Higher Resolution Mancini Scan

Here's a nicer reproduction of Mancini's boy sent to me by Greg Lahti.  I think it gets the point across far better.  Thanks Greg!

The Best paintings I've Ever Seen: Antonio Mancini

I didn't know Mancini's name before seeing this painting, but later realized it was the same guy that painted another of my favorite pieces "resting" at the Chicago Institute (my post about the Chicago Institue).  The reproductions available online are miserable, but this is one of the most arresting objects I've ever encountered.  It commands the room it hangs in at the Philadelphia Art Museum, and I think I gasped when I first saw it.  Its monumentality is startling and the longer you look it doesn't let you go.  

The candy cane- striped pole by his foot almost looks out of place, like something you've never seen in an old painting.  The delicate handling of the wallpaper patterns couldn't be more differently handled than the chunky, globby hair mass.  Even the pupils of the eyes are convex blobs of paint that catch actual highlights on them.

I think one of the worst contributions of French impressionism and modernism to painting is the overuse and strict copy of color.  Imagine this painting with a saturated palette of bright colors, it would kill the melancholy.  The only pure colors are a few red notes in the still life.  To me the saddest statement in the painting is the scraggly peacock feather, pitifully drooping from under his arm.

Adam Miller

Adam Miller's paintings really hit home for me.  Born in 1979, he's three years younger that me, he's to me one of the most exciting young painters of my generation.  When I saw his paintings at first I was a little shocked at how close he came to things I had on the easel.  Even the phone poles! But there are definitely differences the more I look at them.

What I admire most is the combination of solid drawing with movement, powerful design, and movement.  The one above is my favorite.  Such a perfect melancholy. 

Edward Burne-Jones

I prefer not to know the "meaning" of a painting before I see it.  To me it dilutes the experience to be too aware of the subject matter from the beginning.  If I have to know the story it represents or biographical information about the artist then the picture is not successful.  To literally tell a story is an illustrator's job, but a painter's job is to transcend and to touch.  The subject is handled with such poetry and such universality that any person at any time could understand it.  

Of course it can enrich and inform the experience the more one knows about the story, the historical context, the artist's life and philosophy, and the process behind the work, but I believe it is the immediate gut reaction that tells the most about the true meaning of a piece, and this is what Edward Burne-Jones does best.  It does not matter to me whether these are biblical or pagan themes, whether he was a symbolist or a pre-Raphaelite.  They are poems of line and form and transcend the superficial.

Every person dreams of flying.

One of the most poetic drawings I've seen.  

So wonderfully ghost-like.  It would almost be a shame to see it finished

Two versions of "Phyllis and Demophoon" with preliminary sketch.  It's always nice to see process work.  It appears he's using the model to work out the anatomy difficult areas but doing a large part of the work from his imagination.

Max Ginsburg Retrospective Exhibitions and Book

If you're in New York or the midwest please check out one of Max Ginsburg's retrospective shows.  Max is an exciting painter, was one of my most influential teachers, taught Steven Assael and many great realist painters today. 

The show in New York will run through August 5 at the Salmagundi club in Gramercy and the other is September 15th - November 11th at the Butler Institute of American Art in Youngstown, Ohio.  Accompanying the exhibition is also a book of work spanning Max's career.  Very exciting.

"Foreclosure", Max Ginsburg

http://www.maxginsburg.com/retrospective.html

"Contemporary Classicists: Graduates of the Florence Academy" in Fayetteville, AR

I heard about this show just in the nick of time, catching it two days before it closed.  I had never been to Fayetteville, but it was worth every minute of the three-hour drive.  Finally, it seems, contemporary classicism may be making it to the deep south.  The show at "The Revolver" (the coolest name I've heard for a gallery) in the Fayetteville Underground was put on by Maggie Ivy, a native of Little Rock and Fayetteville and a student at the Florence Academy.  I was glad to meet Maggie and Ellen Barker Soderholm, one of the other painters, who had flown in from Sweden.  I plan to join forces with Maggie somehow locally and hope to see more work of this caliber in Arkansas's future.  Below is some of the work from the show.

Ellen Barkin Söderholm

Kendric Tonn

Amelia Meredith

Zacheriah Kramer

Per Elof Nilsson Ricklund

Maggie Ivy

Lucien Freud dies at 88. Celebrate the legacy of this great painter.

If you're not familiar with Lucian Freud's work, please take a moment to learn about a great British painter, the grandson of Sigmund Freud, who passed on this week at the age of 88.  I understand the arguments against him.  His work is offensive, distasteful, uncomfortable, and dangerous, but so is Caravaggio, so is punk rock, so was Beethoven, and so are many things that I love, and I find enormous beauty in their humanity.  Either you get him or you don't and that's okay, but the man was a daring and powerful painter.

-I did a "living grand master" post a while back about him that you can view here.
-Freud on Wikipedia
-NY Times article
-Just found a documentary on him I had not seen before on youtube.  Here's part one.

These are two of my favorite paintings by him:




His process was completely mad.  It makes my heart sing.


A few More...


Ok I put most of my favorites in my other post.  The sheer volume of his work is impressive, but I guess that's natural considering he never stopped making work and painted through his eighties.