19th September 2010 - Who's made a mark this week?

Oil Baron by Martin Roberts
(who I met at the Threadneedle Debate about Arts Funding
of which more next week)

I find September in the UK is always a month when a lot if happening in the Art world.  Major new exhibitions open, major events take place and major competitions are making significant announcements.  This last week has been very busy!

The Liverpool Biennial

The Liverpool Biennial (or Biennale is you're going to be European about it!) started yesterday in Liverpool and runs from 18th September to 28th November.  It's the UK's leading festival of Contemporary Visual Art.    

• Lots on the biennial website and you can follow what's going on on Twitter as well.  
• This is the BBC News on the Biennial - plus a slideshow of the event.  

The big question this year is going to be whether this will be the last time we see the Biennial in its current form given the fact that public funding cutrs loom large on the horizon and one of its funding sponsors has already been axed.

For ten weeks every two years the city of Liverpool is transformed into the most amazing living gallery of new art, showcasing the best contemporary artists from around the world.

and

Works by almost 900 artists from around the world are going on show as part of the UK's largest contemporary arts festival, the Liverpool Biennial.
The event attracted 975,000 visitors the last time it was staged, in 2008.

BBC News - Cultures clash at Liverpool Biennial of art

Major UK Art Competitions and Prizes

The John Moores Contemporary Painting Prize is also based in Liverpool - with the exhibition at the Walker Art Gallery - and is always associated with the Biennial.  On Thursday night - just before the Festival started we heard the announcement that Keith Coventry (won the) £25,000 John Moores Painting Prize 2010

Building the Riverside Museum by Patricia Cain

Which was 24 hours after Wednesday night here in London when I heard who had won the Threadneedle Prize for contemporary figurative art.  Now if I'd got digitally enhanced I could have written my blog post while sat at the dinner table listening to the speeches - but instead I took photos - including one of the winner who you can see and read about in Patricia Cain wins £25,000 Threadneedle Prize 2010.  She's a very nice lady and it was really good to see a pastel drawing win a major prize!

Jonathan Jones on the Guardian was rather less complimentary about the Threadneedle competition and figurative art - which I'd be a tad more persuaded about if he didn't keep trailing the artist (Michaelangelo) he's just written a book about because it increases the chances I'll think he's writing advertising copy rather than critical commentary!

Meanwhile this is My Threadneedle Prize shortlist - right artist - wrong pastel drawing!

Art Blogs

Audio Interviews with/about artists

• This is a post about an audio interview with Kurt Jackson about his new exhibition - words and pics are definitely worth listening to and looking at - see Kurt Jackson and the River Dart
• You can also listen to Lisa Jardine's A Point of View The Sistine tapestries about the four huge tapestries from the Sistine Chapel which the Vatican have lent to the Victoria and Albert Museum to mark the visit of Pope Benedict XVI.  The V&A is the home of Raphael's huge Cartoon (preparatory drawings for the tapestries). The tapestries were not seen alongside the cartoons by Raphael in his lifetime as they were not completed until after his death

The reuniting of Raphael's Sistine Chapel tapestries and their original designs is little short of a miracle

Raphael: Cartoons and Tapestries for the Sistine Chapel, at V&A, Seven magazine review

Drawing and sketching
There's a new drawing blog Line by Line - on the New York Times of all places.  Thanks to Rose Welty for the tip-off. 

•  This is how it describes itself (below).  I've added it to the drawing blogroll and will be keeping an eye on it to see how it does.  Quite a lot of these type of blogs start well and then peter out....however this one has a limited life of 12 weeks.  I wonder how much he will post in that time?

LINE BY LINE:  A series on learning the basics of drawing, presented by the artist and author James McMullan. Line By Line begins with installments on line, perspective, proportion and structure, and continues from there, using examples from art history to illuminate specific issues. Pencil and paper recommended.

• This is the first blog post Getting Back to the Phantom Skill.  According to 'search', tis is the first and only item ever tagged 'drawing' on the New York Times!

Coloured Pencils and Pastels
I've got the 'official posts from UKCPS News about the 9th Annual Open International Exhibition below.  Here are the artists who've been blogging about their pictures being in the exhibition!

• Sue Clinker (Pencilpix) is 15/09: CHUFFED AS A MAGGOT!! to have won Reserve Best in Show.  She'a also pretty pleased about having sold her picture in her first outing at the Society of Feline Artists Exhibition.  Sue is also a member of Made in Whistable
• Bev Lewis (Animal Artistry by Bev Lewis) won a Highly Commended Award for her Silverback 'Rainforest Dreaming'
• Pauline Longley (Pauline Longley's ArtBlog) was also very chuffed to get a Highly Commended for her coloured pencil portrait of a small boy.  Pauline is demonstrating at the exhibition on will be demonstrating on 29th and 30th September.
• Sue Smith (Sue's Sketch Blog) is back with us after a prolonged absence due to illness.  It's very good to see both her and her work - with the latter being in the exhibition

Portraiture

• Philip Glass Talks About His Friend Chuck Close (one of my favourite contemporary artists) “Everyone He Photographed That Day Became Famous”

Art and the Economy / Art Collectors

• There are 10,035 signatures on the the Save the Arts petition already!
• Lehman's corporate art collection goes under the hammer at Christies - An auction of works held by Lehman in the United States will take place at Sotheby's in New York on 25 September. This event boasts a star-studded contemporary collection, with works from John Baldessari, Anish Kapoor, Damien Hirst, Cindy Sherman, John Currin, Richard Prince, Roni Horn and Gerhard Richter.
• Metropolitan Museum Cuts Sales Staff.  If they're suffering, it's not surprising if others are too....... 

Art Competitions

It's fascinating to see that we now have Visitors Choice awards for paintings chosen by people on Twitter and Facebook!  So here's the update for the BP Portrait Awards

• Winner of Twitter Fave BP Portrait Award painting is Alan Rickman by Raoul Martinez. It's now the background image on the National Portrait Gallery's twitter page - see NPGLondon - how about that for a marketing wheeze!
• Winner of the NPG Facebook favourite BP Portrait Award painting is Geneva by Ilaria Rosselli del Turco - and became the profile pic for the exhibition. Many congratulations to Ilaria (Ilaria Rosselli Del Turco - News  I think that might make up for missing the PV! :)

Art Exhibitions

New exhibitions, viewing today......

• Dulwich Gallery's new Salvator Rosa show Salvator Rosa (1615 – 1673): Bandits, Wilderness and Magic (15 September - 28 November) - see Salvator Rosa at Dulwich Picture Gallery
• Arcimboldo, 1526–1593: Nature and Fantasy (September 19, 2010–January 9, 2011) is at the National Gallery of Art - Washington, DC USA

Sixteen examples of the fantastic composite heads painted by Giuseppe Arcimboldo will be featured in this exhibition, their first appearance in the United States. Bizarre yet scientifically accurate, the unusual heads are composed of plants, animals, and objects. 

Opening next week.......

• Angus McEwan ARWS RSW - his new work "Resonance" opens at the Open Eye Gallery, 34 Abercromby Place Edinburgh EH3 6QE on Thursday the 23rd of September 2010 and continues until to 12th October 2010. Click the link to see works in this show about Cuba
• Hilary Paynter - an exhibition of Wood Engravings at the Bankside Gallery 22 September - 3rd October.  She has a very weird website but it's worth the effort.

Art History, Galleries and Museums

• Winsor and Newton have a an article about Article: Palettes of the Masters - JMW Turner
• The Guardian has a couple of items about Kitagawa Utamaro: the Japanese artist who loved women
• This is a slideshow of prints by the Japanese master who drew the intimate world of courtesans and geishas.   Images are from an exhibition at the Ikon Gallery in Birmingham which opens on 21st September
• Kitagawa Utamaro - Laura Cummings explains in her article how few artists have captured the intimate world of courtesans and geishas as dazzlingly as Kitagawa Utamaro

Art Society Exhibitions

Loire Valley Harvest by Janie Pirie

These are the posts relating to the the 9th Annual Open International Exhibition held by the United Kingdom Coloured Pencil Society at the Stamford Arts Centre

• Winner of Best in Show 2010 is... Janie Pirie (Mrs Thorogood).  Janie tells me that she intends to donate £20 for each print sold of Loire Valley Harvest (now re-named All Is Safely Gathered In) to the St. Elizabeth Hospice in Ipswich for the untiring work they do for all terminally ill patients.  Contact Janie if you're interested in a copy as she hasn't got it up on her website yet.
• 9th Annual Open International Exhibition: Other Prizewinners
• Highly commended at the 9th Annual Open International Show 
• New signature members of UKCPS (2010)
• UKPCS Annual Exhibition 2010: Private View

The ‘THE NATURAL EYE’ - The 47th Annual Exhibition of the  Society of Wildlife Artists opens at the Mall Galleries on 22 September and runs to 2 October 2010

Art Education / workshops / Tips and techniques

Art instruction books

• Mitchel Albala (Essential Concepts of Landscape Painting) is following up his best-selling book about landscape painting by teaching about The Lessons of Fog: Massing, Values Zones, Edges and Neutrals
• Deborah Secor (Landscape Painting in Pastels) continues her blog book about Landscape Painting:
• CHAPTER THIRTY -- TWENTY-STROKE PAINTINGS
• CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE – UNDERPAINTING IN COMPLEMENTS
• CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO -- FROM STUDIO TO PLEIN AIR this includes a very helpful overview of the merits of studio versus location painting and a list of materials for plein air painting

Art class / workshops

• Deborah Secor also uses a blog to deliver her schedule for her painting class and then to post results afterwards.  It's a way of using blogs which other tutors of regular and one-off classes could well emulate.  See her posts:
• Class 5— September 2 — Class Collage and Class Collage Results (and some other classroom work)
• Class 6— September 9— Memory Painting Exercise and Memory Painting results
• Class 7— September 16— Emotion of Color and Emotion of Color class results

Art Demonstrations

• You can see award-winning botanical artist Susan Christopher Coulson demonstrating her coloured pencil work using Artists Pencils at the Cumberland Pencil Museum on 28th Sept 2010 and 29th Sept 2010

Art Videos

• This is Marc Dalassio's extremely helpful and very short video on how to use the sight-size approach to plein air painting - which I've posted on The Art of the Landscape

Tips

• Richard mcDaniel (The Pastel Pointers Blog) has A Few Suggestions for Photographing Paintings | Part 1 

Art Studios

• Billie Crain (Art by Crain) has a new easel.  Do you have a new easel you;d like to share?

Art Supplies

Billie also alerted me to Daniel Smith's Watercolor 66 Try-It Color Sheet which I wrote about on my Making A Mark reviews blog - and then daniel Smith sent some suggested videos they'd loaded on to YouTube about to use the sheet (and the post is now updated with those links)

Colour

• I've only recently discovered the fact that back in 2008 Marc Dalessio did a colour test of different paints in relation to vermilion.  You can read about it omn his blog in Color test: Vermilion I followed up and posted Product review: Marc Dalassio's Vermillion Test which provides the link to the website to the paint he recommends
• Winsor & Newton - who have one of the most helpful manufacturer's websites - have a Spotlight on colour: Vandyke Brown page.  Of course I looked a bit further (not easy!) and found
• Spotlight on colour: Payne's Gray
• Spotlight on colour: Turquoise
• Spotlight on colour: Cadmium Orange
• Spotlight on Colour: Phthalo Green

Websites, webware and blogging

• Tina Mammoser (The Cycling Artist) is running courses on how to use your blog to improve your art prospects.  See Blogging - with Tina Mammoser:  Blogging for Beginners: Your Way for Your Art 4-29 October 2010
• Did you know? Check out these posts on the ColourLovers blog
• The Most Powerful Colors in the World
• you could Use Color to Increase Participation?

Using Color to Increase Participation

and finally........

This was amusing - Revealed: the colour of the social web is the colour of Twitter.  What grey, blue and pink say about you on Twitter.  Maybe avoid the pink? ;)