December 2016

By Donald Kolberg, Art Bookmarks Editor

Monthly link highlights to online resources and websites that seem informative and inspiring for artists or art enthusiasts. Most are free. Suggestions are welcomed.

How do you fix the Art World?

Back in August, ARTnews decided to explore a question: “How do you fix the art world?” To that end, they spoke with more than 50 individuals—artists and curators, critics and historians, art dealers, and an art fair director.

Three features published in November (part one, part three, and part four) address what is wrong with the art world. Responses range from the lack of a middle-class artist to the elitist persona art culture has been trying to shake for decades.

 

 

Because of an overwhelming response, ARTnews created a second part of the series covering what’s right about the art world. After reading the articles, you may not be any the wiser as to what is going on in the art world, but you will be exposed to a group of people that took the time to put into words a number of issues that artists should be talking about.

Everything Richard Diebenkorn

I’ve added Richard Diebenkorn’s Catalogue Raisonné to my holiday want list, but at $400 it’s low on the list. (For those who don’t know, a catalogue raisonné is a collection of an artist’s complete works with explanations and scholarly commentary. A more comprehensive explanation here.) I will tell you that this interview with Carl Schmitz, Visual Resources & Art Research Librarian at The Richard Diebenkorn Foundation, left me wanting to see this definitive work of one of my favorite artists. But even more exciting was the excerpt from the new catalogue raisonné published by ARTnews. It explores his move to Santa Monica and the effect that had on his art and his work habits; the excerpt also includes examinations into some of the famed Ocean Park series works. And that’s just the excerpt!

National Geographic‘s Nature Photographer of the Year

Nature photography has always amazed me. When I see the variety of captured images representing phenomena that are actually going on all around us, it gives me pause. National Geographic has come out with their annual awards for nature photography, and this year, due to technological advances, we are privy to some of the best images ever. You can easily browse through images using the timeline of their 12-week selection process, or you can filter by category: animal portraits, landscape, action, and environmental issues.

Frank Stella

I’ve decided that each month I will give a nod toward an established or emerging artist that, for reasons I deem important, I will include in this list. Obviously, given the high number of artists trying to get exposure, I could easily inundate you with names and images. But given that this is a bookmark reference, I’ll leave further investigation up to you. So moving past abstract expressionism toward minimalism to an artist whose goal was “to make paintings in which pictorial force came from materiality, not from symbolic meaning,” here is a link to a post-war American painter and sculptor, Frank Stella.

Hillwood Museum: Deco Japan

The art Deco movement imbued Japanese art and design from the ’20s to ’40s, following the Great Kantō earthquake. Deco Japan, on display at the Hillwood Museum in Washington, DC, until January 1, 2017, brings this influential movement to the United States. In this first show of its kind outside of Japan, the art deco influence is evident in everything from matchbooks and furniture to “images of tipsy Japanese women wearing flapper dresses and puffing imported cigarettes.” If you can’t make it to the show, you can read this feature from Hyperallergic.

Van Gogh’s “Lost” Sketchbook

“The Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam and two renowned experts on the Dutch artist are at loggerheads over whether a ‘lost’ sketchbook from his legendary stay in the French city of Arles is genuine.” MSN news has published a great article to bring all you Van Gogh aficionados up to speed on the controversy over a sketchbook.

Copyright 2016 Woven Tale Press LLC. All Rights Reserved.