Slaughterhouse | The New Republic - Jed Perl

Self Portrait, Oil/Canvas, Francis Bacon, 1971

Francis Bacon: A Centenary Retrospective, Metropolitan Museum of Art

Is there such a thing as a wrongheaded tradition? I believe there is. And the most enduring one is surely the tradition of the artist as a romantic outlaw, which in the last half-century has been pretty much owned by Francis Bacon. His canvases, modernist melodramas with just the right crowd-friendly dash of old-fashioned grandiloquence, are the subject of a retrospective at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Bacon, who died in 1992 at the age of eighty-two, may well be the greatest exemplar of a wrongheaded tradition that we have ever seen. He had a knack for adapting all the wrong elements from all the right artists... - excerpt

Link Full Text, Slaughterhouse, Jed Perl, The New Republic, June 17, 2009

Charlie Rose talks with Jed Perl, Art Critic - Video

A conversation with Jed Perl, art critic for "The New Republic" about his book "New Art City: Manhattan at Mid-Century". - Charlie Rose web site

Link Charlie Rose web site

Link Articles by Jed Perl

Link The New Republic

Who Gets to Call it Art? - Ben Street

Letter from London: Who Gets to Call it Art?

Art 21 Blog
December 7, 2009

What does contemporary art look like? What a ridiculous question! It doesn’t look like anything, does it? No one in their right minds would want to begin to map out a common style across the thousands of different approaches littering the white floors and gray walls of contemporary art galleries all over the world. There have been attempts to bracket artists together, notably by Jerry Saltz in a lovely unprintable phrase that’s apparently still in style (judging by this year’s Venice Biennale), but they only ever glance at comprehensiveness. Talent contests like the Turner Prize begin to look like meaningless conflations of the Oscars, the Pulitzer, and the Nobel... - Art 21 Blog

Link Full Text, Letter from London: Who Gets to Call it Art?, Ben Street

Link Art 21 Blog

Sculptor - Ron Meunck

Mask II, Ron Meunck

...(Ron) Meunck's sculptures faithfully reproduce the minute detail of the human body, but play with scale to produce disconcertingly jarring visual images. His five metre high sculpture Boy 1999 was a feature in the Millennium Dome and later exhibited in the Venice Biennale.

In 1999 Mueck was appointed as Associate Artist at the National Gallery, London. During this two year post he created the works Mother and Child, Pregnant Woman, Man in a Boat and Swaddled Baby. - Wikipedia

Link Ron Meunck, Wikipedia

Link Working Process

Drawing Technique - Trois Crayons

Trois Crayons Example. Young Girl, Watteau

Trois Crayons refers to a drawing technique using three colors of chalk: red (sanguine), black, and white. The paper used may be a mid-tone such as grey, blue, or tan. Among numerous others, the French painter Antoine Watteau drew studies of figures and drapery using trois crayons. - Wikipedia

The technique may be used to organize the light relative to form, to create emphasis, rhythmic dialog, and balance.

Link Wikipedia

Special Exhibit: Watteau to Degas, French Drawings at the Frick Collection, NYC

Jean-Antoine Watteau (1684–1721),Woman Lying on a Sofa, c . 1717–18, red, black, and white chalk, 21.7 x 31.1 cm, Fondation Custodia, Paris

Watteau to Degas: French Drawings from the Frits Lugt Collection

October 6, 2009, through January 10, 2010

Curators at The Frick Collection were invited to select for the exhibition and its accompanying catalogue Lugt's finest eighteenth- and nineteenth-century French drawings, and the sixty-four works featured in the exhibition illuminate both Lugt's taste and that of his successors. Included are drawings and watercolors by well-known masters of the French School such as Watteau, Boucher, Fragonard, David, Ingres, and Degas, as well as by important figures who are less familiar to the general public. This is the first time that a group of French master drawings from the Fondation Custodia has traveled to New York. - Frick Collection web site

Link Watteau to Degas Exhibition web site

Four Things I've Learned About Designers by Warren Berger

For the last two years, I’ve been doing to designers what they usually do unto others. Which is to say, I’ve been observing and studying them, asking a lot of questions and trying to discern patterns. Here are a few things I’ve learned along the way. - Warren Berger, Dec. 1, 2009, AIGA web site

AIGA, the professional association for design, stimulates thinking about design, demonstrates the value of design and empowers the success of designers at each stage of their careers. AIGA’s mission is to advance designing as a professional craft, strategic tool and vital cultural force. Founded in 1914, AIGA remains the oldest and largest professional membership organization for design, and is a nonprofit, 501(c)(3) educational institution..

Link Full Article, Four Things I've Learned About Designers, Warren Berger

Link AIGA web site

The Sacred Made Real: Spanish Painting and Sculpture 1600 - 1700

The Sacred Made Real, Exhibition Catalog Cover

The National Gallery, London

‘The Sacred Made Real’ presents a landmark reappraisal of religious art from the Spanish Golden Age with works created to shock the senses and stir the soul.

Paintings, including masterpieces by Diego Velázquez and Francisco de Zurbarán, are displayed for the very first time alongside Spain’s remarkable polychrome wooden sculptures.

Inspiring devotion

The religious artists of 17th-century Spain pursued a quest for realism with uncompromising zeal and genius, creating works to inspire devotion among believers.

By displaying works side by side, this exhibition explores the intense dialogue between the arts of sculpture and painting, revealing that they were intricately linked and Interdependent.‘The Sacred Made Real’ presents a landmark reappraisal of religious art from the Spanish Golden Age with works created to shock the senses and stir the soul.

Paintings, including masterpieces by Diego Velázquez and Francisco de Zurbarán, are displayed for the very first time alongside Spain’s remarkable polychrome wooden sculptures. - National Gallery (London) Web Site

Oct 21 - Jan 24, 2010

Link The Sacred Made Real Web Site, National Gallery, London

John Wonnacott - Painter

Red Tablecloth Two, Oyster Eaters, John Wonnacott, 1996-99

"What I’m really trying to do is to bridge this gap between my own world of feelings, thoughts and ideas and that world out there. When it works, when one reaches the point of balance between them, it’s a wonderful thing." - excerpt, Ray Atkins in conversation with John Wonnacott

John Wonnacott was born in London in 1940. He trained at the Slade School from 1958-63 before moving to Southend in Essex where he still lives and paints in a studio overlooking the Thames Estuary. - John Wonnacott Online Gallery

His paintings and drawings are known for their panoramic and unexpected pictorial space which is a dynamic of working from direct observation.

Link Interview, Ray Atkins in conversation with John Wonnacott

Link John Wonnacott Online Gallery

Link Slade School of Art

Back to the Land - a visual essay by Maira Kalman

Maira Kalman, NY Times

Maira Kalman is an illustrator, author and designer whose last column for Op-Extra (NY Times), "The Principles of Uncertainty," ran from May of 2006 to April of 2007 and has been published as a book. She has written and illustrated 12 children's books, and her artwork is featured in a recent edition of Strunk and White's "Elements of Style." She recently created a panel story for The Rosenbach Museum and Library's 21st-Century Abe Web project. Her work is shown at the Julie Saul Gallery in Manhattan. Ms. Kalman lives in New York City and teaches graduate courses in design at the School of Visual Arts. "And the Pursuit of Happiness," about American democracy, will appear on the last Friday of each month. - NY Times

Link Full Illustrated Article, Back to the Land, NY Times, Maira Kalman