Sunday, March 18, 2012

18th March 2012: Who's made a mark this week?

It's very interesting to see how art is beginning to get a higher profile in the newsmedia in the UK ever since the Duchess of Cambridge embarked on her Royal duties of visiting good causes.  Her degree in art history should come in handy!

Last week she was at the Dulwich Picture Gallery in South London with the Prince of Wales and Duchess of Cornwall to see children drawing images of the Queen to celebrate the Diamond Jubilee.  The Prince was there in his capacity of founder and President of The Prince's Foundation for Children & the Arts (Children & the Arts)

Here's a video from the Telegraph of The Royals get arty at Dulwich Picture Gallery.

In addition, in January, she became the patron of two art organisations:
  • The Art Room -  which is a charity which helps 5 - 16 year olds who are experiencing emotional and behavioural difficulties.  The aim is to offer art as a therapy to increase children’s self-esteem, self-confidence and independence.
  • The National Portrait Gallery - her patronage is likely to encourage more young people to engage with the Collection.  Her first public visit to the Gallery related to the opening of the Lucian Freud Portraits exhibition.
So nice to see that the person who designed the emblem for Diamond Jubilee (above right) was not an ad man.  Instead it was created by Katherine Dewar, aged 10, from Chester.  She met The Queen at Buckingham Palace after winning a competition run by BBC TV's Blue Peter programme

Art Blogs




Botanical Art
Drawing and Sketching
  • Why Don't You Carry a Journal? by Roz Stendahl (Roz Wound Up) 
  • Tonight's State of Drawing Panel and Amy Sillman's iPhone Animation reviews how a panel tackled some interesting questions about drawing on Hyperallergic.
  • The new London branch of the Urban Sketchers communities had a get together in the rain on Saturday.  We wisely stayed indoors - at the Founders Arms which sits next to the River Thames and Tate Modern - and sketched the skyline, our meals, each other and artists sketching each other - like you do!  (Sketches coming soon......) One of the reasons for staying inside is that we also had lots to talk about - including two upcoming events which you'll hear more about in due course if you follow our new blog Urban Sketchers London.  
Landscapes
“The secret of green is orange, and its friend is violet.”

Painting
Printmaking
Art Business and Marketing
Art Collectors and the Art economy
  • Did you know that in 2011, German painter Gerhard Richter outsold Monet, Giacometti and Rothko—combined?  No nor did I.  However the Wall Street Journal asserts he is The Top-Selling Living Artist (at auction).  The article's a very interesting read in terms of what makes an artist iconic.
  • Felix Salmon (Reuters - Opinion) discusses the notion of art as a commodity or a currency - using a Richter painting as an example - in The commodification of the contemporary art market
  • Different perspectives on where the art market is going in a new four-part series from Art+Auction magazine on ArtInfo - here's the first two parts
Art Exhibitions

Major Exhibitions in the UK
  • The National Gallery has collaborated with Tate Britain to deliver a new exhibition Turner Inspired: In the Light of Claude until 5 June.  I shall be intrigued to see (1) whether it can improve on "Turner and the Masters" (see Exhibition review: Turner and the Masters at Tate Britain) and (2) how much is in the exhibition which isn't usually to be found on the walls of the National Gallery or Tate Britain anyway!  I'm always amazed at how the big galleries manage to get people to pay to see paintings which are there to see all year round!   One of those commenting on one of the Guardian articles summed it up for me
I've just spat out my coffee over the keyboard on reading that the National Gallery wants to charge 12 quid to see the same Turner and Claude paintings that are normally displayed free of charge in the same building!  Yes, there will also be loans. But all these seem to be watercolours from the Turner Bequest which is housed all of 10 minutes away at Tate Britain where they are also available to see completely for free.
the timing of his exhibition is interesting: waves of enthusiasm for proper painting this year mean that pundits will almost certainly set this up as a "moment" when Hirst and all he has come to stand for meets his downfall.
Major Exhibitions in France
Major Exhibitions in the USA
Major Exhibitions in Asia
  • an exhibition of works by American Realist painter Andrew Wyeth (1917-2009) is to be held in China and Hong Kong.  The exhibition will be open to the public 
    • in Beijing April 14 – May 12, 2012 at YUAN Space; 
    • in Hong Kong May 24 – 30, 2012 at the Hong Kong Convention and Exhibition Center; and finally 
    • in New York at Christie’s during early September.
Art Society Exhibitions in the UK
Botanical Art Exhibitions 

Spring is in the air and hence there's a host of botanical art exhibitions coming up
Capturing Flora:
300 years of
Australian botanical art
Art Education

Demonstrations
Intern opportunity
Tips and techniques
  • Graham Giles has a specialised knowledge of painting materials focuses on the qualities of transparent and opaque colours, and the practice of glazing in oil colours in this article - Glazing for Oil Colours - on the Winsor & Newton resource centre website 
Art History & Art Museums

Art Publishing
Art Supplies
  • Jacksons have announced free delivery on UK orders over £20, which are also under 400g.  It's a very good idea but I'm just wondering how we're supposed to know how much art supplies weigh.
  • Michael Chesley Johnson (A Plein Air Painter's Blog) has been writing About Varnish
Copyright
  • Ben Silbermann the founder of Pinterest has DELETED all his boards! I wonder if this might be because he was keen to get rid of any evidence that he'd been pinning images which he might be invoiced for (see http://pinterest.com/ben/ )  My site Pinterest and Copyright tries to keep up with the copyright shenanigans as practiced by Pinterest
if I LIKE your work enough to pin it - I'm also doing you a HUGE disservice as a thank you. Hey buddy - I LOVE your fab photo so much I'm risking the law to give it to someone else who can profit it from it instead of you. Love Life Blog - Not Pining for Pinning
Opinion Poll
  • POLL: Do you insure your art and art business? - It's absolutely OK to admit, anonymously, that you don't insure anything to do with your art - on this month's Making A Mark Poll - see right hand column.  The numbers responding have been pretty low and the only explanation I've come up with so far is that there may be some displacement activity going on......
Web, Internet and Blogging

  • Sharing Trends in 2011 has a useful infographic which repays study
  • Anybody else started to notice that all of a sudden American Blogger blogs with a blogspot.com URL have suddenly started automatically resolving to blogspot.co.uk.  - or at least they do on my iMac here in London!  My very old Blogger blog (see domain name at the top) is based in London and resolutely remains blogspot.com!

and finally......

Is it artornot?
Posted by Making A Mark on Sunday, March 18, 2012
Categories , , , , , , ,

3 comments:

  1. VandyMonday, March 19, 2012

    I love reading your Whose Making a Mark posts, Katherine. They often highlight an exhibition I might have otherwise missed, or make me aware of an artist I didn't know of before. Great source of inspiration. Thank you.

    Specifically in this week's post, I wanted to comment on the 200th Annual Exhibition of Painters in Water Colours which I saw last week. Even though there's less space in The Mall Galleries at the moment, I thought the exhibition was really good. The breadth of styles and subject matter were great and I was pleased to see more work that included aspects of texture, and that focused on unconventional subjects. Well worth seeing. Thanks for the review.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Marion Boddy-EvansWednesday, March 21, 2012

    Jacksons' email said they were assigned weights to everything on their website, but that if you're ordering by phone you'll need to ask. I haven't checked whether it's working or not yet but I presume the weights get added up in the shopping basket.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Making A MarkWednesday, March 21, 2012

    Wow! That's very diligent of them. I guess it also helps with them getting the shipping price right if it goes over.

    Very sensible

    ReplyDelete

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