Easter, the ultimate religious season, often confronts individuals to reassess their spiritual inclinations.  An artist’s grappling of art historical religious traditions proves similar to the layman’s interpretation of Lenten fasting. While many consider the 19th century as artists’ breaking point with religious subjects, artists since have examined and re-appropriated the forms, motifs and iconography of religious art in depictions of everyday life. Iconoclast Manet, who nevertheless strove to present Christ’s true suffering with Realist grit in a canvas, maximized the potency of Christian martyrdom in his Execution of Emperor Maximilian for a contemporary, political subject. Quoting from Goya’s The Third of May 1808, a central Christ-like figure faces down firing squads with dignity. Rather than a intense mediation on lingering Catholic doctrine (or guilt), the artwork memorializes art history.

Stephen Kaltenbach”Caput,” Letterpress, Published by Bert Green Fine Art in partnership with Aardvark Letterpress. Click to inquire.

Stephen Kaltenbach isolates the skull in his work “Caput”.  A companion to its subject is Florentine Masaccio’s Holy Trinity, a fresco uncovered in Santa Maria Novella. In its depiction of Christ’s crucifixion, a skull lays at the base of the cross in allusion to Adam; thus a symbol anticipating and concluding Christ’s death. Like Caput, it is accompanied by a Latin inscription: What you are, I once was: what I am, you will be. Talk about punny!

Kaltenbach’s use of the word-perhaps a play of “Kaputt”, also references itself in its Latin meaning for head. Seperated by centuries, Kaltenbach decodes the religious symbolism of the skull for humor.

 

Wayman Elbrdige Adams, Mother and Child, Oil on board.  Eckert & Ross Fine Art.  Click to inquire.

Wayman Elbrdige Adams’ Mother and Child, like many mother and child scenes, replicates Raphael’s pastoral Madonna and Child (The Small Cowper Madonna). Both artists utilize a pyramidal form to group the duos, a humanist expression of geometric divinity. Madonna and Christ, as the most iconic Mother-Son duo, creates a compositional precedent for gesturing maternal love.

Eric Forstmann’s rectangular composition, plastered with secular trinkets, quotes the predella shape of altarpiece diptychs. As a locus for narratives, Forstmann’s canvas and Renaissance altarpieces expound upon a story…viewers (as the devotional) engage as spectators of the scene.

Eric Forstmann, Match, Oil on Board, Eckert Fine Art.  Click to inquire.

From Jan van Eyck’s Ghent Altarpiece, 1432, St. Bavo’s Cathedral.

While contemporary artworks quoting Renaissance prototypes might not be a bold artistic statement, it reveals a kinship between works of art separated by centuries.

Edouard Quitton, Finches on a Blue Ribbon, Oil on panel, Godel & Co. Fine Art.  Click to inquire.

To celebrate April Fool’s Day, this post reflects on art historical staple, Trompe L’oeil.  Literally to deceive the eye, the technique is employed by artists to create the illusion of three-dimensionality within an artwork.  Although appearing in works of art from the Ancient World, most associate the pictorial trick with modern Art History: in Oudry’s artful compositions of spoils from the hunt or the affable cherubs beckoning viewers into heaven via Baroque church ceilings.  American reinterpretations include William Harnett and John Peto, whose 19th century painted assemblages of paper scraps, photographic mementos and other “stuff” as extensions and indicators of their possessor’s being.

Miguel Moya, “Specimen (Octopus),” Oil on canvas, Arcadia Contemporary.  Click to inquire.

James Neil Hollingsworth, Mixmaster, Oil on canvas, Rehs Galleries.  Click to inquire. 

George Forster, Still Life with Bird’s Nest and Strawberries, Oil on canvas, Questroyal Fine Art.  Click to inquire.

Joe Goode, Studies of the Past 2, 2008, Lithograph, Leslie Sacks Gallery.  Click to inquire. 

While the use of Trompe L’oeil and photorealist methods shows off the precision of its renderer, its use ultimately seduces a viewer through playful deception: hinting to another world in which the painting eternally occupies. FADA inventory traces the pictorial history of the craft.

Bertrand Meniel, Roaring, Acrylic on canvas, Jonathan Novak Contemporary Art.  Click to inquire.

Robert Cottingham, Art, Lithograph, Eckert Fine Art.  Click to inquire.

Yet, when did book covers become art? Browsing through online marketplaces-by no means providing a concise history-17th century vellum book covers adorned with decorative bindings oddly pave the way for mass produced minimalist book covers of the 1960’s. Book covers often incorporate artworks as a means to time stamp its content, bridging parallel artistic and literary movements in a modern afterthought.  Who can resist the pairing of a Grand Manner portrait with an Oxford Classic reedition of a Bronte sisters’ novel? Some are more adventurous: a cubist Picasso marketing Henry James’ Portrait of a Lady, the iconoclast artist provocatively contesting James’ Brahmin persona. While using art as a marketing strategy, book covers with paintings provide a sensory prelude to the book.

Below find both approaches to book cover art, works from FADA’s online inventory matched with your high school English class staples.

George Orwell’s 1984

Sam Francis, First Stone, Jonathan Novak Contemporary Art. Click to inquire.

Abstract Expressionist Sam Francis’s First Stone is the product of Post-War angst resonant in Orwell’s dystopian novel.

Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness 

Leonard Baskin, Saint Anthony with the Red Monster, Wood Engraving, Denenberg Fine Arts.  Click to inquire.

Leonard Baskin’s Saint Anthony with the Red Monster internalizes St. Anthony’s temptation: a biblical precedent to Conrad’s cautionary tale of colonial greed.  The intense texture of the woodcut medium, coupled with bold ink, energizes its visual ambiguity.

Arthur Miller’s “Death of a Salesman” 

Eric Forstmann, Seven Shirts at 12:30 am, Oil on board, Eckert Fine Art. Click to inquire. 

Contemporary realist Forstmann’s Shirts embodies the Middle-Class monotony immortalized in Miller’s play.

Sun Tzu’s Art of War

Robert Riggs, “Goliath hit him with the first clean right hand of the evening,” Oil on canvas, Godel & Co. Click to inquire.

Sport is play: boxing a breeding ground for strategy evoked in the classic how-to.

Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle 

Armin Hansen, “Anchorage” 1921,” Etching, Trotter Galleries.  Click to inquire.

Hints of industry are masked in the background: a colorless scene guided by the spidery quality of Hansen’s etching, amplifying Sinclair’s modern qualms.

Truman Capotes’s In Cold Blood 

Sean Roh, Meltdown, Archival pigment print, PYO Gallery LA.  Click to inquire.

Sean Roh’s laconic print, though vibrantly red, captures the essence of Capote’s murder mystery: the methodical, and fantasized summary of an American crime.

Thomas Mann’s Death in Venice 

Franz Richard Unterberger, Santa Maria Della Salute with Gondoliers on the Grand Canal, Oil on canvas, Vallejo Gallery.  Click to inquire.

The sublimity of Unterberger’s Venice vista juxtaposes Mann’s sickly tale.  A visual anthesis to Mann’s very modern message, the painting  serves as a transition from the idyllic undertaking of the Grand Tour to the intensity of European Relationships post Mann’s 1912 publication.

Andres Nagel, Maria Christina Bridge, Collage, Tasende Gallery.  Click to inquire. 

Similarly, Nagel’s collage seemingly teases Aschenbach’s illicit obsession with young Tadzio: replete with Italian decorative motifs akin to the book’s Greco-Roman allusions.  A very modern medium paired with a very modern book.

While creators of the paintings or books kept the other in mind, even though books-like the bible, or Shakespeare for the Pre-Raphelites-are expounded upon in paintings, creative expression through either medium often encounters overlap. While we’re leaving book cover design to the professionals, works of art, when broken down to their essentials: color, line, composition, reveal their inherent marketability.

FADA began its Desert X journey in January at 2017’s LA Art Show.  In a collaboration with Desert X, which FADA supports as a Founding Member, LA Art Show patrons were brought into a booth evocative of a Movie Colony spread-replete with rattan furniture and Eames chairs—and introduced to Desert X’s curated program of participating established and emerging artists.  

 Although the booth was anchored by reading nook showcasing the catalogs of artists’ recent work, the exhibit’s “newness” and integration within the desert arena called for unique reactions and manifestations-the labors of installation documented fastidiously on the Desert X Instagram. 

 So while visitors received just a tease, nevertheless encouraged by the desert ambience, the collaboration highlighted FADA’s mission as an organization to support compelling art exhibitions/programming with a global reach.  

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FADA made the expedition to Palm Springs for Desert X’s opening weekend.  With installations scattered throughout the desert, the Ace Hotel provided a home base where opening remarks by Artistic Director and Executive Director, Neville Wakefield and Elizabetha Betinski, established the artistic, philosophical and environmental intentions of the endeavor. 

Jeffrey Gibson’s “Alive!” at the Palm Springs Art Museum 

Given a (treasure) map of the works’ locations with the GPS coordinators to find them, we headed north.  In lieu of a caravan our mode of transportation was a Tesla, equipped with a driver who reassured that the falcon wing doors would not cause any injury.  A sense of the desert journey began to take hold as we were whisked from installation to installation, meeting with Desert X artists who explained the influences on their creations.  

Claudia Comte’s “Curves and Zigzags”

Gabriel Kuri’s “Donation Box”- littered with cigarette butts and well-wishers’ pennies 

Provocative, playful and mystical, artworks embodied a monumentality-literally in Claudia Comte’s “Curves and Zigzags”- and in their use of unconventional mediums. As FADA traveled from Gabriel Kuri’s “Donation Box” in an empty strip-mall store front to Sherin Guirguis’ “One I Call” amidst the sublime Whitewater Preserve, contrasting landscapes and mediums revealed artists’ personal interpretations of the desert.  Nevertheless, many art installations were unified in their capability to reflect-to remain hidden. Doug Aitken’s “Mirage”, Philiip K Smith III’s “The Circle of Land and Sky” and Jennifer Bolande’s billboard installation along the highway blended into the desert landscape. 

Inside Sherin Guirguis’ “One I Call,” a desert pantheon 

A bunker shrine to JFK, Will Boone’s “Monument” 

Glenn Kaino’s mystical bunker “Hollow Earth” 

Glenn Kaino and Will Boone’s bunkers were unassumingly buried in the landscape-plugging in GPS coordinates reinforced the notion that one was seeking out the installation. Armando Lerma’s “Coachella Walls” and Jeffrey Gibson’s “Alive!” recast sculpture and painting into meaningful commentary on the desert’s unrecognized inhabitants. 

Doug Aitken’s “Mirage”

The Desert’s Stonehenge: Phillip K. Smith III’s “The Circle of Land and Sky”

Richard Prince’s “Third House” and Rob Pruitt’s Flea Market at the Palm Springs Art Museum, enticed visitors to (although not always sanctioned) take with them mementos of the experience.  

A Desert Dirge: Richard Prince’s “Third Place”

Rob Pruitt’s Flea Market at the Palm Springs Art Museum

While the desert may seem static, dynamic and erotic performances by Lita Albuquerque at Sunnylands and Juliao Sarmento at the Desert Lodge Motel, respectively, energized their audiences. 

 Lita Albuquerque performance at Sunnylands

A man guarding the motel room door took our iPhones before Juliao Sarmento’s 4 minute performance: one person in the room at a time

Some things could not be seen.  Norma Jeane’s apty entitled “Shybot,” a robotic machine, will roam around the desert terrain. Tavares Strachan’s “I Am” only reveals its vedic, neon light message from above. 

Tavares Strachan’s “I Am” from below at the Friday night Opening Party 

As visited installations were crossed off the map, the vibrancy, creativity and uniqueness of individual works contributed to the excitement of the art pilgrimage.  The Fine Art Dealers Association, conscientious of art’s history, saw its future through Desert X’s program.  

 Free and open to the public until April 30th.

 Learn more at https://www.desertx.org/ 

ARRIVAL 

Although categorized under the Sci-Fi genre, Arrival is a movie about communication.  In deciphering the language of Earth’s new visitors, one is kindly reminded of interpreting an abstract canvas.  Joel Hoyer’s watercolor is evocative of hieroglyphics-embodying the effort of translation. 

Joel Hoyer, 7814, Acrylic Pigment on Watercolor Paper, Monotype, Bert Green Fine Art.  Click to inquire. 

FENCES

Character driven performances adapted from August Wilson’s play, evoking the African American experience in the 1950’s, mirror the intimacy of Stephen Scott Young’s “Charmed, 1998.” 

Stephen Scott Young, Charmed, 1998, Watercolor, Surovek Gallery.  Click to inquire. 

HACKSAW RIDGE

 A true war story of one pacifist doctor’s refusal to carry a gun relates to Timothy W. Jahn’s still life, “Remains of Valor,” assembling edifices of war. 

Timothy W. Jahn, Remains of Valor, Oil on panel, Rehs Galleries.  Click to inquire.

HELL OR HIGH WATER 

More than a thrilling tale of bank robberies, the “Neo-Western” film comments on the intricacies of financial world when brothers try to save their family ranch. What lies at the bottom of their problems-oil. A cat and mouse game ensues-simulated in the chaser/chased role embodied in Borein’s Cowboy Watercolor. 

HIDDEN FIGURES 

 A genius title, Hidden Figures recognition of three African American women integral in NASA operations is a film about a woman’s triumph.  Lucy Agid’s sculpture, Dance of Life (small), exudes the feeling of “togetherness” evoked throughout the film.  

Lucy Agid, Dance of Life, Bronze, George Stern Fine Arts.  Click to inquire.

LA LA Land

A love story, the “Neo-Musical” is an ode to Los Angeles, similar to photographer Jim McHugh’s project, “Iconic LA as Subject Series.” 

Jim McHugh, Electrolier-Los Angeles, Archival pigment print, Timothy Yarger Fine Art.  Click to inquire. 

LION 

Henry Moore, Mother and Child IV, 1983, Etching, Leslie Sacks Gallery.  Click to inquire. 

MANCHESTER BY THE SEA 

Ben Schonzeit’s blurred, photorealist “Ammoudi” manifests numbness; a vista looking out to a flight of boats, the most potent symbol from Manchester by the Sea. 

Ben Schonzeit, Ammoudi, Jonathan Novak Contemporary Art.  Click to inquire. 

In anticipation of the upcoming, FADA-supported Desert X, curated, site-specific art installations throughout the Palm Springs Desert area, this post sources FADA inventory evocative of the desert environment. Very much like FADA’s tease of the desert in our 2017 LA Art Show booth, replete with rattan, this post reflects the similarities between fine art and furniture designs responding strongly to the color scheme of the dry climate.

Jeremy Kidd, Desert to Palm, 2005, C-print on aluminum, Leslie Sacks Gallery.  Click to inquire.

Carl Oscar Borg, The Squaw, Oil, David Cook Fine Art.  Click to inquire.

While Desert X -and its installations-are literally rooted in the California landscape, FADA galleries, such as Nedra Matteucci Galleries, David Cook Fine Art, and George Stern Fine Arts specialize in artists, like the Taos school, inspired by the desert-scape. Noticeably empty of civilization, depictions of famous deserts-often inhabitable- contribute to its lore of extremes.

Dick Mason, High Desert Fog, Acrylic on canvas, Nedra Matteucci Galleries.  Click to inquire.

Ethel Magafan, Above the Desert, c.1950, Tempera on masonite, David Cook Fine Art.  Click to inquire.

Desert X goes beyond the barren landscape and recasts the Desert in a new role as exhibition space.  Incorporated into the physical landscape of the desert, how will the exhibition’s audience respond both to the place and space?

Randy Dudley, Desert Tramline, Jonathan Novak Contemporary Art.  Click to inquire.

 

 

 

Within Los Angeles’s bustling cultural scene, participating galleries were able to share their gallery programs with an enthused public. Enjoy Installation Shots and select works by artists presented at the FADA founded Fair!

Arcadia Contemporary  Culver City, CA

Arcadia Contemporary made a splash with their contemporary realist masters.  

Bert Green Fine Art  Chicago, IL

Chicago-based BGFA exhibited in the Works on Paper Section

Richard Duardo, “Ed Ruscha (Blue Shirt)Hand Painted Serigraph,” Watercolor, 2011.

 

OPENING NIGHT: Lois Esformes, FADA Executive Director Jane Glassman and Artist Fred Eversley

LA Art Show visitors browse the inventory of FADA Galleries

In anticipation of the inaugural site-specific contemporary art exhibition Desert X opening next month at sites across the California desert, FADA, a Desert X Founding Member, presented a mock reading nook to browse the catalogues of the exhibition’s invited artists amidst a desert-inspired backdrop.

Plants in Bloom at Booth #1004

LA Art Show Visitors Mingle in the Reading Nook

 

In continuation of 2017 LA Art Show festivities, the Fine Art Dealers Association hosted a cocktail reception at Member Gallery, Arcadia Contemporary in Culver City, for FADA Friends and Desert X Supporters.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

FADA is already looking forward to 2017 with a presentation of Desert X, a contemporary art biennial, at the FADA-founded LA Art Show, January 11th-15th. Booth #1004 introduces participating artists and the questions they will address in site-specific installations amidst the expansive Coachella Valley landscape. Looking forward to an art-filled 2017!

Jerald Melberg Gallery

While participating in many popular art fairs from coast to coast, including Art on Paper, Art New York, Seattle Art Fair and Art Miami, Charlotte based Jerald Melberg Gallery opened a pop-up space in Blowing Rock, NC from June-November. The Hickory Museum of Art acquired a Lee Hall painting for their permanent collection. “Maine Edges” will be included in the museum’s upcoming exhibition “Woman Made: Women Artists from the Hickory Museum of Art Collection” December 17 – April 23, 2017.  Lee Hall’s works, deriving from the tradition of abstractions produced by meditations on nature, were featured in a solo-show last fall at the gallery, Lee Hall: Celebration.

MAINE EDGES   1989 
Acrylic on Linen
36 x 30 inches

 Keep up-to-date with the gallery at @jeraldmelberg

 Rosenbaum Contemporary

Postwar, Modern and Contemporary masters

Rosenbaum Contemporary exhibited Robert Indiana: The Power of Words which featured the artist’s new Bob Dylan Suite as well as a selection of his powerful, word-based works such as HOPE, LOVE, ART, BODY/SOUL, HE and SHE.  An iconic figure of the Pop Art movement, Indiana’s inspiration from American commercial signs are evident in the exhibit. Newly minted Nobel Peace Prize Winner Bob Dylan, the quintessential American wanderer, is the perfect subject for Indiana’s laconic words.

Keep up at @rosenbaumcontemporary

Questroyal Fine Art

American paintings from the nineteenth and twentieth centuries

Ralph Albert Blakelock: The Great Mad Genius Returns, the most extensive exhibition and sale of Blakelock paintings in history, was on view at Questroyal Fine Art November 11–December 10. With over 130 works on view, this monumental exhibition represented each phase of Blakelock’s career, from his iconic moonlights and Indian encampments, to rarely seen late works created while he was institutionalized. The show was covered by the New York Times on October 28.

@questroyal_fine_art

 Nedra Matteucci Galleries

19th and 20th century American art, including the Taos Society of Artists, artists of the American West, and masters of American Impressionism and Modernism

Two heads are better than one.

Nedra Matteucci Galleries held two exhibitions, each featuring two artists: Natural Wonders: Paintings by Chris Morel and Sculpture by Dan Ostermiller, and John Moyers and Terri Kelly Moyers: Time-honored Traditions in Painting.

The first featured Chris Morel’s luminous southwestern landscapes and Dan Ostermiller’s expressive animal bronzes while the second paired husband and wife artists, John Moyers and Terri Kelly Moyers, in a presentation of their newest collection of original oil paintings, showcasing a broad range of locations.