The Artworld Embraces More Outdoor Projects During This Unprecedented Year

The Artworld Embraces More Outdoor Projects During This Unprecedented Year 

While the art world is going through a peculiar year filled with canceled exhibitions and closed galleries, new work found its way onto the streets instead. From the portrait of Kamala Harris in a Kansas field, George Floyd murals, the makeshift art fence outside the White House to the creative placards from the Black Lives Matter protests, many of the most impactful work over time has been outdoors. 

As much as social distancing measures are still progressing in 2021 across the country, artwork in New York, Florida, California, and Washington will keep being outdoors, while restricted indoor exhibitions will always be operational. Marking Monuments, a presentation based on Confederate monuments, slavery history, and the recent tumbling of statues, opened on 22^nd January at the USF Contemporary Art Museum in Fort Lauderdale. 

It features work by Monument Lab, whose aim is to create “critical conversations around the past, present and future of monuments” next to the artist Joiri Minaya, who had wrapped a statue of Christopher Columbus in Miami with tropical-patterned material. According to Minaya, he has been particularly drawn to species that relate to histories of resistance. These plants represent the resilience and hope of the Caribbean people in the face of hardship and adversities. 

In New York, The Plywood Protection Project, an upcycling public art initiative that gathers and redistributes wooden slabs. The team has collected wooden slabs, which businesses used to cover their storefronts during the New York protests, and gave them to artists who will use them for art pieces outside in all five boroughs. This is a strategy for creating beauty out of a crisis, with statues being launched from January to May and events all through the following summer. According to Neil Hamamoto, the project’s founder, producing creatively engaging public art is essential to their mission; hence they believe in public art’s power all the time. 

Reference 

https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2021/jan/11/us-artists-art-2021

The Indianapolis Museum of Art Apologizes for Their Divisive Job Listing

The Indianapolis Museum of Art Apologizes for Their Divisive Job Listing 

The Indianapolis Museum of Art wrote an apology for and revised a job listing they had posted in January, which stated that it was seeking a director who would keep its “traditional, core white art audience” and attract a more varied one. The wordings were amended to take out the word white after a backlash from critics, especially guest curators, for a planned exhibition at the Museum titled; Drip: Indy’s #BlackLivesMater Street Mural. 

According to Malina Simone Jeffers and Alan bacon, the curators who oversee GANGGANG, an Indianapolis-based art incubator for artists for color, they could not go on in their roles and requested the Museum to apologize to all the artists involved in the event. They also asked them to employ a strategy for showing “more works from black artists in perpetuity.” 

A statement from Charles L. Venable, the Museum’s director to The IndyStar, said that the initial intent behind the word white was to show that the Museum would not abandon its current core audience even as it pushes for more diversity. The six-page job advertisement is filled with references to attracting a more diverse audience.  

According to Venable, the fact that anyone can read that sentence and then reading it as a single sentence or a clause, he certainly understood and regretted that it could be taken that way. Venable added that it was not intended at all. He said that they are now hearing feedback, which states that people commenting did not understand their intent. Venable said that they have taken the feedback and will improve their language. 

A statement issued by the Museum said that their audience and most Museum’s audience has historically been and presently is too homogeneous and that they are committed to changing that and purposely diversifying their audience. They added that they sincerely regret that in their job description, in their attempt to focus on building and diversifying their core audience, their choice of words was divisive rather than inclusive. 

Reference 

https://www.theartnewspaper.com/news/indianapolis-museum-apologises-for-posted-job-description-describing-a-core-white-art-audience

4 Art Gallery Shows to See Right Now

4 Art Gallery Shows to See Right Now 

1. Kerry Schuss Gallery 

Jack Pierson  

Date: February 13 

Jack Pierson’s art is driven by life vulnerability that becomes apparent as time goes on. He uses scavenged objects that are temporarily arranged without completing the final artwork. For example, he is well known for his word sculptures that are made out of loosely assembled signs without any order.  His installation works center on one or two pieces of old furniture — a small dressing table, for instance — and can suggest a corner of someone’s modest past. 

2. Lubov 

Artist: Marsha Pels 

Date: February 7 

Jewels are not only a symbol of fashion but also status and culture. They are used by many to signify wealth and maybe patriotic pride. Marsha Pels’s “Fallout Necklace” is one jewel that signifies patriotism. In the series “Trophies of Abuse,” the jewel hangs from the ceiling filling the entire room. It contains pictures of world leaders from autocratic to democratic ones. 

3. Fort Gansevoort 

Artist: Gordon Hookey 

Date: February 20 

Hookey, an Australian Aboriginal artist, will this year bring you hooded figures that were synonymous with Philip Guston, an American artist. It will be featured in the “Sacred Nation, Scared Nation,” an online exhibition organized in collaboration with the American artist Gary Simmons at Fort Gansevoort. The hooded figures are famous persons such as soccer players, presidents, and radicals. The theme of the art is to critic colonialism, racism, and other world evils.  

4. Miles McEnery 

Artist: Emily Mason  

Date: February 13 

Emily Mason plays with colors that are oftentimes extremely splashy. Cascading tides of bright yellows and pinks can easily look garish, and so can the often raggedy edges between them. It takes a little while to get used to the volume and pick out the subtleties. But once you do, you find constructions as delicate and deceptive as spider silk. 

Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/27/arts/design/4-art-gallery-shows-to-see-right-now.html 

Does the sale of fine art need physical spaces?

Does the sale of fine art need physical spaces? 

Since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic early last year, the sale of fine art has taken a different direction which has seen more artists taking the online sales route. Likewise, galleries have ramped up their online sales with many buyers becoming comfortable with bidding for art on online platforms. 

Despite the new trend, art sales reduced by 36% in the first six months of the coronavirus pandemic according to Art Basel and UBS report. To get more insights into the changing trend, Kai Ryssdal of Marketplace interviewed Masha Golovina, director of acquisitions at Marketwork.io. 

When asked how the market was performing for the last 10 months, he said that the art market rarely gets affected by typical progression in the economy saying that blue-chip artworks registered solid results. He said while auction sales went under, private sales dominated the market. 

When asked about the effect of the pandemic on small gallery owners, he said that “We’ve seen smaller galleries struggle more than the mega-dealers.” He added that the blue-chip segment was experiencing steady growth which to the market, is impressive.  

Commenting about the necessity for big physical art fairs, he said “You don’t absolutely need, you know, physical art fairs for sales to happen. I think it is, it’s a really effective way to see a lot of artworks at once and really get a sense of how the market is doing and what kind of property is coming up for sale.” 

However, he said, “I do think that returning to art fairs in some capacity, once there’s a safe way to do so, is going to re-energize the market.” 

Source: https://www.marketplace.org/2021/01/27/does-the-sale-of-fine-art-need-physical-spaces/ 

Pieces of Art that Changed Lives of Students at the University of Oregon’s History of Art and Architecture (HAA)

Pieces of Art that Changed Lives of Students at the University of Oregon’s History of Art and Architecture (HAA) 

As any year comes to an end, it has allowed most people to reflect on their lives and the experiences they have had to their present moment. 2020 has supplied more than enough to be pondered upon. Accordingly, art and design have always played a major role in catalyzing reflections as it has birthed inexpressible inspiration and comfort. Furthermore, art has had a way of helping one comprehend the world even at its most shambolic and untamed states. This year, five students at the HAA department were asked to share the pieces of art that changed their lives for good. Shared below are responses from two of the students. 

Taylor Hayes, an MA student at the HAA department, class of 2021 expressed how many pieces of art had transformed his life but one that captured him the most was ‘The Lament for Icarus’ (1898) by Herbert James Draper, which he would keep staring at for many hours to establish details ever since he was a child. The piece of art was a picture painted in black and white and was contained in a tiny book that his parent had bought him for Christmas. When Taylor met it again in college years later in full colour, his passion for art was rekindled. He declared History of Art as his major and has pursued it since.  

Secondly, Zoey Kambour, another MA student of the 2021 class at the department of HAA shared hers as ‘The Arnolfini Double Portrait’ (1434) by Jan van Eyck. She had first encountered this piece of work during her high school art history class. She recounts that it was the reason she is an art historian currently. The way the painting was presented through a myriad of symbols and meanings and mystery sparked an unending curiosity that made Zoey pursue art history for life. 

References 

https://design.uoregon.edu/haa-students-choose-five-life-changing-works-art-and-architecture

COVID-19 Pandemic Brings a New Scope at Artechouse

COVID-19 Pandemic Brings a New Scope at Artechouse  

In the recent past, the artwork was limited to a physical location where people would visit and adore the amazing materials available. However, in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic this year, there was a dire need to merge the physical and digital worlds through technology to still find a way to entertain people in quarantine and isolated places. Artechouse is an innovative space of art that is always out looking for whatever is new and how the ideas could be translated into real life. Artechouse is proud of many technological advancements it attained this year, one of the key ones being technological –unprecedented location of the New York City. This location is the world’s number one humongous faultless count of megapixel projection with a 16,000 resolution and the newest Hyperreal Sound technology. This has enabled Artechouse to work remotely with a wide range of creative artists dispersed in different cities. 

As the pandemic struck, the team at Artechouse channelled its efforts on developing an XP app and a myriad of online experiences that created a way for their audiences to connect and engage with their art and technological developments at the comfort of their homes. This step helped the teams at Artechouse to prosper in the most unprecedented times as well as helping their audiences to appreciate art in a new way. 

According to the Artechouse, the greatest achievement achieved fanned by the pandemic is how their audiences got to appreciate digital art and recognizing many new possibilities and opportunities engraved in these new technologies. The merger of the real and virtual worlds is has led to digital exploits to become regular thus encouraging many artists to continue creating content through technology. Artechouse speculates greater opportunities as it advances into the future and is determined to call out for more partnerships and collaborations between the two fields of art and technology.  

References 

https://www.forbes.com/sites/nataliestoclet/2020/12/22/artechouse-looks-back-on-the-art-of-exploration-in-2020/?sh=59078b0f3650

A New Book Implying That Science Made Leonardo a Great Artist

A New Book Implying That Science Made Leonardo a Great Artist 

In most cases, when testing a new pen, Leonardo da Vinci had the habit of scribbling the phrase dimmi, meaning tell me. These scribbles appear on the margins of his notebooks, those chronicles of his ravenous, almost carnal curiosity about the natural world. Dimmi, was hos animating question which he wrote between scribbled shopping lists and sketches of inventions, telling himself “describe what sneezing is, what yawning is, the falling sickness, spasm.” Dimmi, tell me your secrets, he asked in his studies of the movement of water and the working of a woodpecker’s tongue. 

Besides being known as a painter, an anatomist, engineer, the designer of torture tools as well as machines to break men out of prison, he was also known as the “real Renaissance man.” However, in her new book, The Shadow Drawing, Francesca Fiorani argues saying never to mind that the notion is reductive and plain wrong. 

Leonardo’s interests were not as dizzyingly different as they seem. His mind sought synthesis with his search for basic principles, the fundamental laws of all nature. He declared, “Write of swimming underwater, and you will have the flight of birds through the air.” Leonardo’s artistic and scientific interests were mixed. In painting, he could put in all he learned about geometry, shadow and light, about the interplay of the eye and mind in perception. 

As much as Sydney Freedberg described evidently how knowledge was indivisible for Leonardo, Fiorani was not the first to make her case. She did make it with new force and point of view against the misconception that Leonardo dropped painting for science in his late years. This idea, however, came from the exact, chaos-sowing figure of Freud skitters in the shadows. It is from his influential and energetic fictionalized study of Leonardo that many false impressions on him started, including the idea od the “dual Leonardo”, the artist turned scientist. 

Reference 

Highly Recommended Charcoal Sketch Sets for Inventive Drawing

Highly Recommended Charcoal Sketch Sets for Inventive Drawing 

Going back as far as early cave painters to Pablo Picasso to Roberto Longo, many artists have always loved the expressive potential of a soft charcoal crayon or pencil. Each charcoal sweep gives intense black color and simple blending for preliminary studies, photorealistic portraits, or landscapes. There are several types of artist’s charcoals on the market, each having a set of unique properties and ingredients. 

For instance, compressed charcoal is a soft rock block or stick usually created from burned birch, black pigment, and clay. Charcoal pencils are just like graphite pencils, and they are usually used to render crisp and detailed drawings. Regardless of the effect you want to achieve, the following are the best-suited charcoal pencils for your needs.  

The graphite drawing pencils and sketch sets have every piece of equipment a professional requires and beginners. It includes charcoal pencils, willow charcoal sticks, wood-encased pastel pencils in four shades, blending stumps, and a dual-tipped rubber blender, totaling up to 40 pieces. It has a convenient case with pop-up sections held by hidden Velcro strips, making it easier for artists who want to have their drawing practice on the road. However, it does not include a sketch pad like other sets, but the packaging, which features a five-step tutorial on drawing and blending, makes up. 

The general pencil classic charcoal drawing set contains 12 drawing sticks, 18 pencils, an eraser, a sharpener, and a drawing pad. For smooth sharpening and strength, the pencil has been handcrafted with sustained-yield cedar wood made in the United States. These implementations are suitable for beginners who wish to jump-start on their charcoal collection and are highly loved by professionals. 

The royal and Langnickel small tin charcoal drawing set has four charcoal sticks, one graphite pencil, and four charcoal vines. The sticks are soft and comfortable to blend and smudge, while the black pencil gives a strong, dark line that cannot be created with standard pencils. 

Reference 

The Best Charcoal Sketch Sets for Inventive Drawing

Wesley Snipes’ fall from the Acting Arena into Prison and Bounces Back Stronger.

 Wesley Snipes’ fall from the Acting Arena into Prison and Bounces Back Stronger.  

Wesley Snipes is a renowned artist who was at the top of his world in the film industry in the late 90s and early 2000s. He was skillful and did with utter perfection every role he was given. He was multitalented, and he starred in several genres, including thrillers, action movies, sports comedies, arthouse romance, dramas, and so forth. He grew in ranks to the extent that he was not just an actor for higher, but he determined the terms under which he would be hired. He was doing well. The movie he starred in all swept the world as a wave, and at one point in 2004, he is reported to have received a salary of nearly a 13million dollars for having produced and perfectly stirred in the famous “third Blade blockbuster, Blade: Trinity.” While there, he fell with a thud to the very bottom.

The fall occurred shortly after this, where many began to accuse him that he had become a complicated person to work with. This could have possibly resulted from the pride that grew from the many breakthroughs he had had in his career. This had a major impact on his career as an acting artist. In 2008, he was charged with willfully not filing the federal tax returns for his $15 million and fined $5million. In 2010, he lost his appeal and was convicted, being imprisoned for 2.5 years.

Coming from prison, Snipes, who is 58 years now, says how the time in prison turned him around to become a better person. He has learned values and to adore the family and those he loves. He is now starring with the renowned Eddie Murphy in an excellent and long-awaited film, “Coming 2 America.”  

References

https://www.theguardian.com/film/2020/nov/02/wesley-snipes-on-art-excellence-and-life-after-prison-i-hope-i-came-out-a-better-person

Art done for Hobby can be Turned into Business

Art done for Hobby can be Turned into Business

 Many people have had it difficult to transition art they have been doing as a hobby into a booming business. When it comes to reflecting on the financial aspect, it could be even more disheartening, but it is necessary. Draft an action plan on how much you need to save or earn to cover all the expenses evenly. You will also need to create goals and the milestones that need to be pursued in actualizing your business. To walk with you on this journey, David Deeds, a Schulze Professor of Entrepreneurship at the University of St. Thomas, explains five steps that anyone who wishes to transform his art into business must follow in his new book, “The Paid Artisan: How to Make Your art Into a Business.

The first step, evaluate your profit and loss. This might sound a bit difficult, but it is easy. First, you need to sit down and analyze all the art you ever did in your life and sold. Please list all of them down in a book. Secondly, you will need to evaluate how much money you have sold in all these pieces of art by simply getting the totals and then have it labeled as “total revenue” Also, from it, get the total expenses you have undergone in developing the art and have it labeled as “total expenses.” To determine the profit or loss, subtract total expenses from the total revenue. If you find a negative value, you are a normal artist, and so it is good because you need to be more vigilant and get to the next step from there. After this, which is the most important step, determine the funding for your next work, project the profits, level the expenses and income to ensure you have but profits, and then set yourself to track the income and expenses as your business progresses.

References

https://www.forbes.com/sites/nextavenue/2020/11/01/how-to-turn-your-art-into-a-business/?sh=418f4fff7950