
10/15/2007 11:11:11 AM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)  #  Comments [0] 
 Friday, October 12, 2007
Farewell

Today is my final day with The Artist's Magazine and I'll miss it tremendously—not only being surrounded by art each day which is truly a gift, but also the people here who care about the magazine and the quality of the work they do. It's been a long, winding journey that began with my start on a now-folded decorative painting magazine. The tally of magazine titles probably adds up to eight, including brief stints at Pastel Journal and Watercolor Magic. But it was on TAM that I finally felt at home.

Art's in my blood. When I was very young, I found a still life of that my dad had painted. It wasn't quite the caliber of art that we feature in the magazine, but it amazed me that he had painted it, and it seemed incredible that a person could capture something on canvas that they saw in their heart and mind. There's something really miraculous about that.

Without getting too much more sappy, I bid you goodbye and I wish you all the best.

Lisa Wurster, associate editor


By Lisa Wurster | Random Thoughts
10/12/2007 4:19:50 PM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)  #  Comments [0] 
 Thursday, October 11, 2007
"Creative people must be stopped"
Arts writer Michael Fallon makes a surprising and challenging argument on the mnartists.org website: the societal push for creativity creates boredom, discontent and lots of bad art.

Just create, says the world. Go ahead and line up for American Idol or America's Got Talent or whatever. You can do it! And while you're at it, why not fill the web with your poetry, videos, art, musings, and every little snippet of creative detritus you can muster. And don't let anyone say it's wrong!

I find myself wanting to agree with some of his points. Even though I believe anyone who wants to express themselves with art should do so, I guess a distinction that's made here is on motives. Are you doing it because you truly enjoy it or to financially benefit from it?

... we've become so inundated with creativity ... that actual audiences for honest-to-goodness good art and real creativity and cultural production are driven into hiding.

Take a gander at the article and let me know what you think.


By Grace Dobush | Random Thoughts
10/11/2007 5:40:10 PM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)  #  Comments [7] 
 Wednesday, October 10, 2007
Five held for questioning in Monet punching
Reuters reports that one of the five people suspected of breaking into the Musee D'Orsay over the weekend gave himself up after the media was all over the story. The suspects are all 18 or 19 years old, and police believe they didn't plan to deface Monet's "Le Pont d'Argenteuil" but rather were just drunk.

By Grace Dobush | News
10/10/2007 1:18:25 PM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)  #  Comments [0] 
 Tuesday, October 09, 2007
Monet gets brunt of brute strength
Amid excitement over a French rugby victory and an all-night annual festival, five hoodlums broke into the Musee D'Orsay in Paris early Sunday. Claude Monet's Le Pont d'Argenteuil apparently got in the way of someone's fist, and the 1874 masterpiece now sports a 4-inch tear in the center of it, the New York Times reports. The French minister of culture says the painting can be restored, but so far no arrests have been made.

Slate magazine has posted (again) a great explanation of how conservators repair priceless paintings. The piece was originally published after casino magnate Steve Wynn tore a hole in his $139 million Picasso last year. (Also check out our March 2007 issue's Ask the Experts column, in which our own Michael Skalka describes the delicacy of repairing a cut canvas. You can get a copy of that issue here.) 


By Grace Dobush | News | Notable Artists
10/9/2007 2:43:05 PM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)  #  Comments [1] 
 Monday, October 08, 2007
The Museum of Forgotten Art Supplies
If you've ever worked in the graphic arts, you'll get a kick out of The Museum of Forgotten Art Supplies. Browse through the images of bygone tools, and be thankful that the computer has curtailed the need for French curves and rubber cement.

By Grace Dobush | Cool Web sites
10/8/2007 4:44:20 PM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)  #  Comments [1] 
 Friday, October 05, 2007
Artists over 60 sure are prolific
This is the scene in my cubicle:

IMG_0013.JPG

Boxes chock-full of nominations for our artists over 60 feature are nearly crowding me out! We've started narrowing down the field, and we are very happy with the work we've been seeing!


By Grace Dobush | News
10/5/2007 2:08:23 PM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)  #  Comments [2] 
 Thursday, October 04, 2007
Two artists join the ranks of MacArthur fellows
What would you do with $500,000?

The members of the 2007 class of MacArthur Fellows have some thinking to do. Each year, the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation gives no-strings-attached grants to two dozen or so gifted individuals with lots of potential. The list this year includes writers, engineers, biologists—and visual artists Whitfield Lovell and Joan Snyder.

The $500,000 is tax-free and paid in quarterly installments over five years, the idea being to take away any financial burden that might inhibit the recipients' creative flow. (Only one catch: You can't nominate yourself, and neither can your friends. The finalists and winners are selected by anonymous nominators and an anonymous committee.)

Lovell, 47, of New York City, does installations and tableaux on antique wood of people, often African-Americans who have not been memorialized by history, as he explains in a video interview. He says one of his biggest challenges as an artist has been making ends meet. He hopes to move on to bigger and more ambitious projects with the help of the grant.

Snyder, 67, of Brooklyn, New York, likens getting a MacArthur fellowship to having a baby. "I think I'll probably get a lot more calls," she says in her video interview when asked about how the grant will affect her. Her abstract paintings often incorporate found objects and elements of collage, and show a very personal evolution over her four-decade career.


By Grace Dobush | News | Notable Artists
10/4/2007 9:32:22 AM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)  #  Comments [1] 
 Tuesday, October 02, 2007
Artists over 60: Time's up!
The deadline for submitting a name for our March 2008 feature on artists over 60 has now passed. All of us here at The Artist's Magazine now face the daunting task of narrowing down the list of names. It's hard to say how many people sent in letters and e-mails. (If I had to guess, I'd say we've got at least 500 artists' websites, slides and pictures to look at.)

Later on this week, I'll post a picture of the boxes and boxes of envelopes so you can see for yourself how big the pool is. As we go through submissions, we'll be sending out letters letting people know whether they made it. Please don't call or e-mail asking us if you are going to be in the feature or if we've reviewed your work yet. We kindly ask for your patience—we've got our work cut out for us!


By Grace Dobush | News
10/2/2007 9:33:27 AM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)  #  Comments [0] 
 Monday, October 01, 2007
All's well that ends well?
A pilfered 16th-century masterpiece has been returned home—sort of.

A digital recreation of Veronese's Wedding at Cana has been installed on the Venetian Island of San Giorgio Maggiore, from where it was taken by Napoleon's forces 210 years ago.

Wedding at Cana's home for the last two centuries, the Louvre, was the site of a monthlong scanning process of the 732-square-foot canvas. Nearly 1,600 digital files were printed out repeatedly until the color quality was sufficient.

A New York Times article said matching the original colors was particularly difficult because the painting was restored a number of times, with the pigments used reflecting contemporary tastes.

"I think [Veronese would] be shocked to see it in the Louvre — though mollified, perhaps, by the fact that nine million visitors pass in front of it each year," Mr. Lowe said.

"Still," he added, "once he realized that 8.9 million were only interested in the Mona Lisa, he might change his mind." (The Mona Lisa hangs in the same gallery at the Louvre, across from The Wedding at Cana.)


By Grace Dobush | News
10/1/2007 3:45:15 PM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)  #  Comments [0]