I have been meaning to post this exhibition up for some weeks and now it's slipped past it's exhibition dates. Nevertheless, it's one that's well worth looking into and so are the artists Chris Peters & David R Choquette. The exhibition was on at Last Rites Gallery.
Chris Peters hails from Los Angeles. He trained for three years at the Gage Academy of Art, completing their program that emphasizes academic painting techniques, whereas David Choquette is a 27 years old Montreal based artist and tattooist.
Australian artist Sam Leach has won both the Archibald Prize for portraiture ($50,000) and the Wynne Prize for landscapes ($25,000) at the Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney. This is only the third time an artist has won both prizes in the same year. The other two were William Dobell in 1948 and Brett Whiteley in 1978.
"The winning portrait is of the singer/songwriter Tim Minchin who is building an international reputation with his off-kilter brand of musical comedy. With his artfully unkempt hair, heavy eye make-up and bare feet, his act is a wickedly entertaining mix of piano playing, cheerfully offensive songs, physical comedy and stand-up. His witty lyrics poke fun at all manner of sacred cows including religion, death, censorship and romantic love." Courtesy AGNSW Press Release
Christen Købke: Danish Master of Light at The National Gallery is the first exhibition outside Denmark to focus on the paintings of Christen Købke (1810–1848). Emphasising his exquisite originality and experimental outlook, the exhibition focuses on the most innovative aspects of his work – including outdoor sketching, his fascination with painterly immediacy, and treatment of light and atmosphere.
The exhibition features around 40 of Købke’s most celebrated works, spanning a variety of genres. Works include landscapes, portraits of many of his family and closest friends, and depictions of Danish national monuments using his charming and unusual sense of perspective.
The exhibition will travel to the National Galleries of Scotland, Edinburgh (5 July–3 October 2010).
Currenty on TV here is the BBC series DESPERATE ROMANTICS, the lusty tale of the rebellious, talented & charismatic artists that foundered the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, William Holman Hunt, John Everett Millais and Dante Gabriel Rossetti.
But what does it take to claim a new art movement today?
Today's Desperate Romantics, Alexy Steele, Tony Pro and Jeremy Lipking think they know and have launched "NOVOREALISM". But is "NOVOREALISM" a new art movement or the result of unrestrained inflated egos in action?
Tony Pro in action.
What is "NOVOREALISM"?
NOVOREALISM according to Alexy Steele is the... " Revolution that Came; Revolution is raging in the land. There was no name worthy of it until now. Yet here it is: “NOVOREALISM." It is a description of current and present, widely spread artistic movement functioning as a set of specific tools, philosophy and practice. As any major art movement in history - it is a common visual language based on a common worldview. As any language, it has its own rules – without knowing them you can still appreciate the music of the language but without comprehending its true meaning....." to read the whole Manifesto Click here
Looking at the 3 main protagonists Pro, Lipking & Alexey....maybe they should've called themselves "THE INSTAMATICS" for their mainly simple point and shoot painting.........and leave the "revolutionary art" to greater minds.
A new art movement or self-promotion? Not that there is anything wrong with promoting oneself or one's artistic beliefs?
I see "NOVOREALISM" not as a new art movement, but as part of the recent trend of artists working with "realism" who are standing up and demanding to be noticed. A grouping of like minded artists to gain strength as a collective.
Another "realism" promoting event is Realist Revolution, a panel discussion on Friday night April 23rd 2010 4:00pm Hyatt Regency Reston, VA
Contemporary Art: REALIST REVOLUTION and CRITICAL RELEVANCE Is Main Stream Media Missing an Important Cultural Trend?
Premises: "There is an actually existing, wide-spread, multi-faceted Realist movement in the Art world today. It is functioning as a set of specific tools, philosophy and practice. As any major art movement in history - it is a common visual language based on a common world view. This movement is current, relevant and forward - looking . This movement is part of presently existing contemporary Art This movement is a reflection of an important aspect of our modern world - democratization of cultural plane. "
Hopefully someone will document it so it can be seen by many.
Meanwhile, on March 14th Graydon Parrish gave a lecture at the Santa Barbara Museum of Art and luckily the artist Jim Harris was there to video it.
Graydon's talk was titled; Technique as Influence: The painter's odyssey of craft and communication. Although, it wasn't strictly a "realism" promoting event, it was a considered & articulate argument in favour excellence in technique mainly displayed in realist painting.
Here is Part 1 of 10 videos, all well worth a viewing.
Artists working with 'Realism" are beginning to group together, social networking sites like Facebook is a major conduit for this. Some form tight bonds, others loose associations, but one thing is certain, there is the beginnings of a push for wider recognition. I do believe it's important for "realist" groups to be inclusive, rather than exclusive. To be openminded towards the many and varied approaches artists take that can be seen as forms of "Realism".
Meanwhile, I'll do my small bit, here In The Real Art World to promote as wide a range of realist artists as possible and to be inclusive of both Contemporary artists and those who are more traditional in thier outlooks.
One of my all time favourite artists, Lee Price is showing this month at Sarah Bain Gallery, a group exhibition of "Gallery Artists" which is on for the duration of March.
I first came across her via this painting, Full, 2007, a painting I absolutely just love and keep finding myself being drawn back to.
Craig Wylie: Suns Silence Stopped, at Plus One Gallery is an exhibition worth going to see if you can. Wylie won the BP Portrait Award at the National Portrait Gallery, London in 2008. In this exhibition Wylie is presenting a series of head paintings based upon people he knows.
Craig Wylie paints from his own photographs, the process involving working directly from a laptop screen, he combines both the incidental light of photography and the actual light passing through the images he works from, giving his paintings an unusual depth and clarity of light and colour.
Stockholm's annual jury-selected Spring Salon, a yearly tradition since the 1920's is currently open. One artist selected is Mattias Sammekull, definitely an artist to keep an eye on.
To visit Liljevalchs Konsthall, Stockholm Click here
Mattias Sammekull, The accused, Oil on linen 2009, 130x105cm
To view more of Mattias Sammekull's art Click here
David Klamen's exhibition "Painting Paintings" at Richard Gray Gallery are literally paintings of paintings on gallery walls.
The Gallery's Press Release states.... "Richard Gray Gallery is pleased to announce Painting Paintings, a series of 20 new works by David Klamen.
Klamen has consistently set out to parse the nature of memory and explore visual answers to the question, “how do we know what we know?”. In Painting Paintings, Klamen faithfully depicts iconic museum paintings in-situ, but subjugates them to methodological manipulation: sharp angles, skewed perspective, dramatic liberty with scale, and the ubiquitous inclusion of wall labels all work together to create a new, forcefully illusionistic experience of these masterpieces from the canon of art history. Staying rigorously faithful to the appearance of his ‘subjects’, Klamen employs a vast range of periods and styles: Renaissance masterworks by Zurburán and Rembrandt are so heavily varnished as to be nearly obscured; the strictly horizontal and vertical lines of Mondrian take on new meaning as diagonals; and Franz Kline’s postwar gesturalism becomes suspended in time. As catalogue essayist Lisa Wainwright observes, “Klamen culls from the most common range of genres… so as to usurp the entirety of the art historical machine in the service of a contemporary exploration of painting’s value.” David Klamen’s work is included in the collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; the Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art; the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago; the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, among others. He lives and works in Chicago."
William Bailey's latest exhibition at Betty Cuningham Gallery is the third for this veteran artist at Betty Cuningham Gallery. Bailey is known particularly for his stil-life and figure paintings. Both the still-life & figure paintings are derived from his imagination, adjusting the light source and relative scale of each object as he paints. The end result is a stillness in the objects and the figures painted from Bailey’s imagination have a strange, dreamlike presence.
You can read the essay about William Bailey's art, "Mindmade Things", by Alexi Worth, by Clicking Here
