Art without religion
We’ve had a century or more of sneering at religion. Are there any art historians left who are qualified to interpret art in the language and culture in which it was made?
Monday Morning Art School: What sells?
The experts are muddled, so I asked a group of professional artists what they think sells. Here’s what they said.
What is style?
Great painters choose truth over stylishness, even to the point of seeming awkward to their contemporaries
Escape from Pleasantville
“I could feel myself loosening up and finally seeing how to sneak past Border Patrol. I shouted (to myself), ‘I finally get it!’”
Ecotourism and art
A wandering mind is an unhappy mind. A wandering person, on the other hand, tends to be a sublimely happy soul.
Monday Morning Art School—Greeking
Words are powerfully potent in pictures. ‘Greek’ them to deemphasize their meaning, for the sake of your overall design.
Real art in the age of selfies
Instead of decorating your room with posters of famous art that sold for millions, buy original art that moves you.
Monday Morning Art School: don’t worry about AI just yet
The greatest ability we have in painting isn’t our technical skill (as important as that is) but our human intellect, both rational and emotional. The 20th century movement towards content-free art is over, because it can be done better and faster by machines. It doesn’t matter if you’re painting abstraction or landscape; start thinking about what the higher meaning of your work is. If it’s not there, you can be replaced by a computer.
Selling out, or selling art
The market tells us things about our work. Sometimes they’re things we don’t want to hear. If instead of getting mad, we listen, we can learn a lot.
From conceptual art to NFTs
The crash of crypto may have put a temporary hitch in the NFT market, but there is still a need for a mechanism to buy, sell and display digital art. However it evolves, tangible artists working in traditional mediums should feel no compulsion to join. It offers nothing to us.