September 12, 2011

Discovery: Robert Liberace, painter

Starting school at George Washington University with a baseball scholarship, Robert Liberace had his eyes set on pursing athletics. As it happened, a figure-drawing class taken on a whim ended up completely altering his life: He was fascinated by human anatomy and by Renaissance art. Teachers encouraged him to pursue studies in that area, and he ended up staying at George Washington University to obtain both his BFA and MFA. Throughout the years, he has garnered much acclaim for his classical, figurative drawings, paintings, and sculptures. Currently, he is represented by a number of galleries and his prices range from $4,000 to $11,000. He currently teaches figure drawing and anatomy at The Art League of Virginia.

His technique is fairly conservative: watercolor-toned papers, red chalk under-drawings, conté block-ins, etc; as well as his subject matter: nude studies, portrait work, biblical and mythological interpretations, and so on.
His work has the blatant presence of Renaissance artists like Michelangelo and DaVinci, as well as the expected influence of the French Academics, such as Gêrome. His portrait work (in particular the studies) are constructed in a manner similar to Nikolai Fechin and perhaps even John Singer Sargent (although Sargent’s methods are generally unknown), —however, unfortunately, finished portraits for clients tend to look a bit overdone. Liberace’s style strength is intense and loose, and it’s best kept that way. Trying to give the viewer too much, or trying to tame things down, and his whole aesthetic seems to stiffen and break. That in mind, his strongest pieces are those set to motion, especially his motion studies featuring multiple stages of a figure (think Bargue meets Muybridge). 


Liberace is, perhaps at his worst, a bit of an era-chaser: meticulously painting Italian plazas in a monochrome watercolor, spending hours making nearly invisible hatch marks on a from-life figure sketch, etc. His work seeks to attain the forever lost, nostalgic triumph of an art era long extinct. Luckily though, his slight deviations to the poetry of motion (something not explored by the academics), is a trait that properly contextualizes Liberace into the contemporary art sphere. 



 

September 11, 2011

Contemporary Painters / Image Dump III

For as I am guilty of the "Golden-Age" fallacy (especially in regards to music and painting), I have to admit that the 21st century has a number of amazing contemporary aesthetes. As a painter, I am especially critical of the conceptual mumbo-jumbo that has proliferated many art galleries, and actually, most of the art community. However, I have to realize that there are many stellar painters who still work and study today. Granted, it's an uphill battle for us, and we nearly deify people like Rembrandt, Velasquez, and --ohmygosh-- Sargent.  Despite the sometimes nullifying sense of artistic freedom given to contemporary artists, that same sense of freedom does give us (the living) something more than what the dead ancients had: freedom. And just that. Our paintings won't be burned if the figures have disproportional fingers. We won't be laughed out of the city if our colors aren't completely real. Looking back, we can not only draw from the technical genius of the painting masters, but also pick up the color theory of the Impressionists, the compositions of the Modernists, the brush quality of the Russian Social Realists, etc. We can really make anything that we want. I'm aware that this post just screams 'postmodernism," but whatever. It is what it is. For a painting class I had to do some digging around on a few art gallery websites and here are some of my new favorites:



















September 4, 2011

Edith Piaf & Magali Noël

Ici,  two of my newest obsessions in French music. Of course, what French music would be complete without Edith Piaf? (French music without her would be like American government without The Constitution. A bit of a stretch? I think not). 





And then a new girl: Magali Noël. I do not know how I have never heard of her. I was browsing youtube and ran across a video of hers, and within ten seconds, I was in love. This song was apparently one of the first French rock-and-roll songs and was also banned on French radios for years due to it's incredibly risqué lyrics (for the non-Frenchies listening, it's about a sadomasochistic encounter). 



I'm almost embarrassed to say that I haven't heard of these (of these songs by Piaf, and of Magali Noel at all). If and when any of you run across something deliciously French, please do not hesitate to tell me. My repertoire is sparse.  

September 3, 2011

Image Dump II

As promised, here we are at another Image Dump day. For those of you who didn't learn of my tragedy, I recently had a hard-drive failure. My information was completely irretrievable. I lost all of my images, poems, writings, essays, drafts, and portfolio pieces. Luckily, I do have an external hard-drive, but it's not like I back it up every two hours. Let me include the fact that it was not my fault and was not in any way caused by my excessive amounts of music and images. Believe me. It was a manufacturing issue. BestBuy said so. Needless to say, I lost a lot, including my libraries of images. Honestly though, it was the most liberating of traumas that I have ever endured. Now that everything is gone, I am ready to start again. And so here we are, ready for the second Image Dump, but really, the first one of the new batch.