New Virtual Art Business and Art History Classes in June

In May I offered a short series of four online art business classes at affordable rates. These classes were quite well received so I am offering a second installment of professional development programming and now also offering art history. You can learn more about my teaching experience on my Speaking and Teaching page, and learn more about my personal background on my About page.

You can register for classes by clicking the button at the bottom of this page and filling out this simple registration form. Please note that all classes will be conducted live via Zoom. Students should be comfortable with this free teleconferencing platform. Students will receive Zoom meeting details in a direct email after they have paid their class fee(s) using Paypal or Venmo.

Thank you!

-Michael

Professional Development Course Listing

Two Day Workshop: Publicizing Your Artwork
Saturday, June 6, 1:00pm-2:00pm
Sunday, June 7, 1:00pm-2:00pm

Artists often have a difficult time publicizing their own work. In this two day workshop, Michael will review key methods to earn publicity for your art and exhibitions. He will discuss traditional means of publicity like the press release and also give detailed advice on utilizing Facebook and Instagram to grow your following.

Included:

• 1 hour live lecture via Zoom each day.

• A resource sheet distributed after class.

• Students can submit questions before, during, or after class.

Class Fee: $50

Making The Most of Juried Exhibitions
Saturday, June 6, 3:00pm-3:30pm

Juried exhibitions provide increasingly important venues for artists to share their work with new audiences. From local art associations to nationally competitive calls, Michael will break down how to strategize and select work for application and how to make the most of being featured in such shows.

Included:

• 30 minute live lecture via Zoom.

• A resource sheet distributed after class.

• Students can submit questions before, during, or after class.

Class Fee: $15

The Appraisal Basics
Sunday, June 7, 3:00pm - 3:30pm

Art appraisal is an important means to learn more about the background and value of one’s collection. While most people are familiar with the “appraisals” of programs like Antiques Roadshow, this short crash course will detail the when, why, and how of professional appraisal practice and teach how collectors can go about securing appropriate valuations for their artworks. This is ideal for individuals who own artworks and aren’t sure how to start the appraisal process.

Included: 

• 30 minute live Zoom lecture.

• Resource sheet distributed after class.

• Students can submit questions before, during, or after class.

Class Fee: $15

Artists’ Professional Development Discussion Group
Monday, June 8, 6:00pm - 7:00pm

In this engaging question and answer session, Michael will take questions from attendees and moderate a conversation in the group on the topics that interest them most. This can range from how to prepare your artwork, to how to interact with galleries, to how to apply to exhibitions. Nothing is off topic!

Included:

• 1 hour live Zoom Q&A session.

Class Fee: $10

Art History Course Listing

Looking at composition
SAturday, June 6, 6:00pm - 7:00pm

Composition is one of the foundational elements of all visual art, and describes the underlying structure of all your favorite images. Using examples from art history, Michael will talk more about the aspects of composition and detail the qualities which make a strong composition. This class is intended to help those interested in art develop a keener visual sense, and will also aid artists in improving their own compositions.

Included: 

• 1 hour live Zoom lecture.

• Students may ask questions during lecture.

Class Fee: $20

Looking at New York Nights
Sunday, June 7, 6:00pm - 7:00pm

New York City has long provided inspiration for visual artists. In this one hour class, Michael will explore the ways in which visual artists have drawn on the unique quality of New York at night to create evocative, engaging, and even mysterious works of art. Artists like John Sloan, Martin Lewis, Edward Hopper, Georgia O’Keefe, and Faith Ringgold will be discussed.

Included: 

• 1 hour live Zoom lecture.

• Students may ask questions during lecture.

Class Fee: $20

Policies

• All course fees are due in advance of the class. Cancellations must occur 48 hours prior to the class start time for class fee to be refunded. Buyer is responsible for any fees resulting from a refund.

• Course fees may be paid via PayPal or Venmo, students will receive payment details after submitting their registration request.

• Classes are open to all and students of all backgrounds are welcome. Class times are Eastern Standard Time.

• Students must be a minimum of 18 years old and should have a good working understanding of the Zoom platform. Michael is not able to provide one on one instruction on how to use Zoom. 

• The content presented in all listed courses is the sole property of Michael Rose, lectures and related course materials may not be recorded or distributed by participants.

Questions

Questions are welcome in advance of classes, to learn more about any of the offerings here, please email Michael at michael@michaelrosefineart.com.

Join Me for Special Online Classes May 2nd and 3rd

Back in January, I began researching and planning how I might be able to offer some of my course material online to reach a wider range of students. I have had many requests for online instruction over the years and have been considering the best mode to share my expertise with students. This idea has clearly taken on a new relevance and I’ve decided to move forward with four short classes to offer unique online educational offerings with affordable rates. Should these classes be well received I will be offering more professional development and art history programming online. You can learn more about my teaching experience on my Speaking and Teaching page, and learn more about my personal background on my About page.

You can register for classes by clicking the button at the bottom of this page and filling out this simple registration form. Please note that all classes will be conducted live via Zoom. Students should be comfortable with this free teleconferencing platform. Students will receive Zoom meeting details in a direct email from Michael after they have paid their class fee(s) using Paypal or Venmo.

Thank you!

-Michael

Course Listing

Pricing Your Artwork
Saturday, May 2, 1:00pm

Pricing art is a challenge for many artists. In this live 1 hour lecture, attendees will learn more about best methods to develop a comprehensive pricing strategy for their work from gallerist and appraiser Michael Rose. Michael will address issues that are relevant to artists working in a variety of media, styles, and techniques.

Included:

• 1 hour live lecture via Zoom.

• A resource sheet distributed after class.

• Students can submit questions before or after class.

Class Fee: $25

Pitching Your Artwork to Galleries
Sunday, May 3, 1:00pm

One of the most frequent questions artists ask is “how do I get gallery representation?”. In this live 1 hour lecture gallerist Michael Rose will share strategies artists can use to make their work more appealing to galleries and talk about how best to navigate the sometimes complicated application process to gain professional representation for fine art.

Included:

• 1 hour live lecture via Zoom.

• A resource sheet distributed after class.

• Students can submit questions before or after class.

Class Fee: $25

Preparing The Back of Your Artwork
Saturday, May 2, 3:00pm

While artists spend most of their energy on the surface of the work they are creating, the back of two dimensional works is often just as important as the front. In this quick 30 minute crash course, gallerist and appraiser Michael Rose will outline best practices artists can use while preparing their work in order to finish their pieces in a professional manner. Labeling, framing preparation, and other important details will be discussed.

Included:

• 30 minute live Zoom lecture.

• Resource sheet distributed after class.

Class Fee: $15

Public Speaking for Artists
Sunday, May 3, 3:00pm 

Many artists find the public component of their work challenging. In this quick 30 minute crash course, gallerist and speaker Michael Rose will share strategies artists can use to improve their public speaking performance in venues such as opening receptions and studio visits. The goal of this course will be to make artists feel more at ease with the basics of public speaking.

Included: 

• 30 minute live Zoom lecture.

• Resource sheet distributed after class.

Class Fee: $15

Policies

• All course fees are due in advance of the class. Cancellations must occur 48 hours prior to the class start time for class fee to be refunded. Buyer is responsible for any fees resulting from a refund.

• Course fees may be paid via PayPal or Venmo, students will receive payment details after submitting their registration request.

• Students must be a minimum of 18 years old and should have a good working understanding of the Zoom platform. Michael is not able to provide one on one instruction on how to use Zoom. 

• The content presented in all listed courses is the sole property of Michael Rose, lectures and related course materials may not be recorded or distributed by participants.

Questions

Questions are welcome in advance of classes, to learn more about any of the offerings here, please email michael at michael@michaelrosefineart.com.

Looking at A Medieval Devotional Ivory

One of my favorite works of art at the RISD Museum is an object which might otherwise go unnoticed. It isn’t very large or impactful on first glance but, at about the size of a small book, it is tucked away in a corner under glass. An ivory diptych dating to around 1300, this piece depicts in exquisite detail scenes from the shared lives of Jesus Christ and his mother Mary. An exceedingly well crafted artwork, it is also one of arresting beauty. It is difficult to understand the views and opinions of those who lived hundreds of years before us, but occasionally art can make it possible. In the case of ivories like this one, we can step back in time and begin to enter the medieval mind and to experience the religious devotion that has largely come to define this period in European history.

Unknown Artist, French, Île de France, Diptych with scenes of the Nativity, the Crucifixion, and the Last Judgement, Ivory with traces of polychromy, ca. 1275–1325, each panel is 9.5” x 5.25”

Small ivory devotional objects in the form of miniature would-be altarpieces were extremely popular in the medieval Christian world and were produced en masse in workshops, the finest of which were located in France. These pieces, typically in diptych or triptych form, could be set up on a table within a domestic setting and then folded shut for travel. The life of the aristocratic class who could afford such an indulgence was a mobile one. Sculptural images such as this were the three dimensional equivalent of books of hours and psalters. A plethora of religious tools engaged lay Christians in a kind of prayer that matched their clerical counterparts.

Ivories would have been richly painted with polychromy, and now a few examples survive of similar works which retain their coloring. Because these objects were so purposefully tactile and because much of medieval devotion centered on the touching, caressing, and even kissing of iconic images, most extant ivories are largely denuded of color. RISD’s retains some traces, which the careful observer can find in the fine crevices of the ivory’s detailed carving.

In a contemporary world so impacted by the new norms of social distancing and in which church services for Easter weekend have largely been cancelled or moved online, the type of individual prayer common in the Middle Ages takes on a new resonance. Objects like this facilitated and were integral to the interior lives of the faithful in a time when public displays of religion were counterbalanced by rich private prayer lives in a complicated puzzle of devotion.

In RISD’s ivory, the viewer witnesses the intertwined stories of Mary and Christ, starting in the lower left register with an episode called The Annunciation in which the Angel Gabriel announces to Mary that she will bear God’s child. Mary holds a prayer book, signifying her unique faithfulness. Between her and the angelic messenger stands a vase holding a lily, a symbol of her purity as a spotless and holy virgin. In the same lower register, we can follow the continuous narrative. The figure of Mary appears again, this time laying on a cot next to the swaddled Christ child at The Nativity. She looks down adoringly at the child while above her within a cloud shepherds are told of the good news by an angel faraway. The visual constructions used in ivories followed rubrics which created images that were easily readable and readily duplicated. The result is something like a cross between a comic strip and a storyboard.

Unknown Artist, French, Île de France, Diptych with scenes of the Nativity, the Crucifixion, and the Last Judgement, Ivory with traces of polychromy, ca. 1275–1325, left panel, 9.5” x 5.25”

Across the central vertical hinge of the diptych the narrative continues. In the entire bottom right register, The Adoration of The Magi is depicted. At the left, a groom handles three horses entering a city gate indicating the far journey of the travelers. The three kings occupy a central space within this frame, each taking on a unique stance and presenting their individual gifts to Christ who stands precarious but confident on his mother’s knee. On the rear of the panel three oak leaves likely indicate the kingly lineage of Christ within the House of David. All medieval images, from great public works down to small personal ivories, are filled with a thickly layered language full of multivalent signs and symbols. For a medieval viewer, details that may be lost on us would have been common parlance. The three gothic arches which hover over each seen are a more clear symbol, underscoring the trinitarian nature of Christian belief.

Unknown Artist, French, Île de France, Diptych with scenes of the Nativity, the Crucifixion, and the Last Judgement, Ivory with traces of polychromy, ca. 1275–1325, right panel, 9.5” x 5.25”

In the upper registers of the panels, Christ’s crucifixion appears at the far left, followed by the crowning of his mother as Queen of Heaven. After the vertical hinge the story is consummated with The Last Judgement. Christ sits centrally, bookended by angelic hosts holding the instruments of his martyrdom - another common conceit in medieval art. Mary kneels at Christ’s righthand, signaling her preeminent status within a Christian canon which numbers saintly individuals in the thousands. Below these heavenly people, in a second register demarcating the earthly realm, minute figures awake in their tombs and raise from the dead in a moment of prophetic foreshadowing. Such is the everlasting life promised in Christian scripture.

RISD’s ivory is a small artwork so full of detail that it can be looked at again and again and enjoyed for hours. It invites contemplation even from an unbeliever. Contemplation of design, of form, of composition, and of narrative. Not to mention of the historical sociological implications such works have.

There tends to be a reading of the Middle Ages, fed by the common misnomer “the dark ages”, as a time of religious terror and general ignorance. In reality the picture is much more complicated. While there was enormous inequality and limited access to education, most Christian adherents during this period had a faith that was both profound and uncynical. The evidence that comes down to us paints a picture of sincere religious devotion borne out in public and private displays of faith that took place across a calendar packed with holy days both high and low. There was a frank belief in theological certainty and an acceptance of both heavenly salvation and hellish damnation. Christianity was also, though, a social practice set within a milieu shared with university foundations which gave us most of the eminent European institutions whose names are now taken as shorthand for learnedness.

The works of art which survive from this period are equally complex and ivories tell just one part of that story. From the guilds of Parisian sculptors that produced them, to the courtly figures who prayed over them, many members of a stratified society laid hands on these objects. And later, similar works were coveted by a spectrum of collectors who wanted to use them as emblems of their own sense of history; they were bought and sold by robber barons in the nineteenth century and looted by Nazis in the twentieth. Today, regulations around endangered species make the purchase of works that include ivory incredibly problematic if not entirely illegal.

The ivories that are available for public appreciation exist mostly under glass in the corners of quiet medieval galleries in museums. But they still hold a kind of magnetic sway. For a viewer in the twenty-first century, that appeal is much more commonly about craft and construction than about religion and devotion but it still exists. These are objects designed to pull one in close, to be educative and inspiring.

The same ivory that we observe now was handled seven centuries ago by a devotee. The same rivulets of tiny botanical borders that we can lingeringly appreciate in a museum were also known intimately by someone of another time entirely in the drafty bedchamber of a great house in Northern Europe. These are two worlds connected not necessarily by the same faith or by the same societal structure, but bound instead by an object. This object.

Therefore an ivory like this can tell us much not only about Paris in 1300, but about our time and place. It can show us that the interior life and indeed the solitary life are not always to be avoided but can instead be fulfillingly embraced. And such lives can also bring a recognition and appreciation of a kind of beauty - one which is both transcendent and even, occasionally, sublime.

Call for Art: Social Distancing Virtual Exhibition

Before the world changed so much, I was scheduled to jury three exhibitions, all of which have now been postponed or rescheduled. Realizing that so many artists are seeing their exhibitions disrupted due to current events, I wanted to organize an opportunity for a juried selection of artists to share their work. So, I will be hosting my first virtual exhibition here on my website! I have included the call for entry below. If you’re an artist, I hope you’ll consider applying. If you’re interested in art, I hope you’ll pass this opportunity along to artists you know and follow along to see the final show.

-Michael

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Call For Art:
Michael Rose Fine Art
Social Distancing Virtual Exhibition

Overview:
In light of the many postponements and cancellations occurring throughout the visual arts community, gallerist Michael Rose seeks artists to feature in a juried virtual exhibition. The show will be featured on Michael’s website www.michaelrosefineart.com, which reaches a diverse international audience of artists and art collectors. Artists working in all media are encouraged to apply. There is no fee to apply and twenty five featured artists will be selected. Michael will select artists based on works shared on their website and online presence, and will write an overview statement to accompany the show.

Eligibility:
Artists of all backgrounds working in all media are welcome. Artists must have both an active website and an Instagram page to apply. Selected artists’ websites and Instagrams will be linked to the exhibition page, which will encourage visitors to explore more of the artists’ work.

Application Fee:
This a free call for entry. There is no fee to apply.

Application Deadline:
This Call is Now Closed.

Monday, April 13 by 11:59pm Eastern Standard Time. Selected artists will be notified by May 1.

Exhibition Dates:
Selected artworks will be featured on michaelrosefineart.com for at least one month beginning on or after May 1. Select artists may also be featured in posts on Michael’s blog.

To Apply:
To submit, interested artists must fill out a quick Google Form application available here. The form must be completed in full in order to be considered.

Terms:
By applying, artists agree to allow Michael Rose to utilize images of their work in materials related to the exhibition including but not limited to digital and print reproduction.

Questions?
Please email Michael any questions about this opportunity. He will make every effort to reply in a timely manner. Thanks for your interest!

Alone Together: Seeing Hopper’s Isolated Bodies

Recently a set of memes highlighting the comic appropriateness of Edward Hopper’s work in our new reality of social distancing have been making the rounds online. The first shows Hopper’s seminal work, Nighthawks, one of the most recognizable images in American art; except in lieu of the few patrons in the original, the space is totally vacant. The second illustrates a collection of Hopper’s paintings of lone figures staring out windows with a pithy line something along the lines of “we are all characters in Edward Hopper paintings now”.

As unease and anxiety sweep the world alongside the rising COVID-19 pandemic, viewers are suddenly reappraising the isolated bodies depicted in so many of Hopper’s paintings. Audiences are beginning to see themselves again in the pale sadness of Hopper’s protagonists, and decades old artworks are taking on new and unexpected meanings.

Edward Hopper’s oeuvre is full of spartanly populated spaces in the heart of normally bustling cities; a girl dining alone in a late night restaurant, a pensive usher in a theater, a man and woman working silently in an office, an empty street, a storefront. Looking at these images now, and knowing what we know about government-mandated separation from our colleagues, our friends, our families and loved ones, they transform into something different. In light of current events, Hopper’s paintings of urban isolation become perceptibly more relevant and more poetic to people living nearly a century later.

Edward Hopper, Automat, 1927, collection of The Des Moines Art Center, Iowa

In Automat, from 1927, a young woman sits staring into a cup of coffee set against the vast black chasm of an unbroken plate glass window which faces a lightless street. Punctuating the halo of darkness is the reflection of two rows of lights that recede behind the viewer into the restaurant. No other patrons are visible; it’s just a woman and her cup of coffee. One of her hands is still gloved, as if she just entered this space from the chilly unseen street beyond. She is heavily draped in a green coat, but below the table, we see her bare crossed legs.

In a normally social space, and at a table with two chairs, a diner sits alone. This image might seem strange and there has always been a persistent weirdness to Hopper’s work - a kind of understandable surreality. For viewers today, this kind of surreality is now all too real and we are all living it. Social interactions are banned and tables of two have been reduced to tables of one.

Edward Hopper, Night Windows, 1928, collection of the Museum of Modern Art

A year after Automat, Hopper painted another lone female character this time seen in a glancing moment probably viewed from a passing elevated train. We see a tripartite grouping of windows on the rounded corner of a building. At the right, the warm glow of a shaded lamp illuminates a red curtain. In the left, a white curtain is blowing out the open window. In the center we see just part of the figure, leaned away from us and taking part in some obscured activity. She wears a pink slip and the pale Rembrandt-like flesh of her arm and legs are made all the more glaring by the darkness of the structure’s exterior.

Historically, this image has been viewed as a meditation on the type of voyeurism that can easily occur in a city and also as an examination of the duality of urban life. It is an observance of the closeness in which people live with one another and also the existential distance they have from one another.

In cities like New York, where current issues of distance take on a level of actual practical difficulty, this unique relationship of people to one another within space has become starkly clear. Looking at Night Windows now, it becomes more about separation of space and diminution of physical proximity.

Edward Hopper, New York Movie, 1939, collection of the Museum of Modern Art, New York

New York Movie, a painting from 1939 which has been in MoMA’s collection since 1941, shows a uniformed theater usher leaning against a wall for a moment of introspection out of view of the few patrons watching a film. In a pool of light cast by a shaded fixture, she leans her head on her hand, supporting her elbow with the flashlight she uses to guide moviegoers to their seats. She closes her eyes just for a moment. The architectural column and wall running down the center of the image form a compositional device to divide the woman on the left from the couple of individuals seated at right. Each of the three characters inhabits their own world within shared space. They are all alone, together.

As movie theaters and other gathering places close, Hopper’s theater takes on a new sense of romance. Places taken for granted in the seventy years since this image was painted are at once precious and missed. And the usher, the type of worker who labors with the public is newly seen by a contemporary audience. People once taken for granted are now essential.

The relationship between service workers, cashiers, custodians and the public is also now more tense and more uncertain. Physical barriers, like the wall in this image, are reconsidered and become vitally important in distancing people from one another. Now, rather than merely benign objects of happenstance, such dividers are seen as necessary safeguards of personal space.

Edward Hopper, Office in A Small City, 1953, collection of The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

In a later work from 1953, Hopper returns again to the subject of the lone figure - this time a man, at a desk staring out a window in Office in a Small City. We see the man externally through a window with crystal clarity. He places his palm on his desk and stares out over the rooftops of a neighboring building which has much more detail, charm, and warmth than the battleship gray facade of his own workplace. Jo Hopper said of the painting that it was an image of “a man in a concrete wall”. That is to say it’s an image of a figure trapped inside the circumstances of his life.

In some regards looking at this today there might be a feeling of jealousy. Oh, to be liberated from the confines of one’s home in favor of an office! But there is also a sense of oneness with the character. We are all looking out the same window, alienated from our surroundings and neighbors.

Edward Hopper, Early Sunday Morning, 1930, collection of The Whitney Museum of American Art, New York

Hopper created many iconic images and one of his most recognizable is Early Sunday Morning, a painting completed at the peak of his production in 1930. In it, the variegated surfaces of 7th Avenue facades are at once representational and abstract. The sunlight of dawn casts long unbroken shadows from hanging signs for tailors and barber shops across the windows of closed storefronts. The city, a place normally defined by people, by crowds, by what Walt Whitman called “the glorious jam”, is desolate. It is reduced to architectural and geometric forms - to a picture plane. The peoplelessness of Hopper’s 7th Avenue isn’t just a metaphor for the brooding urban isolation of his time, but also for the physical realities of our own. Looking at the painting in 2020, it becomes less conceptual and more illustrative. It looks like our neighborhoods now look on Mondays, Tuesdays, Wednesdays.

In John Patrick Shanley’s 2005 Pulitzer Prize winning play Doubt: A Parable, the playwright inserts the memorable line “doubt can be a bond as powerful and sustaining as certainty.” The same can be said of our current state of affairs. We are all bound together by doubts, uncertainties, and anxieties. And when we look at Hopper’s protagonists, it is understandable to see much of the same and to feel a new connection to these old pictures.

In a world seemingly much more connected and social than that of twentieth century New York, we are newly aware of isolation and separateness.

So, what can art like Hopper’s provide for us in times of uncertainty, anxiety, and fear? What do these paintings matter? If nothing else, there is something to be said for the reassuring stability of art across time. After all, as they say, art is long, life is brief. Most art, be it the great, the good, or the terrible, will outlast us and for that reason it innately has a tendency to give us something as precious as it is rare: perspective.

Now when we look at Hopper’s paintings we are less likely to see characters that we feel estranged from on the basis of their singularity, but individuals that we feel increasingly more connected to and understanding of. Hopper’s paintings of lone bodies have now become objects of empathic emotion in ways unlike before.

All at once Hopper’s distant, lone characters are knowable and recognizable. That’s because they’re us.

How to Incorporate Art Into Your Home via Redfin

Thank you to national real estate brokerage firm Redfin for featuring a quote from me in a new piece on their blog detailing professional advice about how homeowners can incorporate fine art into their spaces. Artists and art gallery professionals from across the country contributed to this listing of helpful pointers.

My feedback:

The key to getting the most out of art in your home is to acquire work that you’re passionate about. Whether you buy work to support a friend who is an artist or find items by artists you admire in an auction or consignment setting, collecting works you love is the best investment you can make. And don’t be intimidated because industry professionals like gallerists, auctioneers, and independent advisors can help you out along the way, too!

Read the full article and gain plenty of new ideas for adding art to your home by clicking here. Thanks once more to Redfin!

Looking at Henry Ossawa Tanner’s Flight Into Egypt

Henry Ossawa Tanner (American, 1859-1937), Flight Into Egypt, oil on canvas, 1923, Collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art

Henry Ossawa Tanner (American, 1859-1937) was one of the most celebrated artists of his generation. His paintings are often emotive and evocative and regularly draw on biblical and spiritual themes to underscore moral lessons. They also regularly employ aesthetic qualities unique to the French-inflected American Art of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, a period when artists in the United States increasingly drew inspiration from their European counterparts. Tanner’s depiction of the Holy Family’s Flight Into Egypt, painted in 1923, is a hallmark of his production. At the current moment in our national history and especially during this holiday season, Tanner’s image takes on a new resonance and a new poignancy.

In the painting, Christ’s mother Mary rides into a gated city while holding the swaddled Jesus. Her husband Joseph follows closely behind. Ahead of their small party a faceless and ghostlike figure carries a lantern which illuminates the scene - the proverbial light in the darkness. The image is executed in a palette which is distinct to the Tonalist-tinted work the artist created throughout his career. Tanner, like many of his contemporaries, was influenced by the French, from Barizon landscapists to Realist painters.

Born in the United States, Henry Ossawa Tanner was one of seven children born to Sarah Tanner, a mixed race woman who had escaped slavery via the Underground Railroad. He studied art under the great Thomas Eakins at the Pennsylvania Academy and moved to Paris in 1891 to study at the acclaimed Académie Julian. Largely due to the racism he experienced in the United States, and also to the cultural opportunities afforded to artists living in Europe, Tanner made France his home for the remainder of his life. He was eventually recognized for his artistic excellence with the nation’s highest honor, being made a Chevalier in the Légion d'honneur.

Tanner also traveled extensively in the Middle East and drew inspiration for his paintings, including Flight Into Egypt from the topography, the architecture, and the people he saw there. His immersive exploration gave way to studied attempts at capturing an authentic view of a cohesive biblical landscape to match the reality Tanner found on the ground in places like Jerusalem. His paintings are marked by this quest for truth and also influenced deeply by his own sincere religious faith.

Tanner was the son of Benjamin Tucker Tanner, a bishop in the African Methodist Episcopal Church. Living abroad on Christmas in 1896, he wrote home saying "I have made up my mind to serve Him [God] more faithfully.” He went on to dedicate the majority of his career to painting touching religious scenes, including this plaintive image executed nearly thirty years after Tanner’s letter to his parents. It is a painting born out of devout sincerity.

The artist’s spirituality is evident in much of his later work, but to me, Tanner’s subtle treatment of many of these images is what makes his oeuvre so striking. Unlike other artists of the mid and late eighteenth century, Tanner largely avoided the negative impulses of the popular Orientalist movement in his scenes of the real places in which biblical stories are set. His paintings are paintings first and foremost - not illustrations meant to aggrandize Western audiences. Nor are they burdened by the saccharine sentimentality which is evident in other images of similar subjects made during this period. Tanner’s dual influences from his uniquely American Christian upbringing and his immersion in avant-garde European movements shaped his art and his psyche.

In Flight Into Egypt we witness not a laboriously produced illustrative image of a scene from scripture, but a painterly treatment of an emotive human story. The subdued palette and quality of the surface of the painting result in a romantic image, which provokes empathy and understanding. The power of this piece is evident because it succeeds at making us feel something nearly a century after it was painted. It allows us to see the humanity of saintly figures and in turn, the people they represent in Tanner’s time and our own.

As the small party marches slowly past the closed doors of a walled hamlet at night, we also find ourselves attuned to a feeling of alienation, which would come to define many paintings made by Tanner and his peers, particularly those in America. There is a lonesomeness to journey of the Holy Family, one mirrored in the religious experience of many. In this case that lonesomeness and solitude is portrayed by a painter who after his death was classified by his own son as a mystic. 

This painting is deeply, resonantly, profoundly beautiful because it transcends what we expect from such a work. It is also a reflection of Tanner’s own transcendent experience which culminated in his success in France. The story of a refugee family would have been incredibly important for the son of a freed slave, just as it should be important to contemporary viewers watching the American border crisis unfold.

Henry Ossawa Tanner was a painter of remarkable skill, who harnessed his own experience and his religious views to create paintings of breathtaking and unusual sensitivity. His Flight Into Egypt is a singular expression of many of the best qualities of his oeuvre and still has lessons to teach to viewers today.

Upcoming Projects, Winter 2020

I am excited to share details of some projects I will be working on this winter (and spring). In addition to jurying and judging a number of shows and awards, I will also be teaching several classes. Please read on for the full details and contact me with any questions. - Michael

Speaking and Teaching

History of Printmaking at Providence Art Club
Wednesdays, January 8 - March 11
5-7pm
$100 for Providence Art Club Members and their Guests

From artists like Durer and Rembrandt to Eliza Gardiner and Grace Albee, printmakers have contributed much to the history of art. Through lectures and discussions this class will explore prints executed in a wide range of techniques from etching and engraving to monotypes and screenprints. We will also discuss the market for prints and the ways contemporary artists are utilizing printmaking in their practices.

Providence Art Club Members should register by emailing Angel Dean.

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Artist’s Statement Writing at RISD
Thursday, January 16
6:30pm - 9:30pm
$85

Writing about your art can be a challenge; it is the last thing many artists want to write. In this workshop, you'll develop the strategies and tools necessary to write a compelling and accessible artist's statement, traditionally used for exhibition purposes, grant and teaching applications, and fellowships. By encouraging you to consider the motivations and methods behind your work, this course will make it possible for you to use prose to support and explain your art for a broad range of viewers and readers. By also considering your story as an artist (your biography) you'll be able to paint a complete picture of yourself and integrate this into the how and why of your process for a more complete description of you and your work. By the end of the workshop, you'll have fresh ideas and a rough outline of your own powerful and effective artist's statement.

Register for this class by clicking here.

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Art Collecting at Dartmouth Cultural Center
Saturday, February 22
10:00am - 2:00pm
$50 Members | $55 Non-Members

Navigating the market for art can be complicated and confusing. This class will focus on sharing resources for finding art that fits your taste and budget locally and further afield. Michael will cover the pros and cons of working directly with artists or purchasing work through galleries, art associations, or even in second-hand venues like consignment shops. Online venues such as Saachi Art or even Ebay will be discussed. Questions are welcome.

To register for this workshop click here.

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Social Media for Artists at Dartmouth Cultural Center
Saturday, March 14
10:00am - 2:00pm
$50 Members | $55 Non-Members

Social media is an important tool all artists can use to share their work to a broader audience and to reach new potential collectors. This class will focus on aiding artists to learn the basics of utilizing key platforms like Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, and LinkedIn to share & promote their work. Questions are welcome.

To register for this workshop click here.

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Featured Speaker, Bunny Fain Memorial Lecture Series
Date To Be Announced

As part of a series of lectures to be given in memory of the great Rhode Island arts patron Bunny Fain this spring, I have been invited to give a talk on the current state of the art market. This program will likely take place in May or June. More details to follow.

Jurying and Judging

Juror, Rhode Island Scholastic Art Awards

I’m thrilled to be returning as a panelist on the jury for the Rhode Island Scholastic Art Awards. This important program highlights the work being done by talented high school students throughout the state and around the country. This will be my second year serving as a juror.

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Juror, Connecticut Scholastic Art Awards

This year I am very pleased to also be serving as a juror for the Connecticut Scholastic Art Awards. Students compete for prizes within their state of residence and once top honors are chosen, select students will also be recognized at the national level. I thank the Connecticut Scholastic Art Awards organizers for inviting me.

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Awards Judge for Fakes and Forgeries Exhibition at Spring Bull Gallery, Newport
Exhibition on view January 18 - February 28, 2020
Submissions Due January 11, 12, 15, and 16
To apply please see Spring Bull’s Call for Entry

I was thrilled to be invited by Spring Bull Gallery in Newport to be the Awards Judge for their Fakes and Forgeries Exhibition in January. This show invites artists to interpret famous art historical works. I’m always interested in seeing how living artists reflect on works of the past so I very much look forward to being part of this show.

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Juror for Artists’ Cooperative Gallery of Westerly Regional Exhibition
Exhibition to be held May, 2020
To learn more, visit WesterlyArts.com

Later this spring I will serve as the juror for the popular Regional Exhibition at the Artists’ Cooperative Gallery of Westerly. This show draws hundreds of applicants from throughout Southern New England and I look forward to seeing pieces by talented regional artists.

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Questions?

Again, for more information about any of these projects or to inquire about booking me for future activities, please feel free to shoot me a note. I would be happy to hear from you!

Sign Up to Receive My Newsletter

As 2019 comes to a close, I am planning to send a note to my email subscribers with details of some of my upcoming events. I hope you’ll consider joining my mailing list so I can share talks, courses, and other activities with you. I typically send between four and six emails annually and I will never share my mailing list with third parties. Fill out the form below to join my list and receive my newsletters.

You can also join me on social media or send me a note by clicking the icons below:

Thank you for taking an interest in my work. I look forward to sharing exciting projects with you via my newsletter and my social media channels!

Sincerely,
Michael

It’s Time for Retail Galleries to Rethink Receptions

It seems that since time in memoriam retail art galleries of all sizes have been putting on parties to celebrate new shows. They go by many names, from the classic “opening reception” to the self-consciously chic “cocktails with the artist”. While the contents can vary - many feature live music, most have wine, cheese, et cetera - the idea is basically the same: if you feed them, they will come. But if you feed them, will they buy, too? On this question the jury is still out. The real inquiry is how can these events be made more engaging in small and mid-sized commercial galleries, and how can they be made to pay?

Receptions, like any aspect of the gallery business, are not cheap. Between promotion, food, drink, music, staffing, and other details, it’s not unusual even for a smaller commercial gallery to spend in the range of $1,000 or more on such events. Considering the often precarious financial situation for these same galleries, does it really make sense for them to spend funds that could otherwise go towards rent, advertising, or specialized staff on throwing a party?

Many gallerists and most artists in regional and local marketplaces cling to the idea that these free gatherings drive sales. At the same time though, any gallerist will also tell you that every gallery has their opening “regulars”. These individuals attend exhibition receptions religiously, delight in the complimentary fare, and have also by and large never bought a thing. That being said, though, many gallery owners will also share that the excitement surrounding opening receptions does result in sales. In many cases most sales occur at or around the opening of a show. But is the party itself the driving force behind this? While the data on this topic is sparse, there are reasons to doubt.

The reason that so many sales occur at openings is because these aptly named events typically open the show and are buyers’ first exposure to the work available. Anyone who has loved a painting or a print or a sculpture enough to buy it knows that no amount of free Gruyère made them pull out their checkbook. Collectors of luxury goods like art require three things: means, motive, and opportunity. While some coaxing doesn’t hurt, broad costly programming seems to be a blunt answer to the question of cultivating patronage of the visual arts. And if a gallerist feels a party is an important way to entice or honor potential or prior collectors, perhaps a private VIP preview is the best way to include such individuals and encourage them to become repeat buyers.

So, if these events just happen to be an opportunity for otherwise motivated buyers to make purchases, then how can commercial gallery owners convert them into profit centers in their own right? One idea, maybe the idea, is to charge for them. A lesson you learn in Business 101 is that if you give any product away for free, the public will see it as worthless. So, if money is invested into exhibition programs like receptions, why shouldn’t there be a fee to attend? They do, after all, have value. They provide a unique first look at exhibitions as well as networking and often educational opportunities as well.

One reason I think galleries tend to be leery of charging for events is because the art community at large has an idea that even retail galleries are not merely businesses built on art sales but also cultural centers. And as cultural centers, this thinking goes, it is the responsibility of for-profit galleries to provide open, easy, and free access to their spaces at all times. This free access includes receptions and other events. I recently had this exact conversation with a gallerist who was detailing some of the difficulties they’re seeing in their business and they really leaned into this concept, namely the idea that they had a “community responsibility” to run specific programs and events even at a loss. My response was that as a business owner a gallerist’s key responsibilities are to pay their bills, to pay their artists, and to pay staff.

No other for-profit business that I know of is enlisted to provide free catering and entertainment to strangers who don’t pay for their product or service. So, why should commercial galleries? Certainly, as a gallery professional who works in a uniquely historic and public setting, I think it’s very much in the interest of non-profit, mission-driven art centers and institutions to open their doors wide to the communities they serve and to run plentiful free programs, including openings. Small and medium-sized commercial galleries, however, need to open their doors wide to collectors, patrons, and individuals interested in supporting their artists and their exhibition programming with more than just lip service or dreaded “exposure”. And in those settings, this might just mean charging for special events specifically or even charging a general admission fee.

I don’t think the suggestion that a business should charge for a service is a radical one. And if retail galleries charged a small amount to attend special parties and programs, audiences would see that these events do have a value, and more importantly that there is a cost to the small business putting them on. With the income from admission, even from a thinned herd of attendees, commercial galleries could also improve the programming to build out events that are more enticing to the young, sophisticated, upwardly mobile, moneyed class of potential collectors that need to be engaged if the commercial galleries serving local artists are to survive into the future. Millennials, for instance, are interested in such experiences - and high quality ones, too.

A $30 cover for an event that features craft spirits, canapés from a locally owned restaurant, and a demo with the featured artist(s), is not in any way unreasonable and if a buyer is honestly in the market for art, even a piece in the $1,000 price range, it is not inaccessible. Of course it’s tricky to make the numbers work, but this is an industry filled with creative people and something along those lines sounds much more interesting to me than the average reception. And based on my experiences, I bet it would be much more appealing to real potential art buyers too.

Not everyone is in the market for art, and if a $20 or $30 cover charge is too steep for a visitor, then it stands to reason that a $500 or $1,000 art purchase probably isn’t in the cards for them either. Ultimately, art sales have to be the cornerstone of a successful retail gallery situation, but making openings and other gallery programming more profitable is an important step to creating a commercial gallery business model that is more tenable in a rapidly changing environment.

If important retail venues for local artists are going to last, they must be money-making operations and behave as such. Gallery professionals must show that their spaces, their exhibitions, and their work has value. Rethinking receptions and other events as income-generating activity is one step towards shoring up the economic feasibility of the small commercial gallery for the next generation of local artists.

Wallpapered in Velvet: Fall TEFAF and The (Old) Art World

This weekend, I made a trip to the New York installment of The European Fine Art Fair (popularly known as TEFAF). I wanted to share my takeaways from an event I genuinely very much enjoyed and one I see as an important indicator of issues at play in the art market at large.

Held in the Seventh Regiment Park Avenue Armory, itself a relic of a bygone type of elegance, the The European Fine Art Fair’s (TEFAF) Fall Installment includes galleries specializing in fine and decorative arts dated prior to 1920 and primarily from Europe and the United States. First mounted in 1988 and now hosted three times a year (once in Maastricht in the Netherlands and twice in New York City), the show follows the art fair model it helped to popularize. Galleries and art dealers rent individual booths and exhibit a selection of works drawn from their regular inventory, or new discoveries shown for the first time. The participating exhibitors are vetted in advance as a form of quality control and the Fair’s website boasts a preponderance of museum quality objects. The resulting event features work ranging widely, from drawings by Egon Schiele and Le Corbusier, to Old Master paintings, as well as Ancient and Classical sculpture. The fall iteration of TEFAF is known for featuring older, and potentially more traditional, work whereas the spring show is focused on more modern objects. This show is truly a place to see some of the finest artworks available in retail environments up close and also to examine the workings of an art market in transition.

To say that TEFAF is a refined experience would be an understatement. A visit to the show requires an admission fee more expensive than any museum and most of the visitors are dressed well enough to make it difficult to distinguish collector from dealer. There is something decidedly old world about it and decidedly old school, too. Fitted out in bespoke suits and designer garments, an army of dealers and assistants charm serious connoisseurs and collectors or merely those morbidly curious enough to spend $55 and the better part of a Saturday looking at beautiful things that, barring a bank heist, they will never be able to afford. In addition to crossing paths with a stunning Picasso or two, one is also bound to come in contact with what F. Scott Fitzgerald called “the consoling proximity of millionaires”.

It all feels slightly of another time. Most of the artworks on offer at TEFAF would not have been out of place in the homes of popes or princes, Romanovs or Bourbons. Reviewing the provenance on some object labels, it is not at all uncommon to find a former famous owner or a previous place in a great collection. The contemporary titans of finance or tech who are able drop a cool million on a painting here are not far off from Gilded Age patrons like Henry Clay Frick or J.P. Morgan, who would have delighted in such an event and undoubtedly would have greedily used it to add to their own hoards as well.

This show largely remains the domain of this same archetypal self-assured collector, but one occasionally can spot the unmistakeable look of an art advisor dragging nouveau riche clients through booths of artworks which they do not necessarily appreciate. The phrase “no, Jackson Pollock is much later than this…” might be overheard, or so too an admonishment about manners that, in another generation, were seen as de rigueur. A business degree from Syracuse is as likely an attribute now as one in art history from the Sorbonne. But, it is still a deeply worldly event, where guests in line for the Fair’s restaurant chat languidly in German, French, or Italian. As I walk by, two Japanese women in traditional Kimono are seen in by a maître d’.

Behind all of this old and new international glamour, though, it is worth noting the audible whispers of Brexit and the unsightly murmurs of “return on investment”. It is now unavoidable as ever for art, regardless of age or genre, to be seen and used as a financial tool, and one which is tied inextricably to the fickle fortunes of complex and global systems. As much as taste and quality can determine value, so too can a myriad of other factors, which are speedily defined and redefined in terms far removed from the theoretical values of the art world. There is an incestuous tangle between financial and political power brokers and the art dealers who remain dependent on their patronage, while also being impacted by the workings of economies over which these king-makers often hold some sway.

Although the Fall Installment of TEFAF primarily focuses on objects prior to 1920, errant contemporary items find their way in, mostly through specialty collaborations. It must be said that there is something a little inelegant about a Fontana next to a fine Classical sculpture, or a Warhol adjacent to a Bonnard - something of the whiff of defeat. Dealers and gallerists formerly full of confidence in the market for artworks now seen in some quarters as a little too conventional are finding themselves engaging with the red hot objects of the Modern and Contemporary market in order to buoy their fortunes. The veneer of a fictional well-rounded and broadly interested collector is applied to a decision that is one of purely economic necessity. The market is changing and so too are buyers’ interests. If the pairings that result from these real world realties seem a little odd, they are also easily understandable. A commercial gallery is a business after all, not a religion.

Such is the world today. Gallerists are attempting to make an argument that eighteenth century continental portraiture or medieval polychrome sculpture can be as exciting a proposition as a Basquiat. It remains to be seen if their tactics will be fruitful, or if the one-to-one comparison between newer and more avant-garde objects with their elders will serve only to illustrate the retrograde aspects of the latter to a new generation of collectors more interested in the art and design of the mid-twentieth century than that of the Middle Ages.

All of these details add to the intrigue of TEFAF. It is, indeed, a place to see exceptional things from some of the best dealers in the world. It is also a place to rub shoulders with the art world literati on duty: a curator from the Metropolitan photographing a piece with their phone, a museum official negotiating a deal with a seller, a prominent collector using emphatic, and course, language to describe a dealer’s prices. These details, this vague camaraderie, point to the ways in which the Fall iteration of TEFAF also harkens back to a time when the art world was far less complicated than it is now.

A booth near the entrance of the Fair features a Venitian scene by Bellotto mounted on a partition wallpapered in rich blue velvet. One cannot help but imagine a time when pedigreed art aficionados invited similarly pedigreed collectors into private rooms nearly identically accoutered. Over old cigars and older scotch, sales were ironed out and relationships were built. Of course, such appointments, slightly altered, still take place in the converted townhouses of the Upper East Side, or in the fine interiors of St. James’s in London, or in still more fashionable corners of Berlin or Zurich, Paris or Rome. But now these rarified dealers are working publicly too, on a world stage, and in an art market that is being radically remade by the modern, the new, and the digital.

While TEFAF definitely represents long-standing values of vetting and connoisseurship along with a seriousness of research, purpose, and quality, it is unclear if the Fall show can also represent a future that is largely defined by the excitement around Modern and Contemporary, or by art as financial asset, as investment, as collateral, as splashy, if hollow, political activism.

TEFAF is a preeminent art event and a place to see beautiful things, important things, things that are of rare and spectacular quality. It also will be a place of importance as a testing ground for market realities and one of many barometers measuring the tastes and trends within a labyrinthine, globalized art economy.

The next installment of The European Fine Art Fair (TEFAF) will focus on Modern and Contemporary Art and Design and will take place May 8-12, 2020 at the Park Avenue Armory.

To learn more, visit tefaf.com.

Overheard at TEFAF 2019: Quotes from The Art World

This weekend I visited The European Fine Art Fair, popularly known as TEFAF at the Park Avenue Armory in New York. I’ll be writing more about it in detail through future posts. The fair draws a unique crowd of collectors and connoisseurs, and as I walked around the fair I overheard a number of humorous remarks that seemed to typify some of the more caricature-like individuals who tend to be in attendance.

Here are a few of my favorites. And mind you, all of these are real:

A dealer welcoming a collector to their booth: “Welcome to the nineteenth century!” (followed by a kiss on each cheek)

A collector attempting to learn a price:“You don’t have to tell me what you sold it for… but what was the asking price? Please?”

A French-tinted voice reflecting on a price: “of course $283,000 is a little high, no?” (The dealer agreed and then laughed.)

A collector complaining about a European gallery owner to his assistant: “He skipped out on me last time I was in Switzerland.” This was greeted with a quizzical stare from the assistant and elicited the reply “That’s an American expression, darling… it means he avoided me…”

A dealer explaining technique: “You see, he worked with a very fine brush and it took a great skill not to… fuck it up.”

An annoyed assistant in a heated conversation with her gallery owner: “Do you even know what time it is in Zurich!?”

A visitor asking about an assistant’s background:“How did you get into the gallery business? Did you study art history?” The assistant chuckled and replied “No, no, my father owns the gallery...”

A dealer highlighting a trend in the market: “The 50’s are sooo done...it’s all about Gerhard Richter now!”

An impassioned dealer on the phone: “Listen, I feel like you’re misinterpreting the word ‘carpet’...”

A gallery owner offering an alternative: “Oh, I’ve got a little Napoleon over here I think you’ll love!”

A mildly pushy sales assistant to an individual who revealed themself to be a curator: “Well, we’re definitely looking to place this in an American museum so I guess I’m talking to the right person…”

One guest to another at the exit: “Everything kind of felt like a let down after those mosaics.”

A guest to a sales assistant while examining a potential purchase: “Well the one the Met has is much smaller than this, that is true.”

A dealer summing it up to a guest: “We’re just like the rest of you. Sometimes after a day at the gallery I go home and have a beer in the shower...”

A Few Favorite Things From The Boston International Fine Art Show

I was thrilled to be invited to give a talk at the first day of this year’s Boston International Fine Art Show (BIFAS) at the historic Cyclorama Building in the Back Bay. I gave a talk titled What Has Your Gallery Done For You Lately? about the complexities of the modern artist-gallery relationship.

BIFAS is presented in the historic Cyclorama Building at the Boston Center for The Arts, a stunning backdrop for booths containing work from a range of time periods.

After my lecture, I had a chance to visit the Show and explore some of the great booths representing a wide range of galleries. BIFAS is a diverse and approachably scaled art fair that gives visitors of all backgrounds access to galleries presenting exciting work, including some truly museum-quality pieces. I enjoyed much of the Show, but wanted to highlight a few of my favorite presentations and objects throughout the Show, which continues through Sunday, October 27.

A selection of work by John Wilson in Martha Richardson’s booth.

Martha Richardson Fine Art

Martha Richardson Fine Art is located at 38 Newbury Street and handles American and European work in a variety of media, primarily from the Modern period. I particularly enjoyed a section of Martha’s booth dedicated to works by John Wilson (1922 - 2015), a great Roxbury-born artist. In particular, Wilson’s powerful depictions of African-American figures which were given pride of place in Richardson’s booth caught my eye and drew me in.

Learn more about Martha Richardson at martharichardsonfineart.com.

A mini salon style hanging of drawings in Jasmine Doussiere’s booth.

Jasmine Doussiere’s Silver Art by D and R

Jasmine and her husband are dealers based in Marseilles and New York who show an array of drawings as well as fine French silver at shows throughout the East Coast, from Philadelphia and Baltimore, to Newport, Boston, and New York. I love drawings and couldn’t help but look closely at her selection of works on paper. They were elegantly exhibited and the price points were quite affordable considering their quality.

Learn more about Jasmine at silverartbydandr.com.

A lovely and dramatic Ralph Blakelock offered by Questroyal Fine Art.

Questroyal Fine Art

Questroyal Gallery is an established dealer of important American paintings primarily from the Hudson River School. They also work with paintings dating into the twentieth century. Their booth was well stocked with pieces of the quality you would expect from such an institution. I was especially enamoured with paintings by Ralph Blakelock,  Guy Wiggins, Fairfield Porter, Henry Martin Gasser, and James Beckwith. These pieces from various periods show off the skills and interests of talented American artists.

Learn more about Questroyal at questroyalfineart.com.

A display of work by Winslow Homer presented by Avery Galleries.

Avery Galleries

Avery Galleries was founded by collector Richard Rossello in 2001 and, like Questroyal, deals in work by important American artists. Based in Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania, Avery had a selection of enticing pieces by names any art lover would recognize. My favorite spot in their booth was a corner dedicated to prints, drawings, and one very fine painting by Winslow Homer, one of the most important American artists of the nineteenth century.

Learn more about Avery Galleries at averygalleries.com.

Pre-nineteenth century items on offer from Christine Magne Antiquaire.

Christine Magne Antiquaire

Like Avery Galleries, Christine Magne Antiquaire is based in Pennsylvania, with a showroom in a converted industrial space in Philadelphia. Her booth was full of a variety of European work from Old Master to Tonalist painting. She deals primarily in works of European fine and decorative arts from prior to the nineteenth century, and her space offered a well curated selection of her unique inventory.

Learn more about Christine at franceantique.com.

A beautifully simple Jean Dufy offered by Trinity House Paintings.

Trinity House Paintings

Trinity House Paintings was founded in 2006 by Steven Beale and now has multiple locations in the United Kingdom and the United States. Their booth was full of the types of Impressionist and Post-Impressionist works which they deal regularly. But I was particularly drawn in by a simple line drawing by the French artist Jean Dufy from 1924. It’s minimalism speaks to a tendency to more refined tastes among Millenial collectors.

Learn more about Trinity House Paintings at trinityhousepaintings.com.

A selection of 1920’s and 30’s prints from Fusco Four Modern.

Fusco Four Modern

In addition to being the organizers behind the Boston International Fine Art Show, Tony Fusco and Robert Four have been collecting works of art for decades. One specific passion has been fine prints from the 1920’s and 30’s, an interest I also share. Their booth had a wonderful group of prints by Rockwell Kent, as well as a selection of works on paper by Vera Andrus, whose estate they handle and whose catalogue raissone they are in the final stages of completing. One standout work was Carl Hoeckner’s Jazz Age of 1935, a print also held in the collection of the Art Institute of Chicago which depicts the feverish striptease of a burlesque performer.

Learn more about Fusco Four Modern at fuscofourmodern.com.

Visit BIFAS

The Show continues through Sunday, October 27. BIFAS is open to the public Saturday 11-8 and Sunday 11-5. For more information and to purchase advance tickets, visit fineartboston.com.

Book Review: Rendez-vous with Art

Title: Rendez-vous with Art

Authors: Philippe de Montebello and Martin Gayford

Length: 248 pages

Publisher: Thames & Hudson

Year: 2014

More than a straightforward art history text, Rendez-vous with Art is an unusual volume that compiles engaging conversations between Philippe de Montebello, the longtime director of the Metropolitan Museum of Art and Martin Gayford, a British critic and journalist. These art-focused chats touch on a wide range of issues and emphasize the need to look closely at art in the modern world. It is a fast and delightful read.

The book is appropriately titled as it centers around a series of short meetings had by Montebello and Gayford in some of the world’s leading art places. Within the context of singular conversations about individual works of art, the authors touch either pointedly or glancingly on topics as varied as museum studies, sociological issues around art, or simply the need for close and careful looking. The enjoyment of looking and dissecting images is central to their friendly banter.

The conversational nature of the text invites us, the readers, into the intellectual but accessible crossfire between these two great art minds. It is a stimulating device that encourages us to interrogate our own preconceived notions about great art seen in important institutions. The book makes us a fellow interlocutor on a journey that is both about our perception of works of art and our ability to narrate those perceptions to others in a meaningful way.

In this sense, Rendez-vous with Art, touches on the central conceits of art history - the necessity to look, to examine, to describe, and to question. The artworks discussed are the fulcrum of the text. The physicality of objects is central to the face-to-face conversations at the core of this unwittingly quick and enjoyable read, which inserts art into a place often held by theory in art-writing.

The co-authors also contribute their respective views as the longest-serving director of one of preeminent art museums, and a journalist and critic whose skills for research and composition of sure-footed prose are at the top of their powers. They bring their years of expertise to bear in thoughtful and provocative talks that make us want to learn more, and look more.

This is, in short, a book that will renew your passion for closely examining, fully understanding, and deeply appreciating works of art.

Rendez-vous with Art is available at all major retailers, but do consider patronizing your local independent bookstore!

If you are an author or publisher who would like a book considered for future reviews here, please contact me at michael@michaelrosefineart.com.

New Podcast Episode: The Juried Exhibition Basics

I am happy to share that I have just published the third episode of my Fine Art Insights podcast!

This episode covers the basics of Juried Exhibitions including calls for entry, jurors, and jurying processes. It’s worth noting that around the 49 minute mark you’ll hear a siren that went by while I was recording - no need to be alarmed. I left in the siren, as it adds some excitement to this already exciting podcast. I just published the episode and hope you’ll consider taking a listen. And if you like it, be sure to subscribe!

You can listen on the following platforms:

Apple Podcasts

Breaker

Google Podcasts

Pocket Casts

RadioPublic

Spotify

Thank you for reading and for listening!

Looking at Vincent van Gogh's The Night Café

Vincent van Gogh’s The Night Café, in the Collection of the Yale University Art Gallery.

In 1888, just two years before he died of an allegedly self-inflicted gunshot wound, Vincent van Gogh was living in rented quarters in the south of France. His time in Arles resulted in some of the most prolific output of his decidedly productive career. This was not just a period of great quantity, but also of great quality. Among the paintings he finished in Arles was an interior scene of the café where he was staying; a painting that many consider to be one of his masterworks. Le Café de nuit or The Night Café, depicts the vividly colored interior of the Café de la Gare, van Gogh’s home  as he continued work on The Yellow House, where he hoped to found an artists’ colony with the likes of Paul Gauguin, who famously departed after a short sojourn as Vincent’s housemate. The Night Café is an unusual painting even within van Gogh’s oeuvre. It is defined by a sense of foreboding and unease. But it is also nonetheless one of his most affecting paintings, and one of my favorites.

In the painting, the viewer is placed in a position of confrontation with the barkeep in an all night café lit by the radiating glow of a series of hanging lamps. This figure, that of the owner, Joseph-Michel Ginoux, stands like an apparition behind the billiard table in the center of the room. He is surrounded not only by drunken derelicts peppered throughout the surrounding space, but also by the thickly painted walls of the encroaching room. This space and the characters within it induce a kind of claustrophobic response, and a sense of the psychic angst. This is entirely by design. Van Gogh said as much of the painting in a letter to his brother Theo.

I have tried to express the terrible passions of humanity by means of red and green. The room is blood red and dark yellow with a green billiard table in the middle; there are four lemon-yellow lamps with a glow of orange and green. Everywhere there is a clash and contrast of the most alien reds and greens, in the figures of little sleeping hooligans, in the empty dreary room, in violet and blue. The blood-red and the yellow-green of the billiard table, for instance, contrast with the soft tender Louis XV green of the counter, on which there is a rose nosegay. The white clothes of the landlord, watchful in a corner of that furnace, turn lemon-yellow, or pale luminous green.  

The color relationships that van Gogh describes, between the greens and reds, et cetera, create the illusion of vibration and dissonance within the space. It is as if, we, the viewers have entered the bar already drunk and unwilling to accept the limitations of a last call. The quaint local tavern becomes a destination of last resort.

The self consciously gritty content of van Gogh’s Café may seem somewhat passé to a modern audience. But consider its place in the history of art and the way this image presages the qualities found in later work by Munch or Kirchner or Hopper. The alienation that would become the hallmark of modernity is encapsulated in this painting of a sleepy night haunt in nineteenth century France. The quality that made this work visionary in its own time also establishes its accessibility and resonance for a contemporary audience. Thus, the subjective outlook of the viewers of 2019 informs the static art of the 1880’s, renewing and reinvigorating it with meanings even the artist could not have envisioned.

Van Gogh’s treatment of the scene, with its scintillating colors, thick daubs of paint, and the innate eeriness of a barely-peopled bar make it all too real in a sense. It is what I, personally, love about this picture. Van Gogh crafts an experience as much as he does a place. Ignore, momentarily, the aforementioned color theory meant to display the passions of humanity, and let the instant the painting shows us sink in. The Night Café displays the knife’s edge of drinking. The painter was a drinker and was intimately aware of the way in which festive friendliness of a bar can slip into something uneasy and even funereal.

That pool table lunges forward, as if the room is about to start spinning. The lights are shining a bit too brightly in the lead up to a hangover headache. The barkeep is a blur, but all too able to pour us out another glass. All of it is very solid, but also on the verge of dislocating. Although van Gogh loved beauty and wanted to paint like the Impressionists he so admired, he couldn’t help but show us the darker side of things – the side he knew all too well. This painting illustrates the goings on within the walls of a building that artists just a few years prior would have described with gauzy delicacy. What van Gogh has given us is something altogether unique and altogether his own, and his gift to art history. He has transformed the angst of the emerging industrialized working class into a space. He converted the dramas of humanity into the architectonics of a pub.

So why should such a painting be lauded as one of the most important by an artist such as van Gogh? Are color theory and narrative intrigues enough to catapult a work into the firmament of a particular zeitgeist? These attributes alone are perhaps not enough, but, combined with the artist’s tumultuous personal story and the role his production played in reshaping the broader imaginative possibilities for all artists, they can illustrate why such a work could be seen as a pendant for something larger. The Night Café represents many of van Gogh’s best qualities including his striving for technical complexity and excellence. It also represents some of the personal struggles that drove his art-making and defined his stylistic aims. It is both quintessential and unexpected. It is a great painting of a bad night out.

A detail from The Night Café, showing abandoned tables and a drinker with his face in his arms.

Ten Questions with Shawn Huckins

Shawn Huckins (American, B. 1984) is an artist based in Denver, Colorado who merges historical imagery with contemporary texts, to create technically astute and humorous paintings.

A New Hampshire native, he earned his BA in Studio Art magna cum laude at Keene State College and is represented by galleries in Denver, Seattle, and San Francisco. His work has been published widely and he has earned a number of awards and grants for his work. He his shown his work around the United States and internationally, with a new solo exhibition Happy Go Lucky opening at Galerie Bessiéres in Chatou, France, this October.

I have followed Shawn’s work for some time, along with his thousands of other followers on Instagram. I enjoy the way he mixes art historical tropes with language of our time. His unconventional paintings pair his skills and sense of humor to create images that are fun and exciting.

-Michael

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Q1. Your paintings are very labor intensive. What steps go in to making one of your paintings and about and how long do they take to produce?

A1.  The beginning stages of my paintings all begin with playing around on the computer.  Once I find a text phrase to marry with a classical portrait, I will play around in Photoshop with text size and placement over top an image of the portrait I’m going to replicate from the 18th/19th century.  Once I’m happy with the final composition, I will draw out the entire image (including drafting out the text) onto plain white canvas.  From here, I will mask off the text with tape and begin the underpainting.  After the painting is complete and I’m satisfied with the end result, I will remove the tape to reveal the white lettering below.  I will then touch up the letters with white paint, as sometimes the portrait portion of the painting will seep below the tape.  From beginning to end, it takes generally 2-3 weeks to finish a mid/large painting.  Smaller works can take a week and my largest canvases can take up to two months.

Q2. Your work regularly references art historical subjects. What attracts you to specific historical works?

 A2.  I think the first thought is ‘can I replicate this in a convincing and respectable manner?’ I’m really drawn to fancy clothing and detailed lace, which add times to the production process, but the end results are stunning.  I typically veer toward more realistic portraits rather than gestural works, since my work is realistic based.  I have done more gestural, ‘painterly’ paintings in the past, but I’m more comfortable with realism.

Q3. Do drawings and preparatory studies play a large role in your process? If so, how do you utilize them?

A3.  I typically only do drawings, or small paint studies when I’m trying a new technique.  I use small, cheap canvas board to do my experiments before applying them to the larger, final painting.  Most of prep work is done on the computer in regards to getting the composition correct.  For very large works with tons of detail, I will draw detailed drawings of portions of the painting onto trace instead of drawing on canvas, as to not dirty up the white canvas too much.  Once I have my drawings on trace finalized, I draw it in reverse and rub the drawing onto the canvas.

Q4. Text is a major component of your work. How do you decide your text and image pairings and what are your goals in these?

 A4.  Deciding which text goes with which painting isn’t really a science.  It just was feels right.  I will take into consideration if the portrait is male or female, their posture, and the look on the face.  I have a very large document containing texts I’ve collected over the years which I scout for on social media.  I rarely, if ever, use my own text as I feel it would be too contrived.  The goal is to capture the digital language of today and to show the debasement of language as it becomes shorter (ie, LOL) and grammatically incorrect.

Q5. You have exhibited widely. What do you hope audiences take away from viewing your paintings?

A5. The main goal is to make people smile and laugh.  Yes, I’m talking about the de-evolvution of the English language and how communication skills are suffering due from the rise of technology, but if you smile, that’s the joy in it for me.  During my last show in Seattle, my partner was standing by the door and overheard people as they were coming in for opening night.  He saw people’s faces light up and smile as they walked in and overheard one couple saying ‘we need more people like him in the world.’  That made my whole night.

Q6. Who are other artists working today that you admire and why?

A6.  There are so many great artists today and it’s so easy to discover them by way of Instagram.  Some of my favorites are Vivian Green, Matt Hansel, and Amy Bennett. They motivate and push me to keep producing my best work possible.  Maybe it’s a subconscious artist rivalry thing, but being engaged and surrounded by the work you admire only helps you produce work that you can be proud of.

Q7. Do you feel the humor in your work makes it more accessible to a broader audience?

A7. I feel more people have a better response (myself included) if the work is playful and engaging.  I’ve never produced deep and dark themed paintings because I’m not attracted to that subject matter.  While it certainly has its place in the world, I’d rather create work that makes people smile and laugh.  I remember in college, one of my professors was trying to get me to paint subject matter that was really dark and twisted, and I just couldn’t feel it.  I think she was trying to get me to use art as a therapy session.  I use painting as a creative outlet, for sure, but not in the way my professor was seeking.

Q8. In terms of preparation, how do you frame your work? Historical works like those you reference may have been framed extravagantly. Do you prefer more traditional or contemporary frames?

 A8. I prefer the no-frame method. I like the contemporary look using the thick canvas stretcher bars as the frame for the classical painting to give it a nice contrast along with the text.  This option also allows the collector to choose what they feel is right for their homes (if they want a frame).  Collector’s have sent me images of their paintings in simple maple floater frames, or another chose to have their painting in an ornate, gold leaf frame.  I think both look great.  I would choose the simple, maple floater frame.

Q9. You mostly utilize historical imagery from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Have you or would you consider working from other periods or other types of underlying images?

Q10. What is the next major project you’re working on?

A9./10. I’m working on a new project which will debut in June 2020 at K Contemporary in Denver.  It involves working with Roman sculpture from around 100 - 300 A.D. time periods.  I’m moving away from contrasting classical paintings and digital text to Roman sculpture and the American discourse.  It’s basically a new series of destruction and rebirth, but again, in a playful, engaging manner.  I am very excited to start this.

Introducing My Podcast: Fine Art Insights

I am thrilled to announce that I have launched a new podcast, Fine Art Insights with Michael Rose!

I am hoping to cover a variety of issues related to visual art and the art market in regular episodes. If you have a suggestion for a topic you would like me to discuss, please shoot me a note.

I just published the second episode of Fine Art Insights, which gives a basic overview of commercial galleries and what the future of the business might look like. I hope you will give it a listen!

Currently, I’m publishing my podcast using Anchor, which also distributes to a number of popular venues. Consider subscribing so you don’t miss any future episodes!

You can listen on the following platforms:

Apple Podcasts

Breaker

Google Podcasts

Pocket Casts

RadioPublic

Spotify

Thank you for reading and for listening!

Ten Questions with Lydia Mozzone

Lydia Mozzone is an artist living and working in Boston’s North End. Lydia’s work has exhibited her paintings at the Connecticut Academy of Fine Arts, the Lore Degenstein Gallery in Selinsgrove, PA, and in a two
person show at the Cape Cod Cultural Center, South Yarmouth, MA alongside her mother, Michele Poirier-Mozzone. Her work recently gained regular representation with Coastal Contemporary Gallery in Newport, RI.

Lydia is a painter whose figurative work explores the complex relationships between women and their bodies within the context of contemporary life. She earned her undergraduate degree in studio art at Skidmore College.

In 2018, I selected Lydia as one of ten “Artists to Watch” for Boston Accent Lit and I have continued to follow her work. I am thrilled to share this interview with a talented emerging artist with you.

-Michael

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Q1. Your work is primarily figurative and focuses on the nude. Do you have regular models for your paintings or do you work from photographs, memory, etc?

A1. I use photographs I've taken of roommates and friends through a foggy glass shower as reference for my paintings. Using a photo lets me map out my canvas and refer to the image until I'm happy with my drawing and composition. Then, I can put down the image and react to and enhance what the paint is doing organically. I find this process to be very freeing.

Q2. The nude has a long tradition in art history. Do you see your work in conversation with historical precedent or as a departure from past works predominantly created by male artists?

A2. Many classical nudes portray a confident woman who is acknowledging the viewer; she might be looking directly at us, making little effort to conceal herself. I admire these historical paintings, but I do see my work as a departure from that point of view. My "ladies" are very much about of the complicated relationship the modern woman has with her own body rather than a depiction of confidence and sexuality.

Q3. You studied art at Skidmore College. Can you talk more about your educational background and the role it played in shaping your work?

A3. For the first two years as a Fine Art major at Skidmore, we drew the figure and still-life in charcoal. Regardless of concentration, each student had to spend many hours perfecting proportion, perspective and composition in charcoal before exploring other mediums. I think Skidmore's approach directly inspired my "style" once I discovered oils. I have an obsession with realistic figurative areas interacting with loose, textural spaces in a painting. I still do remain more technical at the beginning of a painting, and then let the handcuffs off to achieve the organic marks I love.

Q4. You have shown your work previously at other venues. But what role do you see your relationship with Coastal Contemporary Gallery playing in your career as a fine artist?

A4. Coastal Contemporary is the first gallery to represent my paintings. I'm thrilled to be showing my work in Newport, and am especially excited to have Shari (the director and owner of Coastal Contemporary) representing my paintings. She is an incredible artist herself and has such an elegant and approachable way of speaking about and curating the work in the gallery.

Q5. Your mother is also an artist, Michele Poirier-Mozzone. How has having another artist in your immediate family influenced your development?

A5. My mom has been the biggest influence in my life artistically. She taught me to draw as a kid and has been providing unfiltered, honest critiques ever since. Each of us has turned areas of our homes into a painting studio. Having a home studio is convenient but isolating, so we’re constantly texting images and calling each other to bounce ideas and critiques back and forth.

I'm extremely lucky to have her support as I carve out my own art career. Her work has inspired me to appreciate deliberate brush strokes, to diversify my "go-to" color palettes, and to keep evolving and challenging my own series of work.

Q6. You've mentioned the importance of drawing to your paintings. Do you exclusively work in charcoal? And are your drawings strictly preparatory or would you consider exhibiting them as finished works?

A6. As a student, I worked in charcoal and graphite constantly. Now that I work mainly in oils, I use graphite pencils to sketch composition ideas for larger paintings. When I move to the canvas, I draw out the composition again with a thin brush and oil paint. I no longer treat my drawings as finished works, but I do think it would be really interesting to explore my series in charcoal or graphite one day! 

Q7. Speaking of influences, what famous artist(s), historical or contemporary, are you currently inspired by and why?

A7. I look at Gerhard Richter for his beautiful lost edges. I love Alex Kanevsky's figures - his compositions are always so unique and I admire his ability to boldly integrate a flesh tone into a cool background and vice versa. I'm also inspired by Jenny Saville's juicy, gestural strokes; her marks make her paintings feel so emotional.

Q8. You work in a variety of scale from 8" x 8" to works that near life size. What role does scale play in your work?

A8. For years I rarely worked on canvases smaller then 4 feet. Painting the figure at a life-size scale is a really cool exercise; it's a very physical process requiring movement of the whole body. Lately I've been working at a much smaller scale. Initially this transition was out of necessity, as I couldn't fit large stretchers into my apartment, but it has challenged me and taught me a lot. It's much easier to overwork a smaller painting - but smaller canvases also lend themselves to making bolder, textural marks, which I find really exciting.

Q9. Can you speak more to your painting process? Do you create the distinct textures using brush or palette knife or both? How do you develop the unique qualities of your surfaces?

A9. I use a mix of palette knife and brush strokes throughout my painting process. I find I can capture an atmospheric "foggy" feeling best when painting "wet into wet" - so often I'll go over a whole dried canvas with Galkyd medium before going back into it. I try to mix hard and soft edges in my paintings - blurring the background into the figure in some places, and using harder lines elsewhere. I use the palette knife to keep a sense of immediacy and spontaneity throughout my process. I try not to overthink it (though that's easier said than done!).

Q10. What projects are on the horizon for you and how do you see your work growing or changing?

A10. I think it's important that a series of paintings never becomes too formulaic - so I'd like to continue to keep pushing myself out of my comfort zone. Now that I've been working at a small scale, I think it would be really interesting to see how these smaller works would inform my process if I go back to very large pieces. I've also been thinking about using a spotlight in the shower, pumping up the contrast and drama in my pieces.

Lydia Mozzone, Opaque, oil on canvas, 8” x 8”

Lydia Mozzone, Opaque, oil on canvas, 8” x 8”

Collecting Vintage Prints: A Personal Perspective

I have to begin this post with a thank you to my colleague Donna Parsons, Gallery Director at Dryden Gallery / Providence Picture Frame for giving me a preview of their incredible Archives Sale, which opens this Friday, June 12 and will run each Friday and Saturday through the end of July from 11am - 4pm each day. Providence Picture Frame is a 100+ year old art business and an institution in itself. It will soon be moving out of the converted textile mill it’s called home for many years and this exciting sale of work from the company’s archive is, what a seasoned collector I know referred to aptly as a “once-in-a-generation sale”.

I was supposed to be visiting Providence Picture Frame earlier this week on official business on behalf of the Providence Art Club. This sneak peak at the objects that would be for sale was supposed to grant us a chance to find some appropriate frames for naked paintings we own, as well as an opportunity to pick up a piece or two to add to our permanent collection. But, of course, I naturally lost all semblance of self control and bought a couple of items for myself.

I am extremely interested in the prints made of New York in the 1920’s, 30’s, and 40’s and was genuinely thrilled to have the opportunity to add two etchings from this period to my personal collection at this intriguing sale. After getting the work home, I did a bit of research and found out some incredibly fun facts about the makers of the pieces I selected. Collecting historic works of art can be interesting, and even dare I say, fun, and I hope sharing what I found and why I love these two pieces might inspire some other would-be collectors.

Nat Lowell, Lower East Side, etching, 1930’s

The first etching is by the Latvian-born Nat Lowell (1880-1956), who trained at the Art Students League of New York and was a prolific printmaker, capturing the unique vibrancy of the City. This scene of the Lower East Side, probably from the 30’s, shows off the bustling harbor, which itself already dated back 300 years to the Dutch settlement of the island. It may be forgotten today to some extent, but for most of its history New York served as one of the most important ports in the world.

In Lowell’s dynamic image, he contrasts the masts of the sailing ships in the foreground with the spires of the city’s financial hub on the tip of Manhattan Island behind. It’s worth noting that the term “skyscraper” was originally used to describe the height of ships, not of buildings. The riotous sea faring vessels before use accentuate the solidity of the City, as do the billowing baroque clouds over head.

Nat Lowell, Lower East Side, etching, 1930’s (detail)

I am unable to find this specific image online thus far, but works by Lowell can be found in the Metropolitan Museum, New York Public Library, Albright-Knox Art Gallery, The Library of Congress, and other important collections. One of the reasons I find original prints so exciting is that for an incredibly reasonable sum, you can live with museum quality work.

Karl Dehmann, Metropolitan Museum, etching, 1928

The second etching is by Karl Dehmann (1886-1974), who was born in Germany and trained both in his native country and in Paris. He made his living for a short time as a copyist at the Louvre and wrote home at one point to complain that he wished he could make more money at his trade. Don’t we all, Karl?

This beautiful nocturne depicts the glowing Beaux Arts facade of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in 1928, which one source reports as the year Dehmann emigrated to the United States. This exact print can be found in the collection of the Museum of the City of New York as well as the Metropolitan Museum itself, which acquired it the year it was printed.

Karl Dehmann, Metropolitan Museum, etching, 1928

You might notice that the seemingly cramped steps and horseshoe driveway in this image are not the hallmarks of The Met recognized today for its gracious cascade of stairs. This entry was dramatically altered in the early 1970’s under Thomas Hoving’s directorship. But this print captures a moment in time while also expressing the innate grandeur of the Richard Morris Hunt building abutting Fifth Avenue, as well as the drama of the well-lit facade against the inky night sky.

Both of these images are richly detailed and executed in a style that was extremely popular in this period. They are intricately and lovingly detailed. They exude two polar qualities of New York: the gritty excitement of downtown in the middle of the workday and the meditative night of a staid and cerebral uptown. They also express some of the wonderful technical qualities found in the medium of etching: the specificity of the line work, the graduated tones of dark and light, the possibility for an image to be descriptive, narrative, and abstract all at once.

It is also worth noting that both of these images, as well as many others crystallizing the singular personality of the place that Brooklyn-born poet Walt Whitman called “America’s great democratic island city”, were executed not by native-born artists but by individuals who came to the United States from abroad. This fact has a message for all of us living in the US in 2019.

Historical works of art can add so much to a collection because in looking at them we can know and understand their makers and their context in ways that do not always translate to artists and artworks of our own time. We know the way the places depicted have changed and that makes these works romantic, doesn’t it? We understand the impact that this school of printmakers had on the shaping of art history and that makes these works educative, doesn’t it? And, if we let the lessons inherent in works like these wash over us they can change our mind or make us see the world differently, can’t they?

Although one of today’s more popular art memes goes something like “buy work by living artists, the dead ones don’t need the money”, there is an alternative saying in the museum world about art-makers who are no longer with us. “The only good artist is a dead artist.”

In the case of collecting there are many great things about buying the work of living artists you might know and like, of course. But there is also something to be said for broadening, deepening, and enriching your collection with works by artists whose careers ended decades ago and whose productions were influenced by an entirely different set of social, political, and artistic realities than we know now.

When I look at the prints I recently purchased, I see not only the New York of Lowell and Dehmann, but I feel inklings of my own experience in the City. I also see indications of familiarity on the part of these printmakers with artists whose work I will never be able to afford like Edward Hopper or Martin Lewis. And for a much more affordable price I can bring prints that capture the zeitgeist of their time with technical precision and artistic flourish into my home.

I removed these prints from their frames and pulled them out from under glass and I honestly cannot stop looking at them. They are a delight and I know I will enjoy them for years to come.

And that is truly the best art investment money can buy.

Providence Picture Frame’s Archives Sale is on July 12, 13, 19, 20, 26, and 27 from 11am - 4pm. They are located at 27 Dryden Lane in Providence, Rhode Island.