A top art blog for artists and art lovers: news about major art competitions and exhibitions, interviews with artists, techniques and tips for art and business
Are you trying to decide which art school to apply to?
Do you know what your choice is if you want to do an undergraduate degree or postgraduate course in art and/or design?
Applications for a place to pursue an art degree in the 2018 academic year are now over.
However it's never too early to start looking if you're thinking of applying for a place in the future.
It starts with What is an Art Degree and then organises listings of the Art Schools, Colleges and Universities with a Fine Art Department / Campus by geography - as follows:
All about Art Schools and Colleges - which includes references to the various ranking tools used to grade performance of both the school and the students
Jean-Michel Basquiat (1960-1988) was a precocious and highly original talent - as a poet, artist and social commentator. He lived fast, painted faster, made a lot of money and died young, age 27, of a heroin overdose - just over 30 years ago. In May this year he achieved iconic art star status.
'Basquiat Boom for Real' Barbican
Photo Tristan Fewings | Getty Images | The Estate of Jean Michel Basquiat Artestar
The anniversary of his death has been marked by:
programmes on the BBC
an exhibition at the Barbican.
More about these below.
Basquiat at the BBC
There are a number of programmes and articles about Basquiat
BBC2 iPlayer Basquiat - Rage to Riches - a 90 minute documentary programme on BBC2 - available for the next 18 days
I knew very little about Basquiat before watching the programme the Basquiat - Rags to Riches programme (link above) - but found it enormously interesting and a very good programme / bio about the artist. It's an interesting mix of the people who knew him really well as friends and those who knew him once he became absorbed by the art world - such as Larry Gagosian.
The recent Sotheby's auction of a Jean-Michel Basquiat Skull painting for over a hundred million dollars has catapulted this Brooklyn-born artist into the top tier of the international art market, joining the ranks of Picasso, de Kooning and Francis Bacon. This film tells Jean-Michel's story through exclusive interviews with his two sisters Lisane and Jeanine, who have never before agreed to be interviewed for a TV documentary. With striking candour, Basquiat's art dealers - including Larry Gagosian, Mary Boone and Bruno Bischofberger - as well as his most intimate friends, lovers and fellow artists, expose the cash, the drugs and the pernicious racism which Basquiat confronted on a daily basis. As historical tableaux, visual diaries of defiance or surfaces covered with hidden meanings, Basquiat's art remains the beating heart of this story.
Basquiat at the Barbican: "Basquiat: Boom for Real"
The exhibition at the Barbican opened on 21 September 2017 and it continues until 28 January 2018. I expect it will be very busy over Christmas/New Year! (Note the visitors info below)
'Basquiat Boom for Real' Barbican
Photo Tristan Fewings | Getty Images | The Estate of Jean Michel Basquiat Artestar
It's the richest portrait prize in the world. [Note: Just to give some sense of perspective, according to Google, as of today, $AUD 150,000 equates to £89,160 in the UK; €99,910 in Europe and $117,525 in the USA]
However the BIG story is the backstory about how the portrait came to be entered for the competition in the first place - which makes for fascinating reading. I'm guessing the sentiments expressed will be ones that many artists will have known at some point in their career.
About the Doug Moran National Portrait Prize
Founded in 1988, the aim of the prize over the last 29 years has been to encourage
both excellence and creativity in contemporary Australian portraiture by asking artists to interpret the look and personality of a chosen sitter, either unknown or well known.
The competition is only open to:
Australian citizens or
an artist legally resident in Australia for the 12 months preceding the entries close date
chief curator at the Art Gallery of New South Wales,
then Senior Curator of Australian Art at the National Gallery of Australia and,
from 1984 to 1990, Director of the Art Gallery of South Australia
Wendy Sharpe - an Australian artist who has won an awful lot of awards
Greta Moran - a founding Director of the Moran Arts Foundation which she established with her late husband Doug Moran in 1988.
First Prize
Tim Storrier's portrait of his friend the artist McLean Edwards is to my mind the absolute stand out portrait amongst the finalists - it's head and shoulders above the others - in more ways than one. (notwithstanding the fact the finalists included a self-portrait by McLean Edwards).
Standing almost two metres tall, the portrait is one of the largest in the competition and certainly one of the most beautiful and arresting, depicting a disheveled-looking Edwards in a stark, mystical night landscape with a cigarette dangling loosely from one hand, a bemused look on his ruddy face and one shoe noticeably absent.Doug Moran Art Prize Won by a Portrait Rejected by the Archibald | Jane Albery, Broadsheet Melbourne
Judge Daniel Thomas described the portrait as one that
“went outside his personal mythology and produced an affectionate, teasing, ‘friendship painting’ of a wild fellow artist”.
Interestingly, according to the Sydney Morning Herald
this is the first time Tim Storrier has entered the Doug Moran Portrait Prize competition.
the portrait was "screened out" by the the judges of the Art Gallery of NSW (presumably in relation to the Archibald Prize)
On collecting his prize money Storrier apparently commented as follows
"That picture should have been really called Lazarus, because the judges of the Art Gallery of NSW in their wisdom screened it out; it did not make the cut..... It's interesting isn't it? It's two different institutions with two different value systems at work." Tim Storrier quoted in the Sydney Morning Herald
Storrier was also in the news earlier this year for blasting the choice of winner for The Archibald Prize - see John Olsen and Tim Storrier blast judges of Archibald Prize dailytelegraph.com.au - they accused the judges of picking a "bland" portrait. He reiterated his criticism that the board of the Art Gallery of NSW had been taken over "by a postmodernist cabal" driven by fashion and political caution. in the interview he gave to the Sydney Morning Herald.
That commentary makes more sense now it turns out that even pre-eminent portrait painters can feel very aggrieved about how selections are made for prestigious competitions!
“It’s just amazing how a limping dog can end up winning a race, isn’t it?”Tim Storrier on his Doug Moran win after being rejected for The Archibald
Storrier has very definitely for both street cred and a track record as both a portrait painter and winner of major awards.
He has won the Sulman Prize twice with
1968: a painting of a motorbike accident in the outback (Suzy 350) when he was 19 years of age
He then went on to win the Packing Room Prize in 2014 for his portrait of 'Sir Les Patterson' one of the messier inventions of John Barry Humphries, AO, CBE - Australian comedian, satirist, artist, and author.
His work is also included in the collections of the National Gallery of Australia, the Art Gallery of New South Wales, the Metropolitan Art Museum in New York and all major Australian art museums. I just wish he'd have a shot at the BP Portrait Award so I could get to see one of his portraits - as they are always fascinating if not a total conundrum dressed up as a portrait.
I went to Kew Gardens yesterday to view their new Artful Autumn exhibitions in the gardens. I hadn't quite bargained on getting Apocalypse Now thrown in for free!
The weather was forecast to be warm and sunny and a great day to visit the gardens to see the sculpture and installations.
However, we've lost confidence in the BBC Weather forecasts ever since the Met. Office lost the contract to provide the weather forecasts. We now find ourselves quite often photographing the BBC weather app showing one thing for a specific location and the weather doing something completely different.
Yesterday was a case in point as the orange sun and the huge dust cloud descended on Kew as we walked around the gardens! I must confess we spent an awful lot of time just staring at the sky as it got darker and darker!
Below are some views of the various installations
a sculpture exhibition which has theoretically finished (but is still there) and
four installations by four different artists in Cedar Vista.
I'll touch on the Life in Death exhibition by Rebecca Louise Law later this week. Apparently it was very busy last weekend!
Sculpture
Kew Gardens is a brilliant location for a sculpture exhibition - if and when they are presented well.
Two figures near the Palm House
For me the absolute minimum is providing either an online guide or a leaflet for what you're seeing. Plus a good and uninterrupted view of the sculpture in its setting.
Instead, all too often at Kew this Autumn, what I've found is:
a very unhelpful barrier around the sculpture which completely spoils the effect of the sculpture; and/or
placing an erect large announcement about what it is very close to the sculpture
See below for examples. It's extremely difficult to get a good clean look at the actual sculpture - unless you look at it from an angle which is not the best!
This week "Changing Seasons" the 2017 Annual Exhibition of the Society of Botanical Artists opened at Central Hall Westminster in London. Admission is free and it's on every day 11am-5pm until Saturday 21st October.
Entrance to the exhibition - at the end of the Private View
Two years later it's beginning to rival Making A Mark for numbers of visitors and pageviews AND - according to an Alexa analysis of similar sites - is now the top website for botanical art in the world!
Consequently I now focus my blog posts for the dedicated botanical art fan on that site - however I know there are a lot of fans who have not made the move over.
The Awards Ceremony at the Private View with Jekka McVicar presenting awards
So here for you are the my first two out of three posts about this year's exhibition.
Thursday was the PV and on Friday I posted about the botanical artists receiving Awards - Society of Botanical Artists' Annual Exhibition 2017. It includes images of the artwork receiving awards and more information about the artists (links to their websites are embedded in their names).
a commentary on its development over the last decade that I have been writing reviews of this exhibition.
This year it includes 457 artworks covering paintings, drawings, miniatures, fine art prints and botanical ED works in glass and jewellery.
A view of the exhibition which embraces a range of styles and media for portraying plants
So, for those of you who have been reading this week's very popular post about Watercolour paintings of flowers sell well- maybe it's time to find out what you're missing!
You've got a week left to visit this very popular exhibition.
