I’ll be having another exhibition for charity next week at the Osteria di Santo Spirito. The paintings are all sketches from this winter painted in the Oltrarno of Florence and a portion of the proceeds will go to the Amici di Santo Spirito association. The opening reception will be on Thursday, February 25th from 6 to 9 pm. You can see some of the work here.
A Pokot Hut. 25 cm x 30 cm, oil on linen.
I have a couple of small pieces in a charity show in London called ‘Artists for Africa’. The exhibition opens on the 23rd of February at the Oakham Gallery in St. Jame’s (27 Bury Street, London SW1). For more information on the Friends of Africa charity, visit their website. The reception is on the 23rd from 6:30 to 8 pm (I won’t be making it though, too much work here at the moment).
The Contemporary Florentine Realism exhibition received some criticism for the title. Some of the participating painters objected to the term ‘realism’ and on the Rational Painting forums the title sparked a thread questioning the need to use the word ‘contemporary’. Granted I did not spend a great deal of time thinking of the name. I just needed to come up with an all-inclusive title to describe what we do in the least offensive manner to all parties. Sometimes talking with other realists reminds me of what some wise man once said: ‘there is no greater cause for ferocious argument than a subtle difference between two abstract ideas’ (along those lines anyways, I can’t find the quote).
Most art movements were given their appellations long after the fact but in today’s soundbite-driven world, we should probably have a catchy name. Its interesting to think that some art movement names were originally insults, such as Baroque, Macchiaoli or Fauvism. Odd Nerdrum has been going for this approach by adopting ‘Kitsch’ to describe his painting, you can read his ideas on the subject on his website.
When I was studying, Classical Realism was the blanket denomination for traditional painting. It always seemed too ivory-tower to me, however, as many of my favorite artists are painting very modern subjects albeit with traditional methods and much of the plein air work I admire has nothing really ‘classical’ about it.
‘Slow Art Florence’ was an early choice for the show’s title, especially as the Slow Food movement it pilfers the name from is very popular here. Greg Hedberg has already used ‘Slow Painting’ for his show at the Oglethorpe University Museum in 2006 (Aristos had an interesting critique of the name here). Though it’s a good idea, a quick google search for ‘Slow Art’ turns up a lot of stuff that has nothing to do with this show, and I paint pretty fast anyways.
Two of the best ideas for a title were from the Rational Painting forums. The first was Graydon Parish’s ‘Post-Contemporary’ art, since the word has already been corrupted to mean a style and not a time. The other was Mark Diederichsen’s ‘Reconstructionism’, a play on Derrida’s Deconstructionism which has influenced so much of Postmodernism. Unfortunately, once again, a quick browse through google turns up exhibitions of Post-Contemporary art (which appear to just be more of the same), and Reconstructionism is already a hard-core Christian movement advocating a return to Mosaic law.
Back to the drawing board. If anyone has suggestions, post them in the comments please.
Update: For the time being I’m using ‘Post-contemporary’ for the show title on the door, I find it too amusing to pass on.
Mia Madre by Elena Arcangeli.
Tomorrow is the vernissage for the first show I’ve ever ‘curated’ (I actually chose the artists, but not necessarily the pieces). There is a lot of excellent work on display from the teachers and alumni of the three traditional painting schools here: The Angel Academy of Art, Charles H. Cecil Studios, and the Florence Academy of Art.
The opening will be from 6 to 8pm at the Cami Gallery so if you’re in the neighborhood please stop by. The address is via della Condotta 36r:
Here are some images from the show:
Update: Here is a very short time-lapse film of the evening, you can use pause to see frames individually (sorry for the lazy photography, but I didn’t want to run around with a camera all night).
This week my traveling painting group will be having our first exhibition in Munich. Our goal is to raise funds for the Myanmar Foundation and Interplast München, both of whose incredible work helping the people of Myanmar we witnessed on our trip there earlier this year. A beautiful gallery space has been donated for the show by the Dorotheum.
We also have a new website with examples of the work, short biographies of each of the artists, and a short film on the Myanmar Foundation.
Sulle Colline di Settignano, 1885
Leith, 1881
Continuing the theme of brilliant regional painters from the Californian school post below. There is a Telemaco Signorini show in Padua at the moment which I am really looking forward to seeing. Signorini has always been one of my favorite plein air painters both for his superb painting technique and the wit he instills in his best work. Such as the play of the bright colors of the advertising billboard above contrasted with the greys and browns of the Scottish town, the lone dog on the wall in End of August at Pietramala below, and the contrasting of the various levels of human endeavor between the humble, transitory vegetable garden and the grand, immutable silhouette of the Duomo in (a painting I haven’t been able to find an image of and can’t remember the title!).
Fine d'agosto a Pietramala, 1889
Una Via di Ravenna
Signorini is probably the greatest painter of the Italian light, from the dirty summer skies contrasted with bright sun-lit roads, to his exceptional rendering of the long grey autumn and winter evenings. His draftsmanship is superb, and often in the small unfinished sketches you can see how everything was meticulously drawn in pencil before he started (Paxton recounted seeing Sargent do this as well with his seemingly freehand Venetian watercolors). Signorini’s brushwork and, often, palette-knife-work is always varied and unexpected, and I would be curious to know what medium he used as the variety of edge is really impressive, from the long soft gradations of the foliage and shadows, to his razor-sharp roofs and palm fronds.
Paesaggio Toscano, 1875
Also, the museums in Italy are all free this weekend. I just spent an hour looking at the Signorini at the Pitti Modern and was the only one in the place the whole time.
La Vuelta de la Pesca. Oil on linen, 265 x 325 cm, 1894.
The Prado Museum in Madrid is having a huge exhibition of Joaquín Sorolla until the 6th of September. With over 100 works from one of the greatest plein air painters ever, this is a show not to be missed.
I remember seeing a black and white photograph of Sorolla painting the above painting (or a version of it) on site, with a massive wooden wind-block built to protect the canvas. This type of large scale plein air work is something I think we don’t see enough of these days.
Triste Herencia (Sad Inheritance). 210 x 285 cm, 1899
Triste Herencia was in the 1900 show at the Guggenheim a few years back and it really came off as the best piece in the show (Sorolla’s massive painting of the ladies mending the sails was a close second). The ’sad inheritance’ is the crippling syphilis these children were born with from mothers working as prostitutes. The contrast between the joyous colors of the children’s bodies in the sun and the inky dark of the sea and priest’s robes is brilliant. Such a poignant subject matter as well, and at the time I found it interesting to be touched by the lives of these children from such a long time ago.
The Exhibition page on the Prado website.
San Marcellino a Monti. Oil on linen, 2009, 70 x 54 inches.
I’m off for New York today and I’ll be away for three weeks, so most likely no blog updates. I did the catalog myself for my upcoming solo exhibition and exported a pdf if anyone would like to see it online (its just under 1 megabite). The show will be Tuscan landscapes from last year as well as a few of the sketches from Myanmar in February.
Chinthe of Lawkananda Paya. Oil on panel, 2009, 10 x 14 inches.
The set-up.
This week I had a professional photographic studio (Industrial Foto) come to photograph my latest paintings for a catalog. It was interesting to see their set up, and the results are so much better than what I can do with my Panasonic Lumix LX2. It was very expensive though, for a little more money I could have bought a new entry level DSLR
Industrialfoto running the shoot from a Macbook
They used artificial light and some of the photos came out with a yellow tint. I can color correct them myself but I would have preferred to work from the RAW camera files rather than the TIFFs they sent me.
For the internet the high-resolution photos really don’t make much of a difference, here is a side by side comparison between my little Panasonic and their system:
The Hasselblad is on the left, my Panasonic is on the right.
Leo and Josh with the model.
On Friday April 17th, Greg, Josh, Leo and I will be having an open studio in our beautiful 19th-century painting studio in Piazza Donatello. Everyone is welcome. You can pop by during the day to beat the crowds if you like, but let someone know you’re coming. Otherwise we’ll have fine wine and even better art from 18:00 onwards.
