Pixdaus

No. Traditionalism (at least in the sense I am using it here) is the preference for things because they are old or because they follow traditions. I couldn't care less whether a work of art is new or old or whether it uses old techniques and materials or new ones. (Well, I do care as a matter of intellectual curiosity, but not when it comes to issues of artistic merit.) What matters to me is the ultimate expressive effectiveness of a work however it was done. Now I do think that over the past 2500 years humanity has learned a thing or two about how to create great artistic expressions and an artist who wishes to do so would benefit from learning all he can from those who have come before, but that doesn't mean that he can't learn newer and better things or that novelty is bad. It just means that many artistic methods have already been discovered and that learning what is already known is the best foundation for moving forward.

The reason this question comes up is that modernists have been for the past hundred years promoting a false alternative. They say that one can either be tied down by old-fashioned ideas/skills/practices/themes/etc. and prefer them because they are traditional OR one can throw the whole thing in the garbage and start "fresh" by adopting the dogma of modernism which considers novelty to be the prime (or perhaps only) virtue. This is curious for two reasons. One is that nobody takes that other position... it's a straw man. Second, after 100 years, the modernist tradition is no longer new. All the stunts have been tried. Blank canvases, silent piano solos, random smearings of paint, random drippings of paint, random swirlings of paint, random selection of materials, selection of fecal matter as the medium... you name it, it has been tried, so now what? Curiously enough, the only novelty left is to create genuinely good art using good techniques... a practice mostly abandoned for the last 100 years.

What matters to me that the works, techniques, and subjects be good, not that they be new or old. My recognition that most recent art has been bad and that much of the older stuff has been better is not a matter of principled preference, but an observation of historical fact.

For what it is worth, there are growing number of professional artists taking on the challenge of learning genuinely good artistic ideas and practices. You can see examples of their work at the Living Masters(tm) Gallery and learn a bit more about the growing number of ateliers that train them at the ARC Approved Atelier Listing.

I recently read the transcript of your interview with David Hockney about the camera obscura. One wonders why people who claim to be reporters were taken in by such nonsense. In the first place, Hockney never learned to draw (this is obvious from his paintings), so one wonders how he could be quoted as an expert in such matters. Secondly, the man reveals himself in this very interview as an ignoramus. He talks about 'Claudio Bruni' being burned in Caravaggio's Rome for his experiments in optics. The man he means is Giordano Bruno who was burned by the Neopolitan Inquisition (a far more conservative body than the Papal Inquisition in Rome) for irregularities in his trinitarian doctrine. In this instance, Hockney filled in his vague knoweldge with a line of nonsensical doubletalk that means exactly nothing. If the man does that, why should he be trusted in any matter of learning? You should be ashamed of yourselves.

I see that the subject has been discussed here at length and I will look over the posts on Hockney as time permits, could could someone knowledgable on the subject please say briefly what role devices such as the camera obscura and wire grids to regulate perspective actually played in the developement of Renaissance art, and where and how far Hockney veers from the truth? I will add that I saw that CBS got Hockney's views endorsed by a physicist -- as a classicist I know how misleading that is. Physical scientists are always misinterpreting ancient evidence becuase they don't know its context and supply a new new context from some tiny fragment of evidence out of their own knowledge and thereby coming up with bizarre theories about the Delphic Oracle, the Mysteries of Mithras, etc.
I bought this book [Secret Knowledge: Rediscovering the Lost Techniques of the Old Masters] sealed with plastic at Barnes and Noble about 6 months ago. When I got to my car, I was excited about learning something of the secrets of the masters, and when I read it I felt ripped off.

You're right, the art from the Renaissance inspires us. We need more of it. We need artists who go deep into life and go deep into their abilities to bring us art that is soul nourishing, art that lifts us higher than the everyday prosaic world.

This book is just like the spirit of our times. We've exhausted every sphere of existence with our cold, calculating scientific eye. We have deconstructed literature, we have fragmented and destroyed the religious traditions, we have wreaked havoc on nature and on ourselves to live a mediocre existence in a fragmented society that is spinning so far from its former center, that we might not make it back.

So, what does Hockney have to offer us? Maybe he can deconstruct a beautiful and poetic way of painting which effectively reflected a deep and abiding love and respect for the human experience, and God, and society, and cradled it all together, its authority providing warmth, inspiration, validity and stability to civilization for centuries.

Or, maybe he can't.

Maybe he can just rattle on about the lens someone may have used, or not.

But, the focus should be on what makes those paintings powerful. And it's not whether or not they had a lens.
The "influence" claim is even more ludicrous than his first claim. You could perhaps more likely claim that the invention of glasses for nearsighted people, I think in the 13th century (David?), lead to more talented people seeing far more clearly, thus enabling them to create sharper more realistic images, than the rare camera obscura.

In fact, if nobody has ever said that before, let me be the first the claim some possible influence of all sorts of glasses on aiding the development of painting. After all, far sighted people, although seeing people and scenes sharply, would have been unable to see close up well enough to paint what they saw, any better than the reverse.

Monocles or glasses were soon known to everyone after their invention, and would have been considered a necessity for all kinds of work for which they made more efficient practitioners.

However, the existence of glasses in no way belittles the value of newly developed skills to create ever better and well crafted works of fine art.

If this was postulated before, which I feel is highly probable, then I'm surprised it wasn't pointed out in further debunking of Hockney long before now.

Um, how is that different from Michelangelo painting the Sistine Chapel as per the Pope's orders? Or any religious painting/altar piece commissioned by the Church? Or any number of portraits commissioned by the sitters? Why is Velázquez' painting of Pope Innocent X (IIRC) fine or high art and Maxfield Parrish's Ecstasy not? Or that famous painting by N. C. Wyeth of Robin Hood (with his men) coming out of the underbrush of Sherwood Forest, with Robin in the lead wearing a pensive expression on his face (sorry can't recall the title, mea culpa) -- how is that less fine art than Waterhouse's Lady of Shalott? Both illustrate a literary moment. That Wyeth produced that painting to be an illustration for a book doesn't debase it in my eyes any more than finding Lady of Shalott reproduced on a canvas tote bag. Is it merely that one artist's work was produced on canvas to be hung on the museum or salon wall as opposed to being done on canvas to be mass-reproduced by the publishing industry the point on which this argument is being made, here??

All these artists made their paintings/artwork for money -- they made them and expected to be paid for them. That is how they earned their living. To denigrate one group because the fruits of their labors were reproduced as product labels, calendars, advertising one-sheets, or magazine covers as opposed to museum and salon pieces is stupid, really. Not all commerical artists and illustrators were on the level of sheer beauty and mastery of the medium as Parrish or Wyeth, Pyle or Beardsley. There were, and still are, lots of drekky kludge being marketed as advertising and illustration and fine art. But a gem is a gem, whether set in precious metal or mud. Drekky kludge was made in Leighton's day, as well as Parrish's, as well as our own.

Do you think that the poster of this argument simply bought the Modern Art argument that commercialism is just "bad", that good art must be made without thought of material gain, that the artist is virtuous if he or she did not "sell out" to the "Establishment" for "money"? Well, hell. How is an artist gonna pay the rent, much less buy more paint if he or she doesn't "sell"? There's a theme here ... In the 19th c., there were highly paid and sought after engravers -- Gustave Doré, for example -- who were adored by the public and paid well for their efforts. Well, how is that different from Alma-Tadema's work or Leighton's work being reproduced in half-tone or engraving in the periodicals of their hey-day? Or, get this, of either of those artists making copies of their popular works in oil on canvas for other clients? Bouguereau did this. Leonardo da Vinci did his Madonna of the Rocks at least twice, that I know of. Yet no one is bashing him. Why? Is it mass production of copies/images of the works the no-no, then? No one seems to be disputing their merit today, amongst the goodart group.

Yet, how is it that the illustrators of the "Golden Age", a period spanning a decade prior to 1900, if I recall correctly, to about the 1920s/early 30s (Parrish's heyday) are disparaged? I see the whole "Golden Age of Illustration" to be the refugee camp for fine artists of the Old School, artists who managed to make a fine living practicing the skills and turning out the product that they'd trained long and hard for which galleries and salons were no longer willing to accept into their hallowed halls -- having had their collective heads turned by the modernist crap as the "Next Big Thing." And that's just the "Golden Age" greats I'm talking about here, BTW. I haven't gone on to name any number of really great cover artists seen gracing the covers of books at the local bookstore -- much less discussing artists in any single genre of books in said bookstore. (Not to mention the fact that cover art is becoming less a painted piece of work and more a matter of digital sampling cobbled together into a .... but I digress.)

Instead of bashing advertising and commerical efforts as a degrading influence on these illustrator "Greats", don't you think that we should be thankful that the businesses in question gave these artists an outlet, a venue for their talent? What about all of Diego Rivera's murals for the great American industrialists in the 30s? Wasn't he commissioned by Edsel Ford to do a series of murals that came to be called the Detroit Series? What about those?

If it's not patronage by industrialists from being great artists, is it the fact that these artists worked for the print media that disqualify these illustrators their place in the sun of our good regard? If so, why? Given the mass production of the medium (magazines, free calendars, etc.) many many more people were exposed to art well done, than could ever hope to afford a trip to a museum. Especially in Parrish's case, as a good portion of his life's work was done during the Depression years. That should count for something, shouldn't it?

Maxfield Parrish
Sunrise, oil on panel, 1931




In fact, there was one period when he would unveil a painting every so often in the store window of his client -- I can't recall now if it was a department store chain or a drugstore -- in New York/major Northern metropolis, and people from all walks of life would line up for blocks to see it. Men, women and children. All ages. All weathers. It was often the bright point in their week, month, life. How could something that gave such joy and contentment to so many be denigrated as "crass commercialism/bad art"? Furthermore, when his work, Sunrise, was displayed, the lines broke all records. There was vast hue and cry some years later when it was reported lost and missing, suspected stolen. It finally turned up in the 70s, at an auction house, if I remember correctly. In case you're interested, the info here on Parrish came from a recently published book (c. 2001 or so), written by a woman who worked with one of the big auction houses up north, and was closely tied to the Parrish family. Dang, I should have bought it. I could then better phrase my argument.

AST OCTOBER I HAD the opportunity to spend an afternoon with realist painter Nelson Shanks at his studio in Bucks County, Pennsylvania. Before our interview I was less familiar with his individual paintings than I was with the reputation he had garnered over the years, due in large part to the notable commissioned portraits he has completed of many of the world's prominent figures. This was soon to change as I sought to separate his artistic truth from his public myth.

When I drove up the wooded private road, I first came upon an old carriage house, and then continued on to a large stone house that sat on the banks of the Delaware River. Shanks met me in the lot, and we walked over to his carriage house studio. As I first entered the dimly lit space, I noticed an unfinished painting in a square, gilded frame. It depicted a young woman playing a guitar. She sat on a brocaded couch with her head tilted back and her lips slightly pursed open as if she were singing. In the background behind the couch sat two potted plants and the edge of the artist's easel; a composition created with a unique point of view.

Rather than place the musician smack in the middle of the picture plane, Shanks chose to position her on the lower half of the canvas, allowing the background to occupy an equal percentage of space as the young woman. The reference to her instrument is minimal at best, as only the neck of the guitar and her left hand can be seen tipping in from the lower right-hand corner of the painting. When I asked Shanks to tell me about the piece, he said that it was "not unlike the way I like to present things. I think of music a lot when I paint. The theme of it to a degree is music. So instead of literally putting in music or literally putting in a musical instrument, I use only a hint of the instrument, but the brocaded pattern is like a line of Bach because of its order and the leaves going up are like passages from Vivaldi, and the emphasis on drapery is where the sound comes [in] ... and so I try to do it that way rather than literalness, which is what a lot of realists use in their subjects, which I do not like. It is very amateurish ... This is what really turns me on, content that is beyond the obvious. To present things in a way that has a more artistic meaning, a more aesthetic meaning."

Shank's figurative oeuvre includes portraits, as well as original compositions. I inquired if his heart was mostly with his portrait work, or with the figurative paintings he did for himself. He replied in a forthright fashion, "It's all around. I love painting portraits. I would prefer, perhaps, painting them more for myself with less constraints from the subject." Then, slightly reticent, he said, "But generally I don't have much constraint from subjects."

Nelson Shanks working on the portrait of Luciano Pavorotti.




Clearly any portrait painter would be thrilled to receive a minimum of directives and requests from his/her client. Additionally, few portrait painters are lucky enough to get a subject to pose at length for a portrait. And even fewer can get the prominent to do so. Speaking a bit about his recent portrait commission of Diana, Princess of Wales, Nelson was lucky enough to have Diana pose for almost 48 hours - a notable amount of time for any subject to pose in this hurried day and age. Shanks talked a bit more about his portraiture. While in England, he had completed a portrait of Margaret Thatcher as well, and spoke of the 18 commissions he had yet to complete. When I asked how he garnered commissions, he said he obtained them by "word of mouth; very few agents involved." As a rule, Shanks works from life, be it with his sitter or with a mannequin adorned in his subject's apparel. "Mannequins are wonderful." I inquired as to whether or not he used reference photography when working. For him photography remains only a last resort. "Usually I don't photograph a sitter. Once in a while I do. Like Elaine ... I did this painting more or less in New York, but I didn't have a chance to finish the hands so I took a bunch of photos of her hands." Affording all the elements in his portraits a similar level of painting detail, Nelson declared, "I don't like these things where someone does a head and then tries to dash off the rest of the painting. It's such a fraud. There's an aesthetic balance that's important to the truth of vision and all that ... that's very exciting."

We briefly discussed the realist protest that was held in New York outside The Whitney Museum of American Art last September. Nelson said that he had heard about it, but was unable to attend. Nonetheless, his outspoken sentiment about the subject of the Biennial is shared by many realists, "I think those people ought to be brought to their knees. They are tastemakers who know very little about art. They just know what sort of dazzles their minimal mentalities. Most of it is pseudo-psychiatric. It's all a bunch of nonsense for the great part. But I have to tell you that I really do feel that part of the problem at the moment that's causing much exclusion of realism, is the lack of quality in realism. Let's face it, it's a fact. If there were people around who painted like Boldini and Sargent and Vermeer ... it would be seen and it would be spoken about and it would be exhibited. But the fact of the matter is that "much of the realism that is exhibited is of lesser quality. But when it's realism it has to be such high quality, you can't fake it. It's all hanging out there like the laundry."

Knowing that much of the Journal's audience are artists and art educators, I made a special point of asking about his materials and techniques. Like most accomplished realists, Nelson is particular about his materials. We discussed his preferred canvas ground-lead with a "minor amount of absorbency." One upon which "the paint flows gracefully." He does not stretch his own canvases, but rather has them made by outside vendors to his specifications. To insure a durable bond between the ground and his painting, he usually has an additional coat of lead applied to the canvas before beginning to paint. Referring to an unfavorable surface he had encountered on a canvas, he speaks repugnantly about a rubbery ground which made him "literally labor over every inch of that painting. (I do) not like to paint on a stark white canvas, so I always tone the surface down a bit so that my highlights and lights do show when I paint them." My eyes roamed around the studio to see what tone he had applied. All the unfinished paintings had areas of a medium grey imprimatura peeping through.

His paint taboret is chock full of Winsor Newton paint. I inquired why he chose that brand. "I think it's better paint than most of the others." He purchases the purest, most intense version of any particular hue, and prefers to do all the mixing himself, rather than buy any tubed mixtures of paint whose chromatic intensity is compromised by the creation of a composite.

We began to discuss painting mediums. In the early, leaner stages of a painting, Shanks uses very little additional medium. If he does incorporate some, he uses a mixture of stand oil, cold-pressed linseed, "maybe a small amount of damar varnish in maybe fifteen parts turpentine." Because the degree of ground absorption can vary from canvas to canvas, Nelson noted that a very absorptive ground may require an additional amount of oil, "to sort of seal as I go. But the way I paint with lead ... I can sometimes put leaner over fat ... carefully. I've never had a crack. Never ... You can't do this with impunity and be cavalier about it, but you can run a lean glaze, or the slightest little turpentine stain over something and basically what it does is combine with the oil in the preceding layer." He mentioned that one of his former teachers, John Koch, had used Maroger medium which Shanks adamantly "takes great exception" because of its inherent impermanent qualities. "It is totally impermanent."

As for his brushes, Shanks prefers to use filberts and flats. He rarely uses rounds, but will "every once in a while for fun," if they're available. He usually starts a painting with bristles, and often completes it with sables. Instead of finishing a painting with a small sized sable, he often chooses to use a brush that has acquired its pointed profile naturally, simply by having been worn down considerably on one side. However, if he is starting a small painting, he will often incorporate a worn sable brush from the start. With a chuckle, he admitted, "if I am using a sable, it may start off as an eight or seven, but it's a double aught by the time I'm done. I hate brights ... they have no use. You might as well buy a filbert and take the scissors and cut off half of what you paid for."

We then talked a bit about his painting technique. Upon viewing a work in progress, I noticed that no remnant of a drawing could be seen on the canvas. I mentioned this to shanks and he said that "there isn't any ... I'm drawing in my head pretty much." Instead, he almost immediately places "colored shapes" on his canvas and tries to "plot out where the colors are." He refers to this as "color composing" and simply, "color painting." "I try to think and design in color." Indeed, from a technical standpoint, working in this manner presents an extraordinarily high level of difficulty to the artist, as he must tackle the drafting, compositional, and tonal elements in one fell swoop. "My interest is in, first of all, seeing and understanding form and doing a 'sculpture of drawing' immediately. Secondly then, the sensitivity of the line and the edge and all that is extremely important, as well. But that's all part of form. So really what I am trying to do is create and understand form. But then too, color enters into it because a lot of things are color changes without a value change, which wouldn't show up if you were just using a non-color medium." After he gets his initial colored shapes on the canvas, he continues to work the whole painting as long as he can. "The reason being is that it's the whole that counts; not one part ... I seldom, if ever, start a painting and wind up the way it started. They're always changed, always." When asked if he always built up his paint thicker in the lights he replied, "Probably. Why not? Yea, I like that. The one thing I don't want to do is stay even anywhere. To me that's the biggest bore in the world." The tonal range of his paintings is established early on in the painting process. Pointing to an object in one of his works in progress, Shanks stated that even though he had not completed the painting of the element, he said that the [tonal] note for it had been established on the first day.

We discussed the difficulty one incurs when painting an object in flat lighting-an object whose main light source comes from the same direction as the point of view of the artist. Such situations make modeling the form "exponentially" more difficult, because the painter no longer has many shadows to depend on to build form. One must be able to see and recreate subtle color changes, as opposed to value changes, to turn the form. "If you can see it, and if you know your color, you can paint it." In these situations Shanks remarked that the value painter leans over and falls because he doesn't have the value crutch to lean on.

I queried Shanks about remembering the point in his life when he realized he could make a living as a painter. He frankly replied that "nothing else really ever occurred to me ... I started painting when I was five ... by the time I was 12, I was painting every weekend. I just grew up drawing from the time I must have been two or three." His parents had expected him to go to engineering school, so he pursued architecture studies in college. "I found it [to be] unbelievably boring and restrictive, so I dropped out after five semesters." At 19 he began his studies at The Art Students League of New York, and received a grant which later financed his studies in Italy with Annigoni and the l'Accademia d'Belle Arte. Shanks speaks ambivalently about his approximately seven months of study with Annigoni: "He was of the 'work should be labor and not fun school,' where you sharpen a pencil and ... you know, put on your microscope and try to noodle out a copy of something, and it was nonsense. That's not the way you learn to draw ... As much as I respected him ... and a lot of his work, I didn't think highly of him as a teacher [but he was a] very interesting character." Additionally, Shanks studied with Henry Hensche, Edwin Dickinson, Robert Brackman ("Brackman's teaching was basically not a color approach; it was a color formula ... "), Ivan Olinsky and John Koch, the latter of which he considers to have had a big influence on him. But when I asked Shanks which of his teachers had the most influence on him, he felt that they all were part of his educational equation, as were the old masters, and that the absence of any one would throw his academic foundation off balance. "I remember back when I was 12 - in tears over Renoir. And I can remember when I was 18 - in tears over Rembrandt."

Shanks spoke of the great need for art students to go back to the roots, to obtain a core education with a strong foundation. Indeed the students at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts are "sorely aware" of this need, for during the last two years they have gathered over 300 signatures on petitions to have him teach his craft at their institution. He lamented about how art schools all over the world are filled with students seeking to learn the techniques of realism, yet artists who have mastered these techniques are often prevented from teaching at such institutions. "We got interested in aesthetics, and then at the end of all of it we fell off the precipice. It's almost like crawling back because so many techniques are lost, and so we're going to have a [small] reserve of teachers who can teach the vast number of interested students. We have these poor, hungry, starving people who want to learn something and no place to get it. It's a tragedy."

As our discussion about education was winding down, Shanks passed on a message to the serious student of painting: "Go to museums. Live in museums. Take your sketchpad ... and live in museums. Look at a great variety of work ... If you really want to seriously think about life, and therefore take painting very seriously ... and take seriously the joys that it can bring to one, then you want to go to museums. You want to study the great of the past ... And the second thing is, if you find yourself with a weakness, attack it ... don't develop a technique that avoids your weaknesses.

I admitted to not liking labels myself, but I did ask Shanks by what term he might best be referred to. After fumbling around a bit for an answer, he replied, "humanist realist ... If there's anything I'd rather be known as ... it's that." Notwithstanding his technical virtuosity, what is most important to him is that he produce works that exhibit humanist qualities "at least in this day and age of nice paintings that mean nothing."

Then I posed a question that would summarize his life's labors. What was the ultimate goal he wanted to achieve with his art? He thoughtfully replied, "To make a measure; a major change in our time ... not only with my own work but by influencing other painters sufficiently and the public sufficiently that they realize there is ... a lot more to realism than they've been aware of. It's not just a boring exercise in pushing oil paint around a canvas. It's a way of opening a threshold to an exciting new world of vision. That's what I'm trying to do with my painting, exactly. I'm not trying to paint a slick egg with a highlight on it; I'm trying to paint stuff that matters, that really has a lot of feeling and meaning.

Nelson Shanks need not worry that his quest remains unsatisfied. He is indeed one of the few individuals who are lucky enough to realize an "ultimate goal" during his own lifetime. Since his realist works are recognized as remaining uncompromisingly masterful, he has already made his measure in our time.

AST OCTOBER I HAD the opportunity to spend an afternoon with realist painter Nelson Shanks at his studio in Bucks County, Pennsylvania. Before our interview I was less familiar with his individual paintings than I was with the reputation he had garnered over the years, due in large part to the notable commissioned portraits he has completed of many of the world's prominent figures. This was soon to change as I sought to separate his artistic truth from his public myth.

When I drove up the wooded private road, I first came upon an old carriage house, and then continued on to a large stone house that sat on the banks of the Delaware River. Shanks met me in the lot, and we walked over to his carriage house studio. As I first entered the dimly lit space, I noticed an unfinished painting in a square, gilded frame. It depicted a young woman playing a guitar. She sat on a brocaded couch with her head tilted back and her lips slightly pursed open as if she were singing. In the background behind the couch sat two potted plants and the edge of the artist's easel; a composition created with a unique point of view.

Rather than place the musician smack in the middle of the picture plane, Shanks chose to position her on the lower half of the canvas, allowing the background to occupy an equal percentage of space as the young woman. The reference to her instrument is minimal at best, as only the neck of the guitar and her left hand can be seen tipping in from the lower right-hand corner of the painting. When I asked Shanks to tell me about the piece, he said that it was "not unlike the way I like to present things. I think of music a lot when I paint. The theme of it to a degree is music. So instead of literally putting in music or literally putting in a musical instrument, I use only a hint of the instrument, but the brocaded pattern is like a line of Bach because of its order and the leaves going up are like passages from Vivaldi, and the emphasis on drapery is where the sound comes [in] ... and so I try to do it that way rather than literalness, which is what a lot of realists use in their subjects, which I do not like. It is very amateurish ... This is what really turns me on, content that is beyond the obvious. To present things in a way that has a more artistic meaning, a more aesthetic meaning."

Shank's figurative oeuvre includes portraits, as well as original compositions. I inquired if his heart was mostly with his portrait work, or with the figurative paintings he did for himself. He replied in a forthright fashion, "It's all around. I love painting portraits. I would prefer, perhaps, painting them more for myself with less constraints from the subject." Then, slightly reticent, he said, "But generally I don't have much constraint from subjects."

Nelson Shanks working on the portrait of Luciano Pavorotti.




Clearly any portrait painter would be thrilled to receive a minimum of directives and requests from his/her client. Additionally, few portrait painters are lucky enough to get a subject to pose at length for a portrait. And even fewer can get the prominent to do so. Speaking a bit about his recent portrait commission of Diana, Princess of Wales, Nelson was lucky enough to have Diana pose for almost 48 hours - a notable amount of time for any subject to pose in this hurried day and age. Shanks talked a bit more about his portraiture. While in England, he had completed a portrait of Margaret Thatcher as well, and spoke of the 18 commissions he had yet to complete. When I asked how he garnered commissions, he said he obtained them by "word of mouth; very few agents involved." As a rule, Shanks works from life, be it with his sitter or with a mannequin adorned in his subject's apparel. "Mannequins are wonderful." I inquired as to whether or not he used reference photography when working. For him photography remains only a last resort. "Usually I don't photograph a sitter. Once in a while I do. Like Elaine ... I did this painting more or less in New York, but I didn't have a chance to finish the hands so I took a bunch of photos of her hands." Affording all the elements in his portraits a similar level of painting detail, Nelson declared, "I don't like these things where someone does a head and then tries to dash off the rest of the painting. It's such a fraud. There's an aesthetic balance that's important to the truth of vision and all that ... that's very exciting."

We briefly discussed the realist protest that was held in New York outside The Whitney Museum of American Art last September. Nelson said that he had heard about it, but was unable to attend. Nonetheless, his outspoken sentiment about the subject of the Biennial is shared by many realists, "I think those people ought to be brought to their knees. They are tastemakers who know very little about art. They just know what sort of dazzles their minimal mentalities. Most of it is pseudo-psychiatric. It's all a bunch of nonsense for the great part. But I have to tell you that I really do feel that part of the problem at the moment that's causing much exclusion of realism, is the lack of quality in realism. Let's face it, it's a fact. If there were people around who painted like Boldini and Sargent and Vermeer ... it would be seen and it would be spoken about and it would be exhibited. But the fact of the matter is that "much of the realism that is exhibited is of lesser quality. But when it's realism it has to be such high quality, you can't fake it. It's all hanging out there like the laundry."

Knowing that much of the Journal's audience are artists and art educators, I made a special point of asking about his materials and techniques. Like most accomplished realists, Nelson is particular about his materials. We discussed his preferred canvas ground-lead with a "minor amount of absorbency." One upon which "the paint flows gracefully." He does not stretch his own canvases, but rather has them made by outside vendors to his specifications. To insure a durable bond between the ground and his painting, he usually has an additional coat of lead applied to the canvas before beginning to paint. Referring to an unfavorable surface he had encountered on a canvas, he speaks repugnantly about a rubbery ground which made him "literally labor over every inch of that painting. (I do) not like to paint on a stark white canvas, so I always tone the surface down a bit so that my highlights and lights do show when I paint them." My eyes roamed around the studio to see what tone he had applied. All the unfinished paintings had areas of a medium grey imprimatura peeping through.

His paint taboret is chock full of Winsor Newton paint. I inquired why he chose that brand. "I think it's better paint than most of the others." He purchases the purest, most intense version of any particular hue, and prefers to do all the mixing himself, rather than buy any tubed mixtures of paint whose chromatic intensity is compromised by the creation of a composite.

We began to discuss painting mediums. In the early, leaner stages of a painting, Shanks uses very little additional medium. If he does incorporate some, he uses a mixture of stand oil, cold-pressed linseed, "maybe a small amount of damar varnish in maybe fifteen parts turpentine." Because the degree of ground absorption can vary from canvas to canvas, Nelson noted that a very absorptive ground may require an additional amount of oil, "to sort of seal as I go. But the way I paint with lead ... I can sometimes put leaner over fat ... carefully. I've never had a crack. Never ... You can't do this with impunity and be cavalier about it, but you can run a lean glaze, or the slightest little turpentine stain over something and basically what it does is combine with the oil in the preceding layer." He mentioned that one of his former teachers, John Koch, had used Maroger medium which Shanks adamantly "takes great exception" because of its inherent impermanent qualities. "It is totally impermanent."

As for his brushes, Shanks prefers to use filberts and flats. He rarely uses rounds, but will "every once in a while for fun," if they're available. He usually starts a painting with bristles, and often completes it with sables. Instead of finishing a painting with a small sized sable, he often chooses to use a brush that has acquired its pointed profile naturally, simply by having been worn down considerably on one side. However, if he is starting a small painting, he will often incorporate a worn sable brush from the start. With a chuckle, he admitted, "if I am using a sable, it may start off as an eight or seven, but it's a double aught by the time I'm done. I hate brights ... they have no use. You might as well buy a filbert and take the scissors and cut off half of what you paid for."

We then talked a bit about his painting technique. Upon viewing a work in progress, I noticed that no remnant of a drawing could be seen on the canvas. I mentioned this to shanks and he said that "there isn't any ... I'm drawing in my head pretty much." Instead, he almost immediately places "colored shapes" on his canvas and tries to "plot out where the colors are." He refers to this as "color composing" and simply, "color painting." "I try to think and design in color." Indeed, from a technical standpoint, working in this manner presents an extraordinarily high level of difficulty to the artist, as he must tackle the drafting, compositional, and tonal elements in one fell swoop. "My interest is in, first of all, seeing and understanding form and doing a 'sculpture of drawing' immediately. Secondly then, the sensitivity of the line and the edge and all that is extremely important, as well. But that's all part of form. So really what I am trying to do is create and understand form. But then too, color enters into it because a lot of things are color changes without a value change, which wouldn't show up if you were just using a non-color medium." After he gets his initial colored shapes on the canvas, he continues to work the whole painting as long as he can. "The reason being is that it's the whole that counts; not one part ... I seldom, if ever, start a painting and wind up the way it started. They're always changed, always." When asked if he always built up his paint thicker in the lights he replied, "Probably. Why not? Yea, I like that. The one thing I don't want to do is stay even anywhere. To me that's the biggest bore in the world." The tonal range of his paintings is established early on in the painting process. Pointing to an object in one of his works in progress, Shanks stated that even though he had not completed the painting of the element, he said that the [tonal] note for it had been established on the first day.

We discussed the difficulty one incurs when painting an object in flat lighting-an object whose main light source comes from the same direction as the point of view of the artist. Such situations make modeling the form "exponentially" more difficult, because the painter no longer has many shadows to depend on to build form. One must be able to see and recreate subtle color changes, as opposed to value changes, to turn the form. "If you can see it, and if you know your color, you can paint it." In these situations Shanks remarked that the value painter leans over and falls because he doesn't have the value crutch to lean on.

I queried Shanks about remembering the point in his life when he realized he could make a living as a painter. He frankly replied that "nothing else really ever occurred to me ... I started painting when I was five ... by the time I was 12, I was painting every weekend. I just grew up drawing from the time I must have been two or three." His parents had expected him to go to engineering school, so he pursued architecture studies in college. "I found it [to be] unbelievably boring and restrictive, so I dropped out after five semesters." At 19 he began his studies at The Art Students League of New York, and received a grant which later financed his studies in Italy with Annigoni and the l'Accademia d'Belle Arte. Shanks speaks ambivalently about his approximately seven months of study with Annigoni: "He was of the 'work should be labor and not fun school,' where you sharpen a pencil and ... you know, put on your microscope and try to noodle out a copy of something, and it was nonsense. That's not the way you learn to draw ... As much as I respected him ... and a lot of his work, I didn't think highly of him as a teacher [but he was a] very interesting character." Additionally, Shanks studied with Henry Hensche, Edwin Dickinson, Robert Brackman ("Brackman's teaching was basically not a color approach; it was a color formula ... "), Ivan Olinsky and John Koch, the latter of which he considers to have had a big influence on him. But when I asked Shanks which of his teachers had the most influence on him, he felt that they all were part of his educational equation, as were the old masters, and that the absence of any one would throw his academic foundation off balance. "I remember back when I was 12 - in tears over Renoir. And I can remember when I was 18 - in tears over Rembrandt."

Shanks spoke of the great need for art students to go back to the roots, to obtain a core education with a strong foundation. Indeed the students at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts are "sorely aware" of this need, for during the last two years they have gathered over 300 signatures on petitions to have him teach his craft at their institution. He lamented about how art schools all over the world are filled with students seeking to learn the techniques of realism, yet artists who have mastered these techniques are often prevented from teaching at such institutions. "We got interested in aesthetics, and then at the end of all of it we fell off the precipice. It's almost like crawling back because so many techniques are lost, and so we're going to have a [small] reserve of teachers who can teach the vast number of interested students. We have these poor, hungry, starving people who want to learn something and no place to get it. It's a tragedy."

As our discussion about education was winding down, Shanks passed on a message to the serious student of painting: "Go to museums. Live in museums. Take your sketchpad ... and live in museums. Look at a great variety of work ... If you really want to seriously think about life, and therefore take painting very seriously ... and take seriously the joys that it can bring to one, then you want to go to museums. You want to study the great of the past ... And the second thing is, if you find yourself with a weakness, attack it ... don't develop a technique that avoids your weaknesses.

I admitted to not liking labels myself, but I did ask Shanks by what term he might best be referred to. After fumbling around a bit for an answer, he replied, "humanist realist ... If there's anything I'd rather be known as ... it's that." Notwithstanding his technical virtuosity, what is most important to him is that he produce works that exhibit humanist qualities "at least in this day and age of nice paintings that mean nothing."

Then I posed a question that would summarize his life's labors. What was the ultimate goal he wanted to achieve with his art? He thoughtfully replied, "To make a measure; a major change in our time ... not only with my own work but by influencing other painters sufficiently and the public sufficiently that they realize there is ... a lot more to realism than they've been aware of. It's not just a boring exercise in pushing oil paint around a canvas. It's a way of opening a threshold to an exciting new world of vision. That's what I'm trying to do with my painting, exactly. I'm not trying to paint a slick egg with a highlight on it; I'm trying to paint stuff that matters, that really has a lot of feeling and meaning.

Nelson Shanks need not worry that his quest remains unsatisfied. He is indeed one of the few individuals who are lucky enough to realize an "ultimate goal" during his own lifetime. Since his realist works are recognized as remaining uncompromisingly masterful, he has already made his measure in our time.

Not bad, farhad! You gave yourself nearly 2.000 votes with your selfvoting orgy JUST TODAY!

Didn't you ever thought that there is a REASON why your pics were not voted popular BY OTHERS??

It is nothing personel but you are a self-righteous ASSHOLE!

If other users don't vote for your boring wallpaper/postcard-pics you just do it for yourself!

I hope you'll leave Pixdaus as soon as possible because you are an affront to ALL other HONEST uploaders here on this site!

Shame on you, farhad!!

You have just entered the largest on-line Museum on the internet. A work in progress, steadily expanding with thousands of high quality images of the greatest paintings and sculpture in history, the Art Renewal Center is building an encyclopedic collection of essays, biographies and articles by top scholars in the field.

ARC is the Eye of the Storm, at the core, hub and center of a major cultural shift in the art world. With a growing body of experts, we are setting standards to become ARC Approved� for artists, art schools, systems of training, museum exhibitions and historical scholarship, to bring guidance, direction, goals and reality to an art establishment that has been sailing rudderless for nearly a hundred years.

Additionally, the Art Renewal Center is a non-profit educational organization committed to reviving standards of craftsmanship and excellence. Only by gaining a full command of the skills of the past masters can we create the masters of tomorrow. This is a step forward for our culture. Experimentation and creativity can only succeed and prosper when built on a solid foundation of past accomplishments, with the tools which empower artists to realize their visions.

Nothing has been more restricting and debilitating than the theories of modernism, which eliminated these tools, along with the skills to employ them. We are providing a forum for artists, scholars, collectors and the public to appreciate great art, and to recognize that they're not alone in their suspicions about the emptiness of modern and postmodern art. These suspicions are fully justified by the overwhelming body of evidence and historical facts.



To create the largest on-line Museum on the internet, with hundreds of thousands of oversized high quality images of all the known works of the greatest painters and sculptors in human history, cross referenced to the largest encyclopedic online art reference library of historical texts, essays, biographies and articles.
To promote a return of training, standards and excellence in the visual arts.
To provide responsible views opposing those of the current art establishment when warranted, especially as expressed in critiques of current art exhibitions, and in aesthetic philosophy.
To disseminate the rich artistic heritage of 2500 years of accumulated knowledge in creating traditional, realistic images touching upon universal and timeless themes.
To advance the understanding that Great Art begins with great themes and expresses them poetically through mastery of all aspects of technique.
To repudiate the idea that development in art requires destruction of boundaries and standards, pointless emphasis on 'newness,' or pursuit of the bizarre and ugly as ends in themselves, and to expose as artistic fraud those works conceived only to elicit outrage.
To provide a technical and historical resource for artistic information, including referrals to experts.
To provide a forum for dialogue and exchange of expert information among educators scholars, curators, collectors and artists.
To promote scholarship and research on the artists of the past and the rediscovery and preservation of their techniques and methods.
To establish basic visual literacy standards across the world. Drawing must be introduced as part of the core curricula in K-12 and developed progressively until high school and beyond.
To provide impetus for the reestablishment of high standards of performance in the visual arts of painting, drawing, and sculpture, and to promote the concept of recognizable quality as a primary criterion for the judgment of Fine Art.
To offer a platform for discussion - both scholarly and informal - on art history, aesthetics, technical considerations, art education and other related issues, and to maintain honesty and frankness in our interaction with everyone, regardless of predisposition.
The Annigoni Museum, dedicated to the works of Pietro Annigoni, the greatest of the 20th-century Realists, opened in Florence, Italy, on November 15th, 2008. It is housed in a stupendous palace, the Palazzo Bardini, on Costa San Giorgio, with a wonderful view over the entirety of medieval Florence and its world-famous cathedral. The museum comprises eight or ten perfectly lit rooms and contains many of Annigoni�s masterpieces, such as the great 1946 Self-Portrait, the Solitudine series, the portrait of Annigoni�s son Benedetto as a young man, a portrait of the artist�s daughter Ricciarda, as well as many of Annigoni�s breathtaking drawings, allegories and landscapes.

Michael John Angel, Lynne Barton and Jered Woznicki of the Angel Academy of Art, Florence, were at the opening, and Benedetto Annigoni explained to them that the museum will also host conferences on art and discuss the rebirth of Realism (and its future directions), thus making the museum a museo vivo, as he called it: a living museum. It is also the intention of the museum to exchange some of the paintings from time to time and show many more works by the maestro.


The museum is the result of years of work by the artist�s family, most notably by Annigoni�s son, Benedetto, and the maestro�s beautiful widow, Rosella. During his life, Annigoni was a rebel and a champion of Realist painting, who was very much at loggerheads with the art establishment; however, shortly after his death in 1988, the government of Florence mounted a huge show in the Palazzo Strozzi. It was a delight to see the artist�s work so beautifully honored by the very art establishment that had fought with him throughout his lifetime. And now, too, there is this spectacular, official museum, where art students and the modern masters of the New Realism can see the work of the painter whom Bernard Berenson called the greatest artist of the 20th century.


Pietro Annigoni was born in Milan in 1910 and moved to Florence with his family in the mid-1920s. He leaped to fame with his 1955 portrait of Queen Elizabeth II of England and, after this, was recognized as the greatest portrait painter in the world. As well as portraits (usually in oil-tempera), he painted many allegories and frescoes for churches throughout Italy. His work is in many royal collections and public museums, such as the National Portrait Gallery in London, the National Portrait Gallery in Washington, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the Uffizi Gallery in Florence and the Vatican Museums in Rome. His students and �artistic progeny� include such painters as Michael John Angel, Antonio Ciccone, Benjamin Long, Nelson Shanks, Daniel Graves, Romano Stefanelli, Silvestro Pistolesi, Fernando Bernardini and Gianni Cacciarini. A biography of Annigoni can be found on the ARC Museum and on Wikipedia. There are many other on-line sites and many books, as well as a biographical film
In this intensive 10-day class, students will learn how to apply fundamental concepts of figure painting to a long pose. The goals of the painting workshop are to develop the student's eye, to deepen the student's feeling for light and the human figure, and to enable students to learn how to apply these principles to their own painting practice.
Each class will begin with a brief lecture and/or demonstration followed by one-on-one instruction at each student's easel.
Demonstrations will reveal the direct painting method practiced by Cheaney as taught to him by the master-artist Ted Jacobs.
This course is open to students of all levels. Dennis will work with each student to assist him or her in taking his or her art practice to the next level.

You have just entered the largest on-line Museum on the internet. A work in progress, steadily expanding with thousands of high quality images of the greatest paintings and sculpture in history, the Art Renewal Center is building an encyclopedic collection of essays, biographies and articles by top scholars in the field.

ARC is the Eye of the Storm, at the core, hub and center of a major cultural shift in the art world. With a growing body of experts, we are setting standards to become ARC Approved� for artists, art schools, systems of training, museum exhibitions and historical scholarship, to bring guidance, direction, goals and reality to an art establishment that has been sailing rudderless for nearly a hundred years.

Additionally, the Art Renewal Center is a non-profit educational organization committed to reviving standards of craftsmanship and excellence. Only by gaining a full command of the skills of the past masters can we create the masters of tomorrow. This is a step forward for our culture. Experimentation and creativity can only succeed and prosper when built on a solid foundation of past accomplishments, with the tools which empower artists to realize their visions.

Nothing has been more restricting and debilitating than the theories of modernism, which eliminated these tools, along with the skills to employ them. We are providing a forum for artists, scholars, collectors and the public to appreciate great art, and to recognize that they're not alone in their suspicions about the emptiness of modern and postmodern art. These suspicions are fully justified by the overwhelming body of evidence and historical facts.



To create the largest on-line Museum on the internet, with hundreds of thousands of oversized high quality images of all the known works of the greatest painters and sculptors in human history, cross referenced to the largest encyclopedic online art reference library of historical texts, essays, biographies and articles.
To promote a return of training, standards and excellence in the visual arts.
To provide responsible views opposing those of the current art establishment when warranted, especially as expressed in critiques of current art exhibitions, and in aesthetic philosophy.
To disseminate the rich artistic heritage of 2500 years of accumulated knowledge in creating traditional, realistic images touching upon universal and timeless themes.
To advance the understanding that Great Art begins with great themes and expresses them poetically through mastery of all aspects of technique.
To repudiate the idea that development in art requires destruction of boundaries and standards, pointless emphasis on 'newness,' or pursuit of the bizarre and ugly as ends in themselves, and to expose as artistic fraud those works conceived only to elicit outrage.
To provide a technical and historical resource for artistic information, including referrals to experts.
To provide a forum for dialogue and exchange of expert information among educators scholars, curators, collectors and artists.
To promote scholarship and research on the artists of the past and the rediscovery and preservation of their techniques and methods.
To establish basic visual literacy standards across the world. Drawing must be introduced as part of the core curricula in K-12 and developed progressively until high school and beyond.
To provide impetus for the reestablishment of high standards of performance in the visual arts of painting, drawing, and sculpture, and to promote the concept of recognizable quality as a primary criterion for the judgment of Fine Art.
To offer a platform for discussion - both scholarly and informal - on art history, aesthetics, technical considerations, art education and other related issues, and to maintain honesty and frankness in our interaction with everyone, regardless of predisposition.
The Annigoni Museum, dedicated to the works of Pietro Annigoni, the greatest of the 20th-century Realists, opened in Florence, Italy, on November 15th, 2008. It is housed in a stupendous palace, the Palazzo Bardini, on Costa San Giorgio, with a wonderful view over the entirety of medieval Florence and its world-famous cathedral. The museum comprises eight or ten perfectly lit rooms and contains many of Annigoni�s masterpieces, such as the great 1946 Self-Portrait, the Solitudine series, the portrait of Annigoni�s son Benedetto as a young man, a portrait of the artist�s daughter Ricciarda, as well as many of Annigoni�s breathtaking drawings, allegories and landscapes.

Michael John Angel, Lynne Barton and Jered Woznicki of the Angel Academy of Art, Florence, were at the opening, and Benedetto Annigoni explained to them that the museum will also host conferences on art and discuss the rebirth of Realism (and its future directions), thus making the museum a museo vivo, as he called it: a living museum. It is also the intention of the museum to exchange some of the paintings from time to time and show many more works by the maestro.


The museum is the result of years of work by the artist�s family, most notably by Annigoni�s son, Benedetto, and the maestro�s beautiful widow, Rosella. During his life, Annigoni was a rebel and a champion of Realist painting, who was very much at loggerheads with the art establishment; however, shortly after his death in 1988, the government of Florence mounted a huge show in the Palazzo Strozzi. It was a delight to see the artist�s work so beautifully honored by the very art establishment that had fought with him throughout his lifetime. And now, too, there is this spectacular, official museum, where art students and the modern masters of the New Realism can see the work of the painter whom Bernard Berenson called the greatest artist of the 20th century.


Pietro Annigoni was born in Milan in 1910 and moved to Florence with his family in the mid-1920s. He leaped to fame with his 1955 portrait of Queen Elizabeth II of England and, after this, was recognized as the greatest portrait painter in the world. As well as portraits (usually in oil-tempera), he painted many allegories and frescoes for churches throughout Italy. His work is in many royal collections and public museums, such as the National Portrait Gallery in London, the National Portrait Gallery in Washington, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the Uffizi Gallery in Florence and the Vatican Museums in Rome. His students and �artistic progeny� include such painters as Michael John Angel, Antonio Ciccone, Benjamin Long, Nelson Shanks, Daniel Graves, Romano Stefanelli, Silvestro Pistolesi, Fernando Bernardini and Gianni Cacciarini. A biography of Annigoni can be found on the ARC Museum and on Wikipedia. There are many other on-line sites and many books, as well as a biographical film
In this intensive 10-day class, students will learn how to apply fundamental concepts of figure painting to a long pose. The goals of the painting workshop are to develop the student's eye, to deepen the student's feeling for light and the human figure, and to enable students to learn how to apply these principles to their own painting practice.
Each class will begin with a brief lecture and/or demonstration followed by one-on-one instruction at each student's easel.
Demonstrations will reveal the direct painting method practiced by Cheaney as taught to him by the master-artist Ted Jacobs.
This course is open to students of all levels. Dennis will work with each student to assist him or her in taking his or her art practice to the next level.

Let me start by very loosely paraphrase from the writing of Jean-Jacques Rousseau when he said: 'Artists are born free, but everywhere they are in chains.' Whether we are talking about the chains of the conceptual,...or the dungeons of deconstruction....the leg irons of irony.... or the shackles of shock,...All "have been forged link by link and yard by yard," ...paying lip service to composition and design while long ago having Abandoned all of the parameters of fine art where paramount was the need to harmonize great subjects and themes with drawing, modeling, perspective, color, and tone, and expert manipulation of the paint. Subjects and themes which more often than not are a form of ...dare I say the word out loud..."storytelling."

Storytelling has become somehow a dirty word in the world of fine art. Storytelling is demeaned as mere "illustration" and "illustration" itself is relegated to the "commercial arts." Go sign up to study in the fine arts department of any college or university in America, and tell the "officials" who run the place, that you want to paint great anecdotal scenes either as histories, or allegorical paintings which symbolize, capture and express the most powerful of human themes.

What do you think will happen?

After looking down their nose at you, trying to figure out how to say what they want without insulting you, will politely tell you that "Well dear, you really need to go and see the department of commercial arts."

They will tell you that Storytelling is not what they do. It doesn't interest them. It's not a fitting purpose for fine art. What is fitting? Form for its own sake...color for its own sake....line or mass for their own sake are far more worthy of accolades of merit than recreating scenes from the real world, or from our fantasies, myths or legends about our hopes, our dreams, and the most powerful moments in life. Empty canvases, or empty rooms, or piles of rocks are more important and far more "relevant" subject matter, than the moments in life that describe and define our shared humanity. Squares of color are superior to subjects about people of color; Layers of textured paper trumps showing the layered textures of life. Dribbles of paint are more compelling than a child learning how to dribble a ball while being mocked in a school yard. Self-consciously arranged boxes eclipse the passage from self-conscious adolescence to self-assured adult. And a light blinking on and off in an empty room attracts journalistic praise while the blinking passage of life and time are but worthless sentiments These are the precepts, of the prefects who hold our museums and colleges in a hundred year long grip of banal irrelevancies boring our inner souls and our youth alike in a system where the skilled are ridiculed, the talented are ignored and disillusioned, and the masters were dying off without a trained generation to protect, preserve and perpetuate that which had been, preserved and perpetuated for so many centuries before.

I am incredibly fortunate to be speaking to you on the cusp of one of the most important, moments in all of art history. It is very rare indeed for people to have the opportunity of living through major cultural shifts of the underlying tectonic plates of the art establishment which are bringing about a world wide shift in the perception and definition of what constitutes great art, and the institutions which themselves must change or perish if they are going to survive. After more than a century of blind allies, nightmarish detours, and mind numbing Artspeak to boost up what should have been rejected long ago as lacking the "relevance" which the modernists insist is missing from the "real" artist of today and the real artists of the 19th century: those who chose not to lead the way to Jackson Pollock, Mark Rothko or Andy Warhol.

It seems that for most of the past century, there has been what is best described as a conspiracy, both tacit and willful, to malign and degrade the reputations and artwork produced during the Victorian era and its counterparts in Europe and America. This struggle for the re-appreciation of Traditional Realism continues to the present day.

There is now an overwhelming preponderance of evidence that has come to light, which makes the Modernist arguments about, and the descriptions of, this era appear to be exactly what they are: pathetic lies and distortions fabricated in order to denigrate some of history's finest art and artists in order to elevate the unskilled works by untrained hands that have been lionized by the tenets of modernism that came directly after them.

The suppressed truth about this period, however, is that during the 19th century there was an explosion of artistic activity unrivaled in all prior history. Thousands of properly trained artists developed a myriad of new techniques and explored countless new subjects and perspectives that had never been dealt with before. They covered nearly every aspect of human activity.

The artists and writers of the day identified, codified, protected and perpetuated the great humanist values and momentous Age-of-Reason discoveries of the day. The writers for their part, were praised and celebrated to the heavens, while the artists were ridiculed and slandered.

But working together, together, they helped free the slaves, protect the environment, stop child labor, eradicate unsafe working conditions, insured women the vote and equal rights, broke up monopolies, and assured minority rights. And for this, their pay back has been to dismiss their work and denigrate their methods and lie about the meaning of their subjects and berate their achievements. Why? Because they didn't lead the way to splattered paint, blank canvases or industrial size Campbell's soup cans? And therefore were called "irrelevant"???

And there in lies the main topic for tonight. For the purpose of this talk, I will focus especially on the concept of "Relevance" that one hears bandied about in discussions about artists and art movements.

These artists are not considered "relevant" by modernism. Only works and techniques that shed all the former definitions and parameters of fine art were to be considered "relevant". Only those artists frankly that lead the way to abstract expressionism were worthy to be called "Relevant".

Nothing could have been further from the truth!

Relevance must be understood on many levels and perhaps the most important of all is the historical context, and how that relates to today's world. Ladies and Gentlemen, what was happening in history at that time was nothing short of "Momentous".

I am speaking about some of the most significant events in all of human history.

In order to understand the Relevance of William Bouguereau and other masters of the 19th century it is essential to place them historically and correctly, in their own time. Then we can see how truly relevant they were and also understand why they have not been given their due respect by the reigning ideology.

First: Ninety-nine percent of all paintings being done between 1850 and 1900 were not impressionism or post-impressionism. Instead it was Academic art, which was taught in the great academies of the time, and exhibited in the yearly European exhibitions and especially the Paris Salons.

This words "academic art" have come to be used in a dismissive or disparaging way being called: petty, banal, mundane and uninspired. However, "academic" more accurately means a dedication to standards of excellence both in training and in artistic execution, and a dedication to teaching and learning with great discipline and devotion, to the methods, developments and breakthroughs of prior generations. But while the past was to be fully appreciated, so too were artists encouraged to develop their craft to ever higher levels of creative and technical excellence and expression.

Yet, this Academic art was characterized as oppressive, narrow and superficial by the "official" pedagogues of abstraction. The exact opposite was the truth.

Today I will show that the academic artists of the 19th century and William Bouguereau in particular, were not only "relevant" to the times, and relevant to the major thread of art history, but they were relevant to the evolution of art itself, as they were working at what will certainly be considered the most important crossroads in human history, when humanity after countless generations as slaves, vassals, and serfs, using the creative words of their newly found political philosophy, threw off their chains, and rebuilt societies based on human rights and democratic rule. The artists of their day, unlike the writers and poets at their sides have not only been unfairly treated in our schools and textbooks, but have been intentionally degraded and maligned in articles, catalogs, and even art reference books and art history texts that are more accurately understood as massive propaganda brochures put out by the modernist victors writing what clearly suited their transitory cause and interests. Interests which surely are not in the interests of great art, art history, and the integrity of art education which we must pass down responsibly to the next generation.

"Relevance" is a word that has been much used and abused when critics and historians endeavor to place artists and writers into the "progressive" view of art history as it has made its way through the centuries from the early Renaissance until the modern day. And while many great and accomplished artists have probably been lost or under appreciated, for the most part, the great and near great have received their due or at least reasonable notice in the discipline of art history.

That was true until the mid nineteenth century. From roughly 1840, onwards, all of the normal criteria for judging, describing and chronicling the history of art by 20th century scholars was tossed out the window, Almost all the art text books that have been used since the middle of the 20th century have rewritten the history of the 19th century to fit the needs and prejudices of the "modernist" art world which sees all of art history through a "deconstructionist" lens that defines as important, valuable, and relevant only those works which broke one or another of the rules and parameters by which works of art were formerly valued and appreciated. Art history was seen as a long march from the "breakthroughs" of Impressionism, through a stream of different movements which led the way to Abstraction, espoused with a strident religious fervor by the followers of this "new history" to be the greatest of all forms and styles of art.

It is one of the goals of this talk to expose the truth of the modernist art history, and it is very much on topic to bring into question any practice which purports to analyze art history, in a way that deliberately suppresses a valid and correct understanding of what actually happened. And it is of the utmost importance that the history of what actually took place not be lost for all time due to the transitory prejudice and tastes of a single era. This is exactly what almost happened to the reputations of William Bouguereau and the other great academic artists of the 19th century. And while there are few if any left alive from their time who can be currently interviewed, there is fortunately a mountain of information and evidence, still available for the clear, even handed, responsible and fair minded scholar, to access, organize and analyze the actual history, so as to yet save for current and future generations an ability to know ourselves by knowing what came before...not as we might have wanted it to be, but as indeed it actually was.

This must be done if art history as a field of scholarship is not to be ultimately discovered to have devolved into nothing more than documents of propaganda. geared towards market enhancement for valuable collections passed down as wealth conserving stores of value. Successful dealers, who derived great wealth by selling such works...works created in hours instead of weeks... had little trouble lining up articulate masters of our language to build complex fire walls of cognoscenti jargon presented everywhere as brilliant analysis. These market influenced treatises insured the financial protection of these collections. Such "artspeak" as it has come to be known is ... a form of contrivance which uses self consciously complex and convoluted babble to impress, mesmerize and ultimately to silence the human instinct so that it cannot identify honestly what has been paraded before it.... brainwashing authoritatively, which confounds the evidence of our senses that otherwise any sane person would question. The "authority" of high positions, and the "authority" of books and print, and the "authority" of certificates of accreditation attached to the names of the chief proponents of modernism, have all conspired to impress and humble those whose common sense would rise up in opposition to what would have been evident nonsense if it had emanated from the mouths and pens of anyone without such a preponderance of "authority" backing them up. Finally, with adulation and the highest praise being paid to such artistic shams as cans of excrement, it has at last come to be recognized as the glib Artspeak that it is... first by a trickle, then a stream, and as a child cries out in innocence, a flood of voices will finally be heard above the din of sycophants, struck dumb, as softly, "The Emperor has no clothes" can be heard as it floats above the multitude. As I speak now, the worst has passed as revelation wakes the sleeping throng to their nearly lost aesthetic sensibilities still, thankfully, linked inextricably to human dignity.

In fact, it is in the realm of human dignity wherein one finds the truly prodigious accomplishments of the works of William Bouguereau. Born in 1825, just after the American and French Revolutions, (two events more than any others which embody the breakthroughs of Enlightenment thinking), Bouguereau stood at the top of the list of the leading writers and artist of his day, whose work was to codify those advances, and bridge the gap from centuries of human societies ruled by kings and emperors who dictated by divine right, to a civilization made of men and laws where governments could only gain legitimacy from the consent of the governed.

Theirs was a period of major cultural shifts...it was a time when the elements that made up their world were endlessly competing with the evolving elements of a world yet to come. And while we can look back perched on an outcropping of safety and view these historical shifts with relative clarity and understanding, we must not forget that it was not always so, nor was it at all clear to the artists, writers and populace where the severe and gentle dusts of history would settle. Justice, equality under the law, elections by popular vote; protection of human rights; the obligation of government and society to identify, organize, and protect those rights; freedom of the press permitting and insuring popular disclosure, debate and resolution of countless injustices from or embedded in remaining and recalcitrant institutions which were still riddled with the followers of former rules and rulers who fought to hold on to their power.

Let me quote from Alexis De Tocqueville's Democracy in America, written in 1835-1840, where he states:

"The society of the modern world, which I have sought to delineate, and which I seek to judge, has but just come into existence. Time has not yet shaped it into perfect form: the great revolution by which it has been created is not yet over; and amid the occurrences of our time, it is almost impossible to discern what will pass away with the revolution itself, and what will survive its close. The world which is rising into existence is still half encumbered by the remains of the world which is waning into decay; and amid the vast perplexity of human affairs, none can say how much of ancient institutions and former manners of will remain, or how much will completely disappear."*
(Alexis De Tocqueville Democracy in America (1835-1840; trans. Henry Reeve 1835-1840)

It was not at all clear where we would wind up, but it was clarity that was needed if people were to organize their lives securely, and it was clarity that was essential, for only a free and secure people can build a civilization fit for culture and the arts. So it was the writers and artists of the "first" century of liberty and freedom,.... the 19th Century,... that were given the duty and responsibility to organize, to codify, to popularize and protect the systems, laws, and democratized institutions of society which would insure the perpetuation of liberty....a way of life so recently come to the affairs of man. How they were to discharge these duties would surely impact and effect future generations perhaps for centuries to come.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau cried out at the beginning of his landmark work, The Social Contract: "Man is born free; and everywhere he is in chains..." Unlike Marx, Rousseau's work focused on one of the most essential concepts that sired the western world from "medievalism," and protected people from being vulnerable to the whims of a despot, or philosopher King alike, either of whom were really only responsible to their own sensibilities which were validated and legitimized by "divine right". The Western world moved from a world filled with edicts of the "Sovereign" to a world ruled by "sovereign states." Terms like the "general will" and "social contract" and "government, of, by and for the people": were disseminated everywhere throughout the newly "free" world. For example in his Discourse on the Origin if Inequality Rousseau, ended this great historical essay speaking about current day injustices in France, "since it is plainly contrary to the laws of nature....that the privileged few should gorge themselves with superfluities; while the starving multitude are in want of the bare necessities of life."

He lashed out at an indifferent society and observed "... how poverty could deprave and degrade men and women who were originally good".

These revolutionary ideas became concepts whose meanings and understanding became increasingly embedded in the educated and wealthy classes, "trickling down" all the way to workers in the fields, and laborers in factories and shipyards all of whom were to participate in the benefits of newly free and democratic societies as the 18th century origins led to 19th century codification and 20th century implementation. It started first narrowly, as with only land owners voting in the original US Constitution, and then ever more broadly until by the time the 20th century had finished dealing with two world wars, the great Depression and countless other horrors, we saw an evolution from an agricultural to an industrialized economy, the abolition of monarchy, women voting, slavery abolished, child labor banned, labor movements established, and countless new institutions spread these new found freedoms and rights into virtually every nook and cranny of Western civilization. The rights to confront your accuser and cross examine witnesses, the cornerstone of "due process" with a common law and written law that protected and defended every inch of those new found human rights.

While it would be possible to write a dozen speeches on this one topic, if you read the seminal Enlightenment works by Locke, Hobbes, Mill and De Tocqueville, the mind set and cultural atmosphere becomes clear, setting the stage for the way in which we feel free to live, work and think today.

While I have taken a lot of time demonstrating many of the core beliefs and breakthroughs of the Enlightenment, it is because it is precisely these ideas and concepts that are so crucial to understanding the context in which the artists of the 19th century lived.

They were, in fact, addressing the very heart of Enlightenment thought.

"RELEVANCE"
Bouguereau painted young peasant girls with a solemn dignity and a hushed and reverential beauty, whether she was holding her staff and standing her ground as in "Jeune Bergere Debout" or the gypsies were being elevated to the heavens, as in this enchanting work called simply "Jeunes Bohemiennes". Note his low horizon has these two young innocents silhouetted by the heavens. Their kind and welcoming expressions implies their acceptance of us, the viewers which must by rights be properly echoed by our acceptance of them regardless of the lowly status of their birth. The very truth and reality of their birth once a negative, now elevates them to the heavens a status now where all of humanity resides. Only this time we have been endowed by our creator with certain "inalienable rights" of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, or in his native France: liberte, egalite and fraternite. How assuredly he shows the values and beliefs newly elevated in his day, that the peasant class was just as noble and worthy of respect as any previous nobility whose rule by "divine right" has been eclipsed by the rule of human rights! And, if all people are equal, than all must rule together....Hence "Democracy!" This was a completely revolutionary way in which to depict the peasant class or human beings in general.

"RELEVANCE"
Each of his figures is an individual, extraordinarily real and ideal at the same moment. Bouguereau has chosen real characteristics present in many or most people to idealize. And his message of values, dignity and self respect and respect for others is thereby enhanced by individuation. Artists such as Julien Dupre, George Laugee, Leon L'hermitte and Jean Francois Millet painted the peasant class at work or at rest, they were also communicating values and beliefs in how to live and what constituted proper modes of conduct:

"RELEVANCE"
Hard work, family life, caring for our children, the value of romantic love as well as familial duty, honor and taking responsibility for oneself and one's life. This supplied endless subjects, compositions and themes that had never been encountered before.

"RELEVANCE"
From there other artists tackled the cultural evils and social ills and countless injustices left behind by the old order that receded every year further back into the smoky recesses of memory, as new societal institutions and structures sallied forth to teach these values, expose the social ills, solve societies problems, and then through hard work, just laws and a thorough education, they were codifying, protecting, fine-tuning and preserving these achievements for our children.

"RELEVANCE"
Paintings of the poor and homeless, women thrown out in the cold by husbands who controlled their money after marriage, and wielded absolute power over their homes much as the Kings had wielded such power over them. Scenes of unsafe working conditions, or children toiling until late at night after 16 hour days. Scenes of marriage and children and family life. Scenes of schools and courts and hospitals and industry...parks and mountains and countless other topics. For example, Clergy preaching to give up worldly possessions from their opulent apartments filled with art and antiques and servants. How revolutionary this was for artists. When Vibert, Brunery or Crogaert satirized the clergy, and painted cardinals in sumptuous surroundings playing cards with pretty young socialites, or hiring the services of a fortune teller, he was saying that the clergy was human and vulnerable to the same weaknesses and frailty of character as other people. But beyond that, to spoof the clergy represented our new found freedom of speech. A modernist professor once said to me "how inane and silly to show Cardinals in silly poses like that" His prejudice blinded him from even beginning to figure out what Vibert had done...what rules of conduct he had broken from the prior rulers of society. We have been taught to elevate artists for breaking rules and conventions of perspective or for undermining realistic drawing, or daring not to follow prior precepts, but the academic artists who had been on the front lines helping all of us to win our freedoms and rights, were also helping to create a climate where it was even possible to consider breaking the rules of art....which by comparison, were unimportant to the rule breaking which lead to freedom and justice.

What could hold more "Relevance" than this and it is they who are made fun of and put down through stilted ignorance and ungrateful arrogance. In previous centuries, an artist would have had his head cut off for spoofing cardinals in this way. From exposing societal ills and portraying the value and equality of all people, it was but a half step away to explore the personal inner life of individuals and to value and elevate mankind hopes, fantasies, and dreams, both the good and the bad, and if necessary, with all of our boils and warts on display. Literature captures these same things in poetry, and novels. And such story telling was a cornerstone to paintings and sculpture as well. What would happen to literature if storytelling were to be banned? Well that's what happened to fine art when story telling for all intents and purposes was banned.

"RELEVANCE"
What used to be scenes of religion, history, kings and the nobility, were supplanted by simple men and gentle women, working, playing, living and praying, fighting soldiers and dancing girls, perhaps with toys or ponies, or dogs and cats. Churches and castles gave way to farm houses and playgrounds. Humanity was what counted, and everything that makes us human...how we see ourselves and how we see the world....humanity was glorified and people of every type and shape, every nationality and color, every occupation and avocation,....we were what counted...we were what was important....and we were the greatest of all subjects for the creative bounty of the top artistic minds on earth. Everything about humanity became the new fodder for the unique forms of communication produced by the writers prose, the poet's pentameter, the painter's pigments. And glorified we were as thousands of artists produced millions of images, mostly new and original, and the best of the best of these were masterpieces of the highest order.

The methods of painting were so advanced, and the best subject matter of this period was so unique and powerful, that I didn't recognize it myself when I first came across one such canvas.

In October 1977, I walked into the Clark Museum, Williamstown, Mass. to see their thirty Renoirs, and after leaving the Renoir galleries walked out into a major hall, at the end of which was a painting that grabbed me body and soul. It was a life-size painting of four water nymphs playfully dragging a mythological satyr into a lake against his will. Frozen in place, gawking with my mouth agape, cold chills careening up and down my spine; I was virtually gripped as if by a spell that had been cast. It was so alive, so beautiful and so compelling. Finally, after about fifteen or twenty minutes of soaking up wave after wave of artistic and spiritual ecstasy, I started to take back control of my consciousness.....my mind started racing with unanswered questions. My first thought was "I haven't felt this way about a work of art since I stood before Michelangelo's David. Then I thought, "This must be one of the greatest old master paintings every produced. But no name or country or time would come to mind. Italian High Renaissance, 17th Century Dutch, Carravaggio, Fragonard, Ingres, Prud'hon ... back further perhaps ... Raphael, Botticelli, Leonardo, no! No! NO! Not one of those names or times felt anything like what I was looking at.

Then I approached the painting more closely, and saw the name mispronouncing it as Bouguereau at the bottom, and the date 1873 -- 1873?

How was that possible? I'd learned that the greatest artists at that time were, Manet, Corot, Courbet, and Renoir ... that the techniques and greatness of the Old Masters had died out, and that nobody knew how to do anything remotely this great by the 1870's.

Years of undergraduate courses and another sixty credits post graduate in art, attaining my master's degree from Columbia University, and I had never heard that name. Who was he? Was he important? How could he not be important? Anyone who could have done this must surely be deserving of the highest accolades in the art world.

I was at the Clark on Sunday October 2nd 1977. That Tuesday, October 4th, I stopped in at Sotheby's and as fate would have it, there were three Bouguereau paintings being offered for sale that coming Friday. I purchased one of two babies asleep in each other's arms. During the next few weeks I started researching Bouguereau and the entire period using any free time I had. I discovered that he had won the Grand Prix de Rome in 1851 at the age of twenty-six, and after winning nearly every accolade and award imaginable for an artist of his time, ultimately become the President of the Academy, Head of the Salon, President of the Legion of Honor. He was in fact, considered the greatest French artist from 1870 to 1900, and Paris was the center of art world. All this made me feel very good about my instincts, and that I had intuitively identified as being one of the worlds' greatest artists somebody who had generally been considered as such by most of the world during the final decades of the 19th century. That included the greats of the time such as Henry James, Frederic Chopin and Charles Dickens. I was in good company as far as my recognition of genius. I then studied further and found out that Bouguereau so revered in his time that he was practically a household name and was as famous as Picasso is in ours.

The biggest discovery about Bouguereau's life was to come to me in more recent years. Mark Walker the former world expert on William Bouguereau and Damien Bartoli, who I helped in writing the Catalog Raisonne on Bouguereau to be published in 2007, discovered that Bouguereau singleÐhandedly, using all of his power in the art world, opened the Academy Julien and later the Academie Francais, to women artists for the first time in history. This fact alone should have saved his reputation from the onslaught of derision that nearly drove his name out of art history.

It didn't take long before I discovered a lot of other major names that I'd never heard of before: Tissot, Cabanel, Lefebvre, Meissonnier, Waterhouse, Rossetti, Alma-Tadema, Burne Jones, and Lord Leighton...the list was near endless.

After years of study and research, taking all the evidence into account, I came to the certain and indisputable conclusions which I am sharing here with you today.

There is a very relevant and fascinating story that needs to be added at this point in the talk. I came across an article in the New York Times, published on April 7, 2000, by KATIE HAFNER. It was about Lenn D. Lowry, the Director of the Museum of Modern Art.

(let me repeat "the Director of the Museum of Modern Art"). She Writes, Lenn D. Lowry..." has a vivid memory of the first time he was profoundly moved by a work of art. At age 7, during a visit to the Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute in Williamstown, Mass., he was separated from his parents.

While wandering in search of them, he came upon a huge painting, Nymphs and Satyr, by William Bouguereau. His parents found him a half-hour later, still staring at the 6-by-8-foot painting. "I just remember being completely transfixed by it," said Mr. Lowry, who is now 45.

The experience helped Mr. Lowry believe in the transformative power of art and what he calls the "unique encounters that occur when one is fortunate to confront directly an extraordinary object." Mr. Lowry, as well as other museum directors, wants to broaden the opportunity for such transforming moments by providing encounters with virtual art, viewed on a computer screen and brought to the art-viewing public via the World Wide Web.

Ironically, this is exactly what we've done at the Art Renewal Center.

I can't help but wonder why Mr. Lowry after having such a similar experience to my own with the same exact painting, has not aided in the resurrection of academic art. But many with careers in the art world are intimidated, and afraid to speak out against accepted gospels of modernist theory.

Before I saw Bouguereau's Nymphs and Satyr, I thought that the methods and techniques of the great Old Masters had somehow been lost over time accidentally. It never had occurred to me for two seconds, that people would actually have deliberately destroyed all of the institutions and methods by which the knowledge could be gained of how to create great works of art. This is one of mankind's greatest achievements ... one of the defining characteristics of advanced civilization ... a skill that makes us so unique, so sophisticated and so special. We are talking about the great arts of drawing, painting and sculpture, through which it's possible to express our shared humanity, including all of the universal, profound, complex and subtle emotions of what that means: our hopes and dreams, our fears and fantasies, our jealousy, and joys, our grief, loneliness, expectation, insecurity, intrigue, and compassion,

This is what art is really for; whether in theatre, in music, in literature, in sculpture, or in painting. Not the modernist cry of, "art for art's sake," or the modernist's belief that it is the duty of the artist to be honest and "prove that the canvas is flat". Any three-year-old knows that the canvas is flat! It is making the canvas come to life with reality and meaning that is the accomplishment. And these skills and humanistic values became precisely what the theories of modernism decided to attack and label as uncreative, confining and sentimental. They called great skill obsession with technique and worthless. They called story telling and the use of universal symbols as boring and repetitive. Realizing this we see that modernism didn't attack academic art. It attacked art itself. All art was without value, because the essence of what art is, the communication of our common humanity, was banished. And all this destruction was supported by journalistic art criticism, which was also held hostage by the same insanity. No longer was art allowed to use any of the parameters by which we can seek universal concepts and communicate with each other. Art was to only be about art and to be continuously novel for the sake of novelty. Not only did this create "empty art" it created quick and easily available products for sale at high prices. Now there is a huge establishment invested both philosophically and financially in this dead-end art...in such "work" as canvases using excrement and empty rooms with the light blinking on and off. In case any of you think I'm making that up, just such a room was the winner of the most prestigious award given out each year in Great Britain, the Turner Prize.

Let's go back now to look at what a collector looks for before making an acquisition. The answer is that every collector is different and has different motivation from every other collector. For me, I look for works that deal with some of the most compelling moments during life, and then harmonize this theme with superlative technique making the canvas come to life. Normally the best way to do this is with illustration or storytelling of some degree.

So many students and even teachers have written and told us how realism has been virtually or actually banned from their art departments.

John Stuart Mill's remarks on this very issue are as alive and pertinent today as they were two hundred years ago.

"Where there is a tacit convention that principles are not to be disputed; where the discussion of the greatest questions which can occupy humanity is considered to be closed, we cannot hope to find that generally high scale of mental activity which has made some periods of history so remarkable."

And

"However unwillingly a person who has a strong opinion may admit the possibility that his opinion may be false, he ought to be moved by the consideration that however true it may be, if it is not fully, frequently, and fearlessly discussed, it will be held as a dead dogma, not a living truth." John Stuart Mill's essay On Liberty (From Great Political Thinkers by Wm. Bernstien p.569)

Without a dynamic living coterie of experts teaching traditional techniques in drawing and painting, it will never be possible for college art departments, to have students who are able to enrich the debate and the academic environment for all students by producing works of art that are capable of expressing complex and subtle ideas. To forbid these skills to be taught on campus in any real depth, is as ridiculous as having a music department that refuses to teach the circle of fifths or only teaches three or four of the scales from which they insist all music must be composed.

If there was nothing to be ashamed in their teaching methods and in their results, they would welcome the chance to confront the ideas that they should be well equipped to refute. They have a solemn duty to maintain the integrity of thought made possible by what has been handed down to them by those artists, writers and thinkers of the 19th century and before, who established a system where freedom of thought would prevail. And where is it more important to vouchsafe these principles than at our nation's colleges and universities who are training the next generations of leaders?

Even if they don't agree they had a duty to expose their students to what is the "state of the art".

There is a concept which explains how It works. It's called "prestige suggestion".

Prestige suggestion causes people to assume automatically that a work must be great if it is by any of the "big names" of modern art, so they at once start looking for greatness. If they don't see greatness they are made to believe that it is due to their ignorance or lack of artistic sensibilities, but never because just maybe there is some failing in the art work. To acknowledge doubts is to make oneself vulnerable to ridicule and derision. It's so much easier to go along to get along. Students operating under that kind of intimidating pressure, you can be sure, will find greatness no matter what they are looking at. The reverse of this has been trained into them when they view academic paintings. They have been taught that works exhibiting realistic rendering are "bad" art and therefore any good that is seen is not due to qualities in the artistic accomplishment, but are rather due to a lack of intelligence and taste in the viewer. But political free speech is so important, so at the heart of what America stands for, so integral to our entire way of life that this danger is being spotted by a new generation and many thoughtful scholars and more mature members of culture who have been able to unplug themselves from the Modernist propaganda machine to finally see with their own eyes.

Now, what of the future?

Artists, Oil Painters of America!

Modernist educators....and I use that term loosely....love to tell their charges...their students... the object of the fiduciary responsibility that they have been licensed by the state for, and whom they have a sacred duty and promise to guide and gain safe on their educational journey before entering the ranks of art professionals.

Educators have determined en masse, apparently, that the best way to impart the benefits of modernism, and all of their own years of hard work, experience and knowledge, is to tell their students to...
"Do your own thing."
"Do your own thing????"
Aren't they really saying to "figure out how to teach yourself, because I sure as hell don't know how to teach you anything?"

We all know adolescence normally entails some degree of rebellion from authority, and truancy from participation and practice. Shirking of one's work and duties is not the kind of thing that teachers are supposed to encourage. Young people love getting out of doing work, especially work that is hard and takes great concentration and focus. What do you think goes through their heads when the "authority" in front of the room in art class tells then to "do your own thing"???

Despite the gross misuse of this phrase, and as practicing artists, already educated, whether you have suffered through this system or lack there of, you have come out on the other side, and you are building your careers. And I know that many of you must take commissions in order to make a living. But let me please encourage you to not lose sight of the inspiration that originally seduced you to become artists and painters.

Each of you have different subjects and themes that excite you and when it comes to subjects and themes, for the already educated and skilled, it is there that the directive of "do your own thing" can and should be used.

And please people, don't turn away from great painting.
Despite the warning of modernists, that it's already all been done...
It has not already all been done!
It has not even remotely all been done!
Would anyone say it's all been done when it comes to literature, theatre, poetry, music, or dance?
It has not ...already ...all.. been done!
Not even close.

In fact, I would say that we are really just beginning to explore the great themes about the human condition, whether subtle or evident,
Whether psychic, or psychological
Whether history or story telling
Literal or Literary ----Fantasy or faith,
Fiction or fact----Romantic or realistic
Legend or landscape---Whether of inner life, or interstellar travel.

The last century has unquestionably been the most complicated and expansive to the human mind and human sensibilities, and the tenets of modernism which have held the art world in an iron grip were absolutely paralyzing to the discipline of painting, and the fine arts.

All of the breakthroughs in thought and science over the past hundred years during which the knowledge of the world went from doubling every 50 years to doubling ever 6 years, the entire experience of humanity during this timeframe which ...if the math is right, takes us at this moment in time to a point where 98+% of the world knowledge has been generated during....the century without Traditional Realism.

This entire past century has barely been touched at all by your chosen field.

It's all been done?

My god, you'd have to be living in Plato's cave to believe that.

We have hardly begun to even consider all of the possible areas of thought, emotion, knowledge, and experience which have yet to be conceived, drawn and painted, in which the expressive, poetic and creative powers of the artists eye can once again enrich society, culture and civilization with the outpouring of countless masterpieces from the hands of our Living Masters, either here today, or who may now just be entering one of the 63 ARC Approved schools which we have identified which are finally teaching once again thousands of talented young people how to become...really become..."Real" artists.

With the power of the Internet and with credible organizations such as the OPA and the Art Renewal Center reaching countless millions of people, it won't be but a few short years before everyone interested in the arts knows the truth about the bondage of and its near total control over the institutions of fine art.

And as our power grows, so to will the power to communicate the truth, and the power of our newly earned sensibilities to recognize beauty, poetry and excellence in fine art!

We are but a half step away from a new birth of creativity... and a vast new outpouring of human expression, an explosive reinvigoration of the visual arts, but this time fully imbued with the true meaning of freedom of expression.

So long as most of humanity is permitted to compare and decide for themselves what constitutes great art, ...truth and beauty, the twin sisters of the human soul, are certain to prevail.

Thank you letter from Kathryn Beligratis, Executive Director of Oil Painters of America

Let me start by very loosely paraphrase from the writing of Jean-Jacques Rousseau when he said: 'Artists are born free, but everywhere they are in chains.' Whether we are talking about the chains of the conceptual,...or the dungeons of deconstruction....the leg irons of irony.... or the shackles of shock,...All "have been forged link by link and yard by yard," ...paying lip service to composition and design while long ago having Abandoned all of the parameters of fine art where paramount was the need to harmonize great subjects and themes with drawing, modeling, perspective, color, and tone, and expert manipulation of the paint. Subjects and themes which more often than not are a form of ...dare I say the word out loud..."storytelling."

Storytelling has become somehow a dirty word in the world of fine art. Storytelling is demeaned as mere "illustration" and "illustration" itself is relegated to the "commercial arts." Go sign up to study in the fine arts department of any college or university in America, and tell the "officials" who run the place, that you want to paint great anecdotal scenes either as histories, or allegorical paintings which symbolize, capture and express the most powerful of human themes.

What do you think will happen?

After looking down their nose at you, trying to figure out how to say what they want without insulting you, will politely tell you that "Well dear, you really need to go and see the department of commercial arts."

They will tell you that Storytelling is not what they do. It doesn't interest them. It's not a fitting purpose for fine art. What is fitting? Form for its own sake...color for its own sake....line or mass for their own sake are far more worthy of accolades of merit than recreating scenes from the real world, or from our fantasies, myths or legends about our hopes, our dreams, and the most powerful moments in life. Empty canvases, or empty rooms, or piles of rocks are more important and far more "relevant" subject matter, than the moments in life that describe and define our shared humanity. Squares of color are superior to subjects about people of color; Layers of textured paper trumps showing the layered textures of life. Dribbles of paint are more compelling than a child learning how to dribble a ball while being mocked in a school yard. Self-consciously arranged boxes eclipse the passage from self-conscious adolescence to self-assured adult. And a light blinking on and off in an empty room attracts journalistic praise while the blinking passage of life and time are but worthless sentiments These are the precepts, of the prefects who hold our museums and colleges in a hundred year long grip of banal irrelevancies boring our inner souls and our youth alike in a system where the skilled are ridiculed, the talented are ignored and disillusioned, and the masters were dying off without a trained generation to protect, preserve and perpetuate that which had been, preserved and perpetuated for so many centuries before.

I am incredibly fortunate to be speaking to you on the cusp of one of the most important, moments in all of art history. It is very rare indeed for people to have the opportunity of living through major cultural shifts of the underlying tectonic plates of the art establishment which are bringing about a world wide shift in the perception and definition of what constitutes great art, and the institutions which themselves must change or perish if they are going to survive. After more than a century of blind allies, nightmarish detours, and mind numbing Artspeak to boost up what should have been rejected long ago as lacking the "relevance" which the modernists insist is missing from the "real" artist of today and the real artists of the 19th century: those who chose not to lead the way to Jackson Pollock, Mark Rothko or Andy Warhol.

It seems that for most of the past century, there has been what is best described as a conspiracy, both tacit and willful, to malign and degrade the reputations and artwork produced during the Victorian era and its counterparts in Europe and America. This struggle for the re-appreciation of Traditional Realism continues to the present day.

There is now an overwhelming preponderance of evidence that has come to light, which makes the Modernist arguments about, and the descriptions of, this era appear to be exactly what they are: pathetic lies and distortions fabricated in order to denigrate some of history's finest art and artists in order to elevate the unskilled works by untrained hands that have been lionized by the tenets of modernism that came directly after them.

The suppressed truth about this period, however, is that during the 19th century there was an explosion of artistic activity unrivaled in all prior history. Thousands of properly trained artists developed a myriad of new techniques and explored countless new subjects and perspectives that had never been dealt with before. They covered nearly every aspect of human activity.

The artists and writers of the day identified, codified, protected and perpetuated the great humanist values and momentous Age-of-Reason discoveries of the day. The writers for their part, were praised and celebrated to the heavens, while the artists were ridiculed and slandered.

But working together, together, they helped free the slaves, protect the environment, stop child labor, eradicate unsafe working conditions, insured women the vote and equal rights, broke up monopolies, and assured minority rights. And for this, their pay back has been to dismiss their work and denigrate their methods and lie about the meaning of their subjects and berate their achievements. Why? Because they didn't lead the way to splattered paint, blank canvases or industrial size Campbell's soup cans? And therefore were called "irrelevant"???

And there in lies the main topic for tonight. For the purpose of this talk, I will focus especially on the concept of "Relevance" that one hears bandied about in discussions about artists and art movements.

These artists are not considered "relevant" by modernism. Only works and techniques that shed all the former definitions and parameters of fine art were to be considered "relevant". Only those artists frankly that lead the way to abstract expressionism were worthy to be called "Relevant".

Nothing could have been further from the truth!

Relevance must be understood on many levels and perhaps the most important of all is the historical context, and how that relates to today's world. Ladies and Gentlemen, what was happening in history at that time was nothing short of "Momentous".

I am speaking about some of the most significant events in all of human history.

In order to understand the Relevance of William Bouguereau and other masters of the 19th century it is essential to place them historically and correctly, in their own time. Then we can see how truly relevant they were and also understand why they have not been given their due respect by the reigning ideology.

First: Ninety-nine percent of all paintings being done between 1850 and 1900 were not impressionism or post-impressionism. Instead it was Academic art, which was taught in the great academies of the time, and exhibited in the yearly European exhibitions and especially the Paris Salons.

This words "academic art" have come to be used in a dismissive or disparaging way being called: petty, banal, mundane and uninspired. However, "academic" more accurately means a dedication to standards of excellence both in training and in artistic execution, and a dedication to teaching and learning with great discipline and devotion, to the methods, developments and breakthroughs of prior generations. But while the past was to be fully appreciated, so too were artists encouraged to develop their craft to ever higher levels of creative and technical excellence and expression.

Yet, this Academic art was characterized as oppressive, narrow and superficial by the "official" pedagogues of abstraction. The exact opposite was the truth.

Today I will show that the academic artists of the 19th century and William Bouguereau in particular, were not only "relevant" to the times, and relevant to the major thread of art history, but they were relevant to the evolution of art itself, as they were working at what will certainly be considered the most important crossroads in human history, when humanity after countless generations as slaves, vassals, and serfs, using the creative words of their newly found political philosophy, threw off their chains, and rebuilt societies based on human rights and democratic rule. The artists of their day, unlike the writers and poets at their sides have not only been unfairly treated in our schools and textbooks, but have been intentionally degraded and maligned in articles, catalogs, and even art reference books and art history texts that are more accurately understood as massive propaganda brochures put out by the modernist victors writing what clearly suited their transitory cause and interests. Interests which surely are not in the interests of great art, art history, and the integrity of art education which we must pass down responsibly to the next generation.

"Relevance" is a word that has been much used and abused when critics and historians endeavor to place artists and writers into the "progressive" view of art history as it has made its way through the centuries from the early Renaissance until the modern day. And while many great and accomplished artists have probably been lost or under appreciated, for the most part, the great and near great have received their due or at least reasonable notice in the discipline of art history.

That was true until the mid nineteenth century. From roughly 1840, onwards, all of the normal criteria for judging, describing and chronicling the history of art by 20th century scholars was tossed out the window, Almost all the art text books that have been used since the middle of the 20th century have rewritten the history of the 19th century to fit the needs and prejudices of the "modernist" art world which sees all of art history through a "deconstructionist" lens that defines as important, valuable, and relevant only those works which broke one or another of the rules and parameters by which works of art were formerly valued and appreciated. Art history was seen as a long march from the "breakthroughs" of Impressionism, through a stream of different movements which led the way to Abstraction, espoused with a strident religious fervor by the followers of this "new history" to be the greatest of all forms and styles of art.

It is one of the goals of this talk to expose the truth of the modernist art history, and it is very much on topic to bring into question any practice which purports to analyze art history, in a way that deliberately suppresses a valid and correct understanding of what actually happened. And it is of the utmost importance that the history of what actually took place not be lost for all time due to the transitory prejudice and tastes of a single era. This is exactly what almost happened to the reputations of William Bouguereau and the other great academic artists of the 19th century. And while there are few if any left alive from their time who can be currently interviewed, there is fortunately a mountain of information and evidence, still available for the clear, even handed, responsible and fair minded scholar, to access, organize and analyze the actual history, so as to yet save for current and future generations an ability to know ourselves by knowing what came before...not as we might have wanted it to be, but as indeed it actually was.

This must be done if art history as a field of scholarship is not to be ultimately discovered to have devolved into nothing more than documents of propaganda. geared towards market enhancement for valuable collections passed down as wealth conserving stores of value. Successful dealers, who derived great wealth by selling such works...works created in hours instead of weeks... had little trouble lining up articulate masters of our language to build complex fire walls of cognoscenti jargon presented everywhere as brilliant analysis. These market influenced treatises insured the financial protection of these collections. Such "artspeak" as it has come to be known is ... a form of contrivance which uses self consciously complex and convoluted babble to impress, mesmerize and ultimately to silence the human instinct so that it cannot identify honestly what has been paraded before it.... brainwashing authoritatively, which confounds the evidence of our senses that otherwise any sane person would question. The "authority" of high positions, and the "authority" of books and print, and the "authority" of certificates of accreditation attached to the names of the chief proponents of modernism, have all conspired to impress and humble those whose common sense would rise up in opposition to what would have been evident nonsense if it had emanated from the mouths and pens of anyone without such a preponderance of "authority" backing them up. Finally, with adulation and the highest praise being paid to such artistic shams as cans of excrement, it has at last come to be recognized as the glib Artspeak that it is... first by a trickle, then a stream, and as a child cries out in innocence, a flood of voices will finally be heard above the din of sycophants, struck dumb, as softly, "The Emperor has no clothes" can be heard as it floats above the multitude. As I speak now, the worst has passed as revelation wakes the sleeping throng to their nearly lost aesthetic sensibilities still, thankfully, linked inextricably to human dignity.

In fact, it is in the realm of human dignity wherein one finds the truly prodigious accomplishments of the works of William Bouguereau. Born in 1825, just after the American and French Revolutions, (two events more than any others which embody the breakthroughs of Enlightenment thinking), Bouguereau stood at the top of the list of the leading writers and artist of his day, whose work was to codify those advances, and bridge the gap from centuries of human societies ruled by kings and emperors who dictated by divine right, to a civilization made of men and laws where governments could only gain legitimacy from the consent of the governed.

Theirs was a period of major cultural shifts...it was a time when the elements that made up their world were endlessly competing with the evolving elements of a world yet to come. And while we can look back perched on an outcropping of safety and view these historical shifts with relative clarity and understanding, we must not forget that it was not always so, nor was it at all clear to the artists, writers and populace where the severe and gentle dusts of history would settle. Justice, equality under the law, elections by popular vote; protection of human rights; the obligation of government and society to identify, organize, and protect those rights; freedom of the press permitting and insuring popular disclosure, debate and resolution of countless injustices from or embedded in remaining and recalcitrant institutions which were still riddled with the followers of former rules and rulers who fought to hold on to their power.

Let me quote from Alexis De Tocqueville's Democracy in America, written in 1835-1840, where he states:

"The society of the modern world, which I have sought to delineate, and which I seek to judge, has but just come into existence. Time has not yet shaped it into perfect form: the great revolution by which it has been created is not yet over; and amid the occurrences of our time, it is almost impossible to discern what will pass away with the revolution itself, and what will survive its close. The world which is rising into existence is still half encumbered by the remains of the world which is waning into decay; and amid the vast perplexity of human affairs, none can say how much of ancient institutions and former manners of will remain, or how much will completely disappear."*
(Alexis De Tocqueville Democracy in America (1835-1840; trans. Henry Reeve 1835-1840)

It was not at all clear where we would wind up, but it was clarity that was needed if people were to organize their lives securely, and it was clarity that was essential, for only a free and secure people can build a civilization fit for culture and the arts. So it was the writers and artists of the "first" century of liberty and freedom,.... the 19th Century,... that were given the duty and responsibility to organize, to codify, to popularize and protect the systems, laws, and democratized institutions of society which would insure the perpetuation of liberty....a way of life so recently come to the affairs of man. How they were to discharge these duties would surely impact and effect future generations perhaps for centuries to come.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau cried out at the beginning of his landmark work, The Social Contract: "Man is born free; and everywhere he is in chains..." Unlike Marx, Rousseau's work focused on one of the most essential concepts that sired the western world from "medievalism," and protected people from being vulnerable to the whims of a despot, or philosopher King alike, either of whom were really only responsible to their own sensibilities which were validated and legitimized by "divine right". The Western world moved from a world filled with edicts of the "Sovereign" to a world ruled by "sovereign states." Terms like the "general will" and "social contract" and "government, of, by and for the people": were disseminated everywhere throughout the newly "free" world. For example in his Discourse on the Origin if Inequality Rousseau, ended this great historical essay speaking about current day injustices in France, "since it is plainly contrary to the laws of nature....that the privileged few should gorge themselves with superfluities; while the starving multitude are in want of the bare necessities of life."

He lashed out at an indifferent society and observed "... how poverty could deprave and degrade men and women who were originally good".

These revolutionary ideas became concepts whose meanings and understanding became increasingly embedded in the educated and wealthy classes, "trickling down" all the way to workers in the fields, and laborers in factories and shipyards all of whom were to participate in the benefits of newly free and democratic societies as the 18th century origins led to 19th century codification and 20th century implementation. It started first narrowly, as with only land owners voting in the original US Constitution, and then ever more broadly until by the time the 20th century had finished dealing with two world wars, the great Depression and countless other horrors, we saw an evolution from an agricultural to an industrialized economy, the abolition of monarchy, women voting, slavery abolished, child labor banned, labor movements established, and countless new institutions spread these new found freedoms and rights into virtually every nook and cranny of Western civilization. The rights to confront your accuser and cross examine witnesses, the cornerstone of "due process" with a common law and written law that protected and defended every inch of those new found human rights.

While it would be possible to write a dozen speeches on this one topic, if you read the seminal Enlightenment works by Locke, Hobbes, Mill and De Tocqueville, the mind set and cultural atmosphere becomes clear, setting the stage for the way in which we feel free to live, work and think today.

While I have taken a lot of time demonstrating many of the core beliefs and breakthroughs of the Enlightenment, it is because it is precisely these ideas and concepts that are so crucial to understanding the context in which the artists of the 19th century lived.

They were, in fact, addressing the very heart of Enlightenment thought.

"RELEVANCE"
Bouguereau painted young peasant girls with a solemn dignity and a hushed and reverential beauty, whether she was holding her staff and standing her ground as in "Jeune Bergere Debout" or the gypsies were being elevated to the heavens, as in this enchanting work called simply "Jeunes Bohemiennes". Note his low horizon has these two young innocents silhouetted by the heavens. Their kind and welcoming expressions implies their acceptance of us, the viewers which must by rights be properly echoed by our acceptance of them regardless of the lowly status of their birth. The very truth and reality of their birth once a negative, now elevates them to the heavens a status now where all of humanity resides. Only this time we have been endowed by our creator with certain "inalienable rights" of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, or in his native France: liberte, egalite and fraternite. How assuredly he shows the values and beliefs newly elevated in his day, that the peasant class was just as noble and worthy of respect as any previous nobility whose rule by "divine right" has been eclipsed by the rule of human rights! And, if all people are equal, than all must rule together....Hence "Democracy!" This was a completely revolutionary way in which to depict the peasant class or human beings in general.

"RELEVANCE"
Each of his figures is an individual, extraordinarily real and ideal at the same moment. Bouguereau has chosen real characteristics present in many or most people to idealize. And his message of values, dignity and self respect and respect for others is thereby enhanced by individuation. Artists such as Julien Dupre, George Laugee, Leon L'hermitte and Jean Francois Millet painted the peasant class at work or at rest, they were also communicating values and beliefs in how to live and what constituted proper modes of conduct:

"RELEVANCE"
Hard work, family life, caring for our children, the value of romantic love as well as familial duty, honor and taking responsibility for oneself and one's life. This supplied endless subjects, compositions and themes that had never been encountered before.

"RELEVANCE"
From there other artists tackled the cultural evils and social ills and countless injustices left behind by the old order that receded every year further back into the smoky recesses of memory, as new societal institutions and structures sallied forth to teach these values, expose the social ills, solve societies problems, and then through hard work, just laws and a thorough education, they were codifying, protecting, fine-tuning and preserving these achievements for our children.

"RELEVANCE"
Paintings of the poor and homeless, women thrown out in the cold by husbands who controlled their money after marriage, and wielded absolute power over their homes much as the Kings had wielded such power over them. Scenes of unsafe working conditions, or children toiling until late at night after 16 hour days. Scenes of marriage and children and family life. Scenes of schools and courts and hospitals and industry...parks and mountains and countless other topics. For example, Clergy preaching to give up worldly possessions from their opulent apartments filled with art and antiques and servants. How revolutionary this was for artists. When Vibert, Brunery or Crogaert satirized the clergy, and painted cardinals in sumptuous surroundings playing cards with pretty young socialites, or hiring the services of a fortune teller, he was saying that the clergy was human and vulnerable to the same weaknesses and frailty of character as other people. But beyond that, to spoof the clergy represented our new found freedom of speech. A modernist professor once said to me "how inane and silly to show Cardinals in silly poses like that" His prejudice blinded him from even beginning to figure out what Vibert had done...what rules of conduct he had broken from the prior rulers of society. We have been taught to elevate artists for breaking rules and conventions of perspective or for undermining realistic drawing, or daring not to follow prior precepts, but the academic artists who had been on the front lines helping all of us to win our freedoms and rights, were also helping to create a climate where it was even possible to consider breaking the rules of art....which by comparison, were unimportant to the rule breaking which lead to freedom and justice.

What could hold more "Relevance" than this and it is they who are made fun of and put down through stilted ignorance and ungrateful arrogance. In previous centuries, an artist would have had his head cut off for spoofing cardinals in this way. From exposing societal ills and portraying the value and equality of all people, it was but a half step away to explore the personal inner life of individuals and to value and elevate mankind hopes, fantasies, and dreams, both the good and the bad, and if necessary, with all of our boils and warts on display. Literature captures these same things in poetry, and novels. And such story telling was a cornerstone to paintings and sculpture as well. What would happen to literature if storytelling were to be banned? Well that's what happened to fine art when story telling for all intents and purposes was banned.

"RELEVANCE"
What used to be scenes of religion, history, kings and the nobility, were supplanted by simple men and gentle women, working, playing, living and praying, fighting soldiers and dancing girls, perhaps with toys or ponies, or dogs and cats. Churches and castles gave way to farm houses and playgrounds. Humanity was what counted, and everything that makes us human...how we see ourselves and how we see the world....humanity was glorified and people of every type and shape, every nationality and color, every occupation and avocation,....we were what counted...we were what was important....and we were the greatest of all subjects for the creative bounty of the top artistic minds on earth. Everything about humanity became the new fodder for the unique forms of communication produced by the writers prose, the poet's pentameter, the painter's pigments. And glorified we were as thousands of artists produced millions of images, mostly new and original, and the best of the best of these were masterpieces of the highest order.

The methods of painting were so advanced, and the best subject matter of this period was so unique and powerful, that I didn't recognize it myself when I first came across one such canvas.

In October 1977, I walked into the Clark Museum, Williamstown, Mass. to see their thirty Renoirs, and after leaving the Renoir galleries walked out into a major hall, at the end of which was a painting that grabbed me body and soul. It was a life-size painting of four water nymphs playfully dragging a mythological satyr into a lake against his will. Frozen in place, gawking with my mouth agape, cold chills careening up and down my spine; I was virtually gripped as if by a spell that had been cast. It was so alive, so beautiful and so compelling. Finally, after about fifteen or twenty minutes of soaking up wave after wave of artistic and spiritual ecstasy, I started to take back control of my consciousness.....my mind started racing with unanswered questions. My first thought was "I haven't felt this way about a work of art since I stood before Michelangelo's David. Then I thought, "This must be one of the greatest old master paintings every produced. But no name or country or time would come to mind. Italian High Renaissance, 17th Century Dutch, Carravaggio, Fragonard, Ingres, Prud'hon ... back further perhaps ... Raphael, Botticelli, Leonardo, no! No! NO! Not one of those names or times felt anything like what I was looking at.

Then I approached the painting more closely, and saw the name mispronouncing it as Bouguereau at the bottom, and the date 1873 -- 1873?

How was that possible? I'd learned that the greatest artists at that time were, Manet, Corot, Courbet, and Renoir ... that the techniques and greatness of the Old Masters had died out, and that nobody knew how to do anything remotely this great by the 1870's.

Years of undergraduate courses and another sixty credits post graduate in art, attaining my master's degree from Columbia University, and I had never heard that name. Who was he? Was he important? How could he not be important? Anyone who could have done this must surely be deserving of the highest accolades in the art world.

I was at the Clark on Sunday October 2nd 1977. That Tuesday, October 4th, I stopped in at Sotheby's and as fate would have it, there were three Bouguereau paintings being offered for sale that coming Friday. I purchased one of two babies asleep in each other's arms. During the next few weeks I started researching Bouguereau and the entire period using any free time I had. I discovered that he had won the Grand Prix de Rome in 1851 at the age of twenty-six, and after winning nearly every accolade and award imaginable for an artist of his time, ultimately become the President of the Academy, Head of the Salon, President of the Legion of Honor. He was in fact, considered the greatest French artist from 1870 to 1900, and Paris was the center of art world. All this made me feel very good about my instincts, and that I had intuitively identified as being one of the worlds' greatest artists somebody who had generally been considered as such by most of the world during the final decades of the 19th century. That included the greats of the time such as Henry James, Frederic Chopin and Charles Dickens. I was in good company as far as my recognition of genius. I then studied further and found out that Bouguereau so revered in his time that he was practically a household name and was as famous as Picasso is in ours.

The biggest discovery about Bouguereau's life was to come to me in more recent years. Mark Walker the former world expert on William Bouguereau and Damien Bartoli, who I helped in writing the Catalog Raisonne on Bouguereau to be published in 2007, discovered that Bouguereau singleÐhandedly, using all of his power in the art world, opened the Academy Julien and later the Academie Francais, to women artists for the first time in history. This fact alone should have saved his reputation from the onslaught of derision that nearly drove his name out of art history.

It didn't take long before I discovered a lot of other major names that I'd never heard of before: Tissot, Cabanel, Lefebvre, Meissonnier, Waterhouse, Rossetti, Alma-Tadema, Burne Jones, and Lord Leighton...the list was near endless.

After years of study and research, taking all the evidence into account, I came to the certain and indisputable conclusions which I am sharing here with you today.

There is a very relevant and fascinating story that needs to be added at this point in the talk. I came across an article in the New York Times, published on April 7, 2000, by KATIE HAFNER. It was about Lenn D. Lowry, the Director of the Museum of Modern Art.

(let me repeat "the Director of the Museum of Modern Art"). She Writes, Lenn D. Lowry..." has a vivid memory of the first time he was profoundly moved by a work of art. At age 7, during a visit to the Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute in Williamstown, Mass., he was separated from his parents.

While wandering in search of them, he came upon a huge painting, Nymphs and Satyr, by William Bouguereau. His parents found him a half-hour later, still staring at the 6-by-8-foot painting. "I just remember being completely transfixed by it," said Mr. Lowry, who is now 45.

The experience helped Mr. Lowry believe in the transformative power of art and what he calls the "unique encounters that occur when one is fortunate to confront directly an extraordinary object." Mr. Lowry, as well as other museum directors, wants to broaden the opportunity for such transforming moments by providing encounters with virtual art, viewed on a computer screen and brought to the art-viewing public via the World Wide Web.

Ironically, this is exactly what we've done at the Art Renewal Center.

I can't help but wonder why Mr. Lowry after having such a similar experience to my own with the same exact painting, has not aided in the resurrection of academic art. But many with careers in the art world are intimidated, and afraid to speak out against accepted gospels of modernist theory.

Before I saw Bouguereau's Nymphs and Satyr, I thought that the methods and techniques of the great Old Masters had somehow been lost over time accidentally. It never had occurred to me for two seconds, that people would actually have deliberately destroyed all of the institutions and methods by which the knowledge could be gained of how to create great works of art. This is one of mankind's greatest achievements ... one of the defining characteristics of advanced civilization ... a skill that makes us so unique, so sophisticated and so special. We are talking about the great arts of drawing, painting and sculpture, through which it's possible to express our shared humanity, including all of the universal, profound, complex and subtle emotions of what that means: our hopes and dreams, our fears and fantasies, our jealousy, and joys, our grief, loneliness, expectation, insecurity, intrigue, and compassion,

This is what art is really for; whether in theatre, in music, in literature, in sculpture, or in painting. Not the modernist cry of, "art for art's sake," or the modernist's belief that it is the duty of the artist to be honest and "prove that the canvas is flat". Any three-year-old knows that the canvas is flat! It is making the canvas come to life with reality and meaning that is the accomplishment. And these skills and humanistic values became precisely what the theories of modernism decided to attack and label as uncreative, confining and sentimental. They called great skill obsession with technique and worthless. They called story telling and the use of universal symbols as boring and repetitive. Realizing this we see that modernism didn't attack academic art. It attacked art itself. All art was without value, because the essence of what art is, the communication of our common humanity, was banished. And all this destruction was supported by journalistic art criticism, which was also held hostage by the same insanity. No longer was art allowed to use any of the parameters by which we can seek universal concepts and communicate with each other. Art was to only be about art and to be continuously novel for the sake of novelty. Not only did this create "empty art" it created quick and easily available products for sale at high prices. Now there is a huge establishment invested both philosophically and financially in this dead-end art...in such "work" as canvases using excrement and empty rooms with the light blinking on and off. In case any of you think I'm making that up, just such a room was the winner of the most prestigious award given out each year in Great Britain, the Turner Prize.

Let's go back now to look at what a collector looks for before making an acquisition. The answer is that every collector is different and has different motivation from every other collector. For me, I look for works that deal with some of the most compelling moments during life, and then harmonize this theme with superlative technique making the canvas come to life. Normally the best way to do this is with illustration or storytelling of some degree.

So many students and even teachers have written and told us how realism has been virtually or actually banned from their art departments.

John Stuart Mill's remarks on this very issue are as alive and pertinent today as they were two hundred years ago.

"Where there is a tacit convention that principles are not to be disputed; where the discussion of the greatest questions which can occupy humanity is considered to be closed, we cannot hope to find that generally high scale of mental activity which has made some periods of history so remarkable."

And

"However unwillingly a person who has a strong opinion may admit the possibility that his opinion may be false, he ought to be moved by the consideration that however true it may be, if it is not fully, frequently, and fearlessly discussed, it will be held as a dead dogma, not a living truth." John Stuart Mill's essay On Liberty (From Great Political Thinkers by Wm. Bernstien p.569)

Without a dynamic living coterie of experts teaching traditional techniques in drawing and painting, it will never be possible for college art departments, to have students who are able to enrich the debate and the academic environment for all students by producing works of art that are capable of expressing complex and subtle ideas. To forbid these skills to be taught on campus in any real depth, is as ridiculous as having a music department that refuses to teach the circle of fifths or only teaches three or four of the scales from which they insist all music must be composed.

If there was nothing to be ashamed in their teaching methods and in their results, they would welcome the chance to confront the ideas that they should be well equipped to refute. They have a solemn duty to maintain the integrity of thought made possible by what has been handed down to them by those artists, writers and thinkers of the 19th century and before, who established a system where freedom of thought would prevail. And where is it more important to vouchsafe these principles than at our nation's colleges and universities who are training the next generations of leaders?

Even if they don't agree they had a duty to expose their students to what is the "state of the art".

There is a concept which explains how It works. It's called "prestige suggestion".

Prestige suggestion causes people to assume automatically that a work must be great if it is by any of the "big names" of modern art, so they at once start looking for greatness. If they don't see greatness they are made to believe that it is due to their ignorance or lack of artistic sensibilities, but never because just maybe there is some failing in the art work. To acknowledge doubts is to make oneself vulnerable to ridicule and derision. It's so much easier to go along to get along. Students operating under that kind of intimidating pressure, you can be sure, will find greatness no matter what they are looking at. The reverse of this has been trained into them when they view academic paintings. They have been taught that works exhibiting realistic rendering are "bad" art and therefore any good that is seen is not due to qualities in the artistic accomplishment, but are rather due to a lack of intelligence and taste in the viewer. But political free speech is so important, so at the heart of what America stands for, so integral to our entire way of life that this danger is being spotted by a new generation and many thoughtful scholars and more mature members of culture who have been able to unplug themselves from the Modernist propaganda machine to finally see with their own eyes.

Now, what of the future?

Artists, Oil Painters of America!

Modernist educators....and I use that term loosely....love to tell their charges...their students... the object of the fiduciary responsibility that they have been licensed by the state for, and whom they have a sacred duty and promise to guide and gain safe on their educational journey before entering the ranks of art professionals.

Educators have determined en masse, apparently, that the best way to impart the benefits of modernism, and all of their own years of hard work, experience and knowledge, is to tell their students to...
"Do your own thing."
"Do your own thing????"
Aren't they really saying to "figure out how to teach yourself, because I sure as hell don't know how to teach you anything?"

We all know adolescence normally entails some degree of rebellion from authority, and truancy from participation and practice. Shirking of one's work and duties is not the kind of thing that teachers are supposed to encourage. Young people love getting out of doing work, especially work that is hard and takes great concentration and focus. What do you think goes through their heads when the "authority" in front of the room in art class tells then to "do your own thing"???

Despite the gross misuse of this phrase, and as practicing artists, already educated, whether you have suffered through this system or lack there of, you have come out on the other side, and you are building your careers. And I know that many of you must take commissions in order to make a living. But let me please encourage you to not lose sight of the inspiration that originally seduced you to become artists and painters.

Each of you have different subjects and themes that excite you and when it comes to subjects and themes, for the already educated and skilled, it is there that the directive of "do your own thing" can and should be used.

And please people, don't turn away from great painting.
Despite the warning of modernists, that it's already all been done...
It has not already all been done!
It has not even remotely all been done!
Would anyone say it's all been done when it comes to literature, theatre, poetry, music, or dance?
It has not ...already ...all.. been done!
Not even close.

In fact, I would say that we are really just beginning to explore the great themes about the human condition, whether subtle or evident,
Whether psychic, or psychological
Whether history or story telling
Literal or Literary ----Fantasy or faith,
Fiction or fact----Romantic or realistic
Legend or landscape---Whether of inner life, or interstellar travel.

The last century has unquestionably been the most complicated and expansive to the human mind and human sensibilities, and the tenets of modernism which have held the art world in an iron grip were absolutely paralyzing to the discipline of painting, and the fine arts.

All of the breakthroughs in thought and science over the past hundred years during which the knowledge of the world went from doubling every 50 years to doubling ever 6 years, the entire experience of humanity during this timeframe which ...if the math is right, takes us at this moment in time to a point where 98+% of the world knowledge has been generated during....the century without Traditional Realism.

This entire past century has barely been touched at all by your chosen field.

It's all been done?

My god, you'd have to be living in Plato's cave to believe that.

We have hardly begun to even consider all of the possible areas of thought, emotion, knowledge, and experience which have yet to be conceived, drawn and painted, in which the expressive, poetic and creative powers of the artists eye can once again enrich society, culture and civilization with the outpouring of countless masterpieces from the hands of our Living Masters, either here today, or who may now just be entering one of the 63 ARC Approved schools which we have identified which are finally teaching once again thousands of talented young people how to become...really become..."Real" artists.

With the power of the Internet and with credible organizations such as the OPA and the Art Renewal Center reaching countless millions of people, it won't be but a few short years before everyone interested in the arts knows the truth about the bondage of and its near total control over the institutions of fine art.

And as our power grows, so to will the power to communicate the truth, and the power of our newly earned sensibilities to recognize beauty, poetry and excellence in fine art!

We are but a half step away from a new birth of creativity... and a vast new outpouring of human expression, an explosive reinvigoration of the visual arts, but this time fully imbued with the true meaning of freedom of expression.

So long as most of humanity is permitted to compare and decide for themselves what constitutes great art, ...truth and beauty, the twin sisters of the human soul, are certain to prevail.

Thank you letter from Kathryn Beligratis, Executive Director of Oil Painters of America

Congratulations! From 16 to 9 on the top list! And that only in two weeks! How did you do it? (Oh sorry, stupid question! You just vote for yourself!) And you archieved it with only one third of popular pics!! But you still working on THIS item, I guess! It looks like you get your votes cause people vote your boring shit down! (Unfortunately you always get a vote to your account for that... But that's a reason why you only have one third of popular pics!)

Farhad you should know that photography We hear over and over the question as to whether photography can be considered as its own form of Art. And we see numerous treatises on yes it is and no it isn't. The main objection seems to be that it is primarily a mechanical process that handles most of the work—that the photographer has nothing further to do with it, other than some manipulation in the printing of the picture (If indeed the photographer does his own darkroom work. For example the WWII photographers overseas snapped the shutters, but the stateside labs developed the film and printed the pictures—the photographers usually had no idea what the results, if any, would be).

Perhaps I can offer one way that might help come to some conclusion. In 1956-57 I spent upwards to a year with William Mortensen in Laguna Beach, California, learning his philosophies and techniques, both of which I have loyally practiced for over forty years as a portrait photographer. Mr. Mortensen had developed his own techniques of lighting the subject, determining the exposure, developing the film, and making the print. At every step, he ran afoul of the Group f/64 headed by Ansel Adams, who believed that there should be no "manipulation" in either developing the film or making the print. It would seem that this philosophy itself would eliminate photography from the consideration of Art, by their own arguments. The group had so much clout that they were successful in the elimination of Mortensen from virtually every history of photography for over a decade. Mortensen reversed the basic concept of "Expose for the shadows and develop for the highlights" by practicing the opposite. The concept demanded the darkroom technician to "pull" the negative at a certain point of development, guided by what's known by the "gamma" factor. This short-changing of the negative robs it of a certain degree of its potential by stopping development before it is complete. I cannot argue the results as shown by luminaries such as the Group f/64—they have certainly produced magnificent photographs that will live on forever. But I can argue the basic concept. Mortensen said that a negative, compared with the ultimate "camera obscura," the human eye, is restricted enough in its ability to record the complete gradations of a subject, that to further rob it of that ability makes little sense. The above concept does just that.

The Mortensen concept "Expose for the highlights and develop for the shadows" results in complete development of the film, arriving at what he called his "7-Derivative," or "7-D" negative. He even proved it by giving the film adequate agitation during the basic time for that film to be completely developed, say five minutes, then "going out to lunch"—he left the film in the developer for upwards to 1-1/2 hours, or just up to the time when developer breakdown would stain the negatives. From the 5-minute development on, nothing else can happen; everything has been done. With a totally developed negative, only minimal exposure need be done to the paper for a fully graded print, from its whitest white to its blackest black. I have done this several times, the 1-1/2 hour bit, with no untoward effect on the negatives.

Getting to the point of the title, this practice of involving the photographer in every aspect of achieving a picture goes a long way to place photography in the halls of Art, but it has one more demand. Mortensen, a most competent artist, fulfilled that demand. Long before going into photography he studied in New York with the artists Bridgeman, Henri, and Bellows, painting mostly cityscapes,spent a year in Greece painting. Back in his home state in Salt Lake City he taught art classes in his old high school. I saw a couple of his oils that Myrdith Mortensen had in Laguna Beach—highly competent work. The point is that he was a proven artist, carrying that talent into his work with photography.

I'm sure that my own competence as an artist, albeit a technical artist as compared with a fine artist, has been behind my success at totally absorbing Mortensen's techniques and accepting and applying his philosophies and so successfully carrying on with my own forty+year practice as a portrait photographer. I have found no other photographer that produces portraits with the same quality as mine—I'm not tooting my own horn as much as to show the Mortensen influence in my work, work that I have seen no match anywhere. My impression is that everyone learned from the same source: the works of one are indistinguishable from those of the next. My answer is that although they are good technicians, they do not have that spark of the artist. And that spark is a quality one is born with, not learned. However, an in-depth study of art history and an examination of the works of the Old Masters and successful Artists does tend to improve one's understanding of Art and to improve his own work.

I have attended so many photo shows and have gone through so many photo magazines and books to have seen works by technicians, but few Artists. One illustration: Mortensen was invited to help judge a photo show in Santa Ana, one of the few times he was away from his Laguna Beach home and studio. He took with him his understanding of "Schnitt," a method of determining the placement of the picture's principle point of interest, eponymously named after a German mathematician, Schnitt—A is to B as B is to A-B, both vertically and horizontally. The prints were laid on the floor in straight lines as in a vegetable garden. The judges walked along between the lines of prints, indicating their choices. Mortensen looked at each print, muttering "Schnitt" or "No Schnitt," picking up to too-few "Schnitts" and leaning them against a wall for further comparing. The other judges were puzzled—most of their choices were not among Mortensen's. He explained that if a print did not have good composition, it did not matter how well it had been exposed and printed, and that the application of "Schnitt" would easily determine between a print with good composition and one without. The other judges finally agreed—Mortensen's final choices were the ones given awards.

I have no argument with photographers showing their work in the usual displays. But when they try to pass off mediocre work as Art, work that is technically competent but without the true quality that Art demands, I raise an argument. I'm even no longer asked to judge photo shows because I'm known to refuse considering color prints that do not indicate who printed them along with who shot the pictures. Most photographers farm out their color printing to laboratories that have the expensive equipment—this I understand, but the labs should be given due credit.

So consider this: For photography to have its place in the world of Art, it must have within it that quality of having been achieved by the hand of a competent Artist, along with the hand of a technically competent photographer. Many technical photographers do magnificent work in the way of recording what the world has, but only Artist-photographers can do work that can hold its place in Art salons and Collections.

In a first system, a laboratory unit includes a developing machine for developing an exposed film, a printer for printing the exposed film, a print identification code printer, a film identification code reader for reading a film identification code, a scanner for reading the image recorded on the exposed film, a controller for controlling an image memory in is stored the image data sent from the photographer, and a printer which prints the image data. Also in the first system, a photographer unit includes an image memory for storing image data sent from the laboratory side, an image processing unit, an operation member, a monitor, an optical disc unit, and an image memory. The laboratory unit is connected to the photographer unit by a transmission line containing terminal repeaters. In a second system, on the photographer side, the images on a negative film are read by a scanner and converted into digital image data. The digital image data is processed by an image processing unit. The digital image data processed by the image processing unit is transferred to the laboratory side via terminal repeaters. The transferred data contains the digital image data, the data used to identify the sender, and at least one of data indicating the print size and data indicating the number of prints. A printer effects printing on the basis of the image data transferred.In this article, we describe our experiences
with an autonomous photographic system
mounted on a mobile robot. The robot navigates
around at social events, such as weddings
and conference receptions, opportunistically
taking photographs of the attendees. The
system is capable of operating in unaltered environments
and has been deployed at a number
of real-world events.
This article gives an overview of the entire robot
photographer system, and provides details
of the architecture underlying the implementation.
We relate our experiences deploying the
system in several environments, including a
scientific conference and an actual wedding,
and discuss how it performed. We evaluate the
quality of the photographs taken, and discuss
opportunities for improvement.
Our system is implemented with two digital
cameras (one still and one video), mounted on
an iRobot B21r mobile robot platform. The robot,
a bright red cylinder approximately two
feet in diameter, stands slightly over four feet
tall. The cameras are mounted on top of the robot
on a Directed Perception pan/tilt unit. All
computation is done onboard, on a PentiumIII
800 megahertz system. The only sensors used
for this project are the cameras and a laser
rangefinder, which gives 180 radial distance
measurements over the front 180 degrees of
the robot, in a plane approximately one foot
above the floor. The robot communicates with
a remote workstation, where photographs can
be displayed using a wireless Ethernet link. The
robot is shown in figure 1.
Generally, the system works as follows. The
robot navigates around the room, continually
looking for “good” photographic opportunities.
A face-detection system that fuses data
from a video camera and the laser range finder
locates the position of faces in the scene. These
faces are then analyzed by a composition system,
based on a few simple rules from photography,
and the “optimal” framing of the scene
is determined. The camera then pans, tilts and
zooms in an attempt to match this framing,
and the photograph is taken.
In the remainder of this article, we will discuss
our motivation for undertaking this project
and describe the various aspects of the system.
We then describe some of the system’s
major deployments, and show examples of the
photographs that the system took. Finally, we
offer some conclusions based on our experiences,
attempt to evaluate the performance of
the current system, and suggest future directions
for researchFailures
The most fragile component of the system is
face finding, which is highly dependent on the
color and intensity of the lights and the background
wall colors. In most environments we
had very little control over the lighting. Even
at SIGGRAPH we were constrained by the types
of lights they could provide, although we
could position them where we wanted. For example,
we have deployed the robot at the St.
Louis Science Center with mixed results because
the walls are all painted with splashes of
various colors that confuse the face finder.
The other area of mixed success was highlevel
navigation. Our two navigation strategies
perform best in different environments—
crowded versus sparse. At the CASW event and
the wedding the number of people changed
throughout the evening. In these situations, it
would have been very useful to be able to automatically
swap navigation strategies as conditions
changed.
Evaluation
The robot photographer system is inherently
hard to evaluate. Most natural characterizations
of performance are highly subjective. We
also know of no similar system with which to
compare ours. Based on the system’s performance
at SIGGRAPH, approximately one third
of the pictures that the robot takes are at least
good enough to qualify as souvenirs. This deduction
agrees with some of our after-the-fact
evaluations. People not affiliated with the project
were asked to classify randomly selected
photographs from the robot’s portfolio, across
all events, as either “very bad,” “bad,” “neutral,”
“good,” or “very good.” Roughly one
third of the photographs were classified as
“good” or “very good.” While this is certainly

Conclusions and Further Work
Several other robots have been fielded in similar
real world deployments. For example, Minerva
gave tours of the Smithsonian Museum of
American History over a period of fourteen
days (Burgard et al. 1999). This is certainly a
longer deployment than we have had, with a
similar level of environmental complexity.
Other robots have been deployed for longer,
but generally with much simpler tasks and environments
(Hada and Yuta 2000). Another notable
long-term deployment involves a robot
that provides assistance for elderly persons
(Montemerlo et al. 2002), which included several
daylong deployments.

Farhad should be in the photography This book was designed to be primarily used in two ways: as a textbook in introductory courses in remote sensing and image interpretation, and as a reference for the burgeoning number of practitioners who use geospatial information and analysis in their work. In this edition, the basics of analogue image analysis are still provided, but greater emphasis is placed on digitally based systems and analysis techniques. Hence, the subject matter contained in this book ranges from the principles of airphoto interpretation and photogrammetry, to a description of next generation satellite systems and recent developments in digital image processing.

@G.Greitl: I laugh my ass off! That's the dumbest shit I've ever heard! "farhad" took his "photographs" from ordinary wallpaper-sites! And you said that he's got "talent"!!!! Muahaha, can't stop laughing...

(The onion has been hang ging out with the fruit((OK))What are you doing?)-----Farhad : do you see my explanations.
Commercial photography is probably best defined as any photography for which the photographer is paid for images rather than works of art. In this light money could be paid for the subject of the photograph or the photograph itself. Wholesale, retail, and professional uses of photography would fall under this definition. The commercial photographic world could include:
Advertising photography: photographs made to illustrate and usually sell a service or product. These images are generally done with an advertising agency, design firm or with an in-house corporate design team.
Fashion and glamour photography: This type of photography usually incorporates models. Fashion photography emphasizes the clothes or product, glamour emphasizes the model. Glamour photography is popular in advertising and in men's magazines. Models in glamour photography may be nude, but this is not always the case.
Crime Scene Photography: This type of photography consists of photographing scenes of crime such as robberies and murders. A black and white camera or an infrared camera may be used to capture specific details.
Still life photography usually depicts inanimate subject matter, typically commonplace objects which may be either natural or man-made.
Food photography can be used for editorial, packaging or advertising use. Food photography is similar to still life photography, but requires some special skills.
Editorial photography: photographs made to illustrate a story or idea within the context of a magazine. These are usually assigned by the magazine.
Photojournalism: this can be considered a subset of editorial photography. Photographs made in this context are accepted as a documentation of a news story.
Portrait and wedding photography: photographs made and sold directly to the end user of the images.
Landscape photography: photographs of different locations.
Wildlife photography that demonstrates life of the animals.
Photo sharing: publishing or transfer of a user's digital photos online.

The market for photographic services demonstrates the aphorism "one picture is worth a thousand words," which has an interesting basis in the history of photography. Magazines and newspapers, companies putting up Web sites, advertising agencies and other groups pay for photography.

Many people take photographs for self-fulfillment or for commercial purposes. Organizations with a budget and a need for photography have several options: they can employ a photographer directly, organize a public competition, or obtain rights to stock photographs. Photo stock can be procured through traditional stock giants, such as Getty Images or Corbis; smaller microstock agencies, such as Fotolia; or web marketplaces, such as Cutcaster.

There are many ongoing questions about different aspects of photography. In her writing “On Photography” (1977) Susan Sontag discusses concerns about the objectivity of photography. This is a highly debated subject within the photographic community (Bissell, 2000). It has been concluded that photography is a subjective discipline “to photograph is to appropriate the thing photographed. It means putting one’s self into a certain relation to the world that feels like knowledge, and therefore like power” (Sontag, 1977: p 4). Photographers decide what to take a photo of, what elements to exclude and what angle to frame the photo. Along with the context that a photograph is received in, photography is definitely a subjective form.

Modern photography has raised a number of concerns on its impact on society. The concept of the camera being a 'phallic' tool has been exemplified in a number of Hollywood productions. In Alfred Hitchcock's Rear Window (1954), the camera is presented as a promoter of voyeuristic inhibitions. 'Although the camera is an observation station, the act of photographing is more than passive observing' [Sontag Susan 1977: p 12]. Michal Powell's Peeping Tom (1960) portrays the camera as both sexual and sadistically violent technology that literally kills in this picture and at the same time captures images of the pain and anguish evident on the faces of the female victims.

"The camera doesn't rape or even possess, though it may presume, intrude, trespass, distort, exploit, and, at the farthest reach of metaphor, assasinate- all activities that, unike the sexual push and shove, can be conducted from a distance, and with some detachment" [Sontag Susan 1977: p 12]

Photography is one of the new media forms that changes perception and changes the structure of society (Levinson, 1997). Further unease has been caused around cameras in regards to desensitization. Fears that disturbing or explicit images are widely accessible to children and society at large have been raised. Particularly, photos of war and pornography are causing a stir. (Sontag). Sontag is concerned that “to photograph is to turn people into objects that can be symbolically possessed”. Desensitization discussion goes hand in hand with debates about censored images. Sontag writes of her concern that the ability to censor pictures means the photographer has the ability to construct reality.
Please answer me to write

(ok) what do you tell me?

Farhad read these comments.Where are you?Let me for my comments.

STOP VOTING FOR YOUR OWN PICS!!! (RIGHT NOW, I WATCHED IT ON THE TOP LIST: NOBODY GET VOTES EXCEPT YOU!!) THAT'S CHEATING!!!

...and another 1000 votes overnight... DAMN CHEATER!!!

No happy year to you, you damn asshole!!! That you have over 100.000 votes is so absurd!!! You are NOT one of the great uploaders here on Pixdaus!!!! One and a half week ago you had 83.000 votes!!!! Nobody has such a grow of votes like you!!! You don't deserve this votes cause you vote just yourself!! Even your oldest pics get constantly positive votes!!! That is not the case by other users!!! YOU ARE A DAMN FUCKING CHEATER!!!! Over 100.000 votes! Absolut ridiculous! SHAME ON YOU, farhad!!!! SHAME ON YOU!!!

It can be. I think that this distinction between art and illustration is a rather weak one that was created in order to segregate the insane world of modernism from the practical needs of people to use artistic communication in conjunction with ad campaigns, books, and so on. When someone paints a great painting of a woman washing her hair with Head and Shoulders he might be doing it for a commercial purpose, but he's still making art (if he does it right, that is). When someone illustrates a chapter of a book, or makes a poster to promote a movie he is still doing everything a conventional artist does and he is still doing it the same way, he's just doing it for a commercial/product promotional reason rather than some other one, and I don't think that there's anything unworthy about that. The existence of talented "illustrators" in the 20th century in fact has been the carrier of much of the good knowledge and technique from the time before modernism to the present day. That they often had to work for commercial interests like magazines, book publishers, and ad agencies says nothing about the quality of their work (other than that people with genuine expressive needs recognized their value) and it says a lot about the fact that such people were mostly shunned by the rest of the "fine art" world. The "rehabilitation" of Norman Rockwell in recent years has been a good sign in this regard.
Since I don't even think there is such a thing as communal art I don't know quite how to respond to that. Art is made by individual people, not groups. Multiple artists might cooperate on some large-scale project, but each of them is still using his own insights and making his own judgments alone. One thing is certain, forcing people to support such "communal art" against their will is not a way to generate genuine support for it, nor a way to get people to feel more involved in their social and cultural lives. If it is imposed on them by know-it-alls who think that people are sheep you won't end up with a unified and cooperative community of free people, you will have masters and servants, each despising the other.

You have just entered the largest on-line Museum on the internet. A work in progress, steadily expanding with thousands of high quality images of the greatest paintings and sculpture in history, the Art Renewal Center is building an encyclopedic collection of essays, biographies and articles by top scholars in the field.

ARC is the Eye of the Storm, at the core, hub and center of a major cultural shift in the art world. With a growing body of experts, we are setting standards to become ARC Approved� for artists, art schools, systems of training, museum exhibitions and historical scholarship, to bring guidance, direction, goals and reality to an art establishment that has been sailing rudderless for nearly a hundred years.

Additionally, the Art Renewal Center is a non-profit educational organization committed to reviving standards of craftsmanship and excellence. Only by gaining a full command of the skills of the past masters can we create the masters of tomorrow. This is a step forward for our culture. Experimentation and creativity can only succeed and prosper when built on a solid foundation of past accomplishments, with the tools which empower artists to realize their visions.

Nothing has been more restricting and debilitating than the theories of modernism, which eliminated these tools, along with the skills to employ them. We are providing a forum for artists, scholars, collectors and the public to appreciate great art, and to recognize that they're not alone in their suspicions about the emptiness of modern and postmodern art. These suspicions are fully justified by the overwhelming body of evidence and historical facts.



To create the largest on-line Museum on the internet, with hundreds of thousands of oversized high quality images of all the known works of the greatest painters and sculptors in human history, cross referenced to the largest encyclopedic online art reference library of historical texts, essays, biographies and articles.
To promote a return of training, standards and excellence in the visual arts.
To provide responsible views opposing those of the current art establishment when warranted, especially as expressed in critiques of current art exhibitions, and in aesthetic philosophy.
To disseminate the rich artistic heritage of 2500 years of accumulated knowledge in creating traditional, realistic images touching upon universal and timeless themes.
To advance the understanding that Great Art begins with great themes and expresses them poetically through mastery of all aspects of technique.
To repudiate the idea that development in art requires destruction of boundaries and standards, pointless emphasis on 'newness,' or pursuit of the bizarre and ugly as ends in themselves, and to expose as artistic fraud those works conceived only to elicit outrage.
To provide a technical and historical resource for artistic information, including referrals to experts.
To provide a forum for dialogue and exchange of expert information among educators scholars, curators, collectors and artists.
To promote scholarship and research on the artists of the past and the rediscovery and preservation of their techniques and methods.
To establish basic visual literacy standards across the world. Drawing must be introduced as part of the core curricula in K-12 and developed progressively until high school and beyond.
To provide impetus for the reestablishment of high standards of performance in the visual arts of painting, drawing, and sculpture, and to promote the concept of recognizable quality as a primary criterion for the judgment of Fine Art.
To offer a platform for discussion - both scholarly and informal - on art history, aesthetics, technical considerations, art education and other related issues, and to maintain honesty and frankness in our interaction with everyone, regardless of predisposition.
The Annigoni Museum, dedicated to the works of Pietro Annigoni, the greatest of the 20th-century Realists, opened in Florence, Italy, on November 15th, 2008. It is housed in a stupendous palace, the Palazzo Bardini, on Costa San Giorgio, with a wonderful view over the entirety of medieval Florence and its world-famous cathedral. The museum comprises eight or ten perfectly lit rooms and contains many of Annigoni�s masterpieces, such as the great 1946 Self-Portrait, the Solitudine series, the portrait of Annigoni�s son Benedetto as a young man, a portrait of the artist�s daughter Ricciarda, as well as many of Annigoni�s breathtaking drawings, allegories and landscapes.

Michael John Angel, Lynne Barton and Jered Woznicki of the Angel Academy of Art, Florence, were at the opening, and Benedetto Annigoni explained to them that the museum will also host conferences on art and discuss the rebirth of Realism (and its future directions), thus making the museum a museo vivo, as he called it: a living museum. It is also the intention of the museum to exchange some of the paintings from time to time and show many more works by the maestro.


The museum is the result of years of work by the artist�s family, most notably by Annigoni�s son, Benedetto, and the maestro�s beautiful widow, Rosella. During his life, Annigoni was a rebel and a champion of Realist painting, who was very much at loggerheads with the art establishment; however, shortly after his death in 1988, the government of Florence mounted a huge show in the Palazzo Strozzi. It was a delight to see the artist�s work so beautifully honored by the very art establishment that had fought with him throughout his lifetime. And now, too, there is this spectacular, official museum, where art students and the modern masters of the New Realism can see the work of the painter whom Bernard Berenson called the greatest artist of the 20th century.


Pietro Annigoni was born in Milan in 1910 and moved to Florence with his family in the mid-1920s. He leaped to fame with his 1955 portrait of Queen Elizabeth II of England and, after this, was recognized as the greatest portrait painter in the world. As well as portraits (usually in oil-tempera), he painted many allegories and frescoes for churches throughout Italy. His work is in many royal collections and public museums, such as the National Portrait Gallery in London, the National Portrait Gallery in Washington, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the Uffizi Gallery in Florence and the Vatican Museums in Rome. His students and �artistic progeny� include such painters as Michael John Angel, Antonio Ciccone, Benjamin Long, Nelson Shanks, Daniel Graves, Romano Stefanelli, Silvestro Pistolesi, Fernando Bernardini and Gianni Cacciarini. A biography of Annigoni can be found on the ARC Museum and on Wikipedia. There are many other on-line sites and many books, as well as a biographical film
In this intensive 10-day class, students will learn how to apply fundamental concepts of figure painting to a long pose. The goals of the painting workshop are to develop the student's eye, to deepen the student's feeling for light and the human figure, and to enable students to learn how to apply these principles to their own painting practice.
Each class will begin with a brief lecture and/or demonstration followed by one-on-one instruction at each student's easel.
Demonstrations will reveal the direct painting method practiced by Cheaney as taught to him by the master-artist Ted Jacobs.
This course is open to students of all levels. Dennis will work with each student to assist him or her in taking his or her art practice to the next level.

what's happening?

For exactly half a century (since our foundation in 1951) Yassavoli Publications has held firmly to the premise that a nations' art and culture provide much of the bedrock of its civilization. We, at Yassavoli Publications, are convinced, as are most of our patrons, that Iran's contributions to these two important fields are entirely distinctive and of profound significance in shaping our nations' pride and identity- to say nothing of our contribution to the Islamic world and the world at large. For these reasons Yassavoli Publications' dedicated staff and consultants have searched far and wide to locate and present the very best from Iran's glorious past- while simultaneously generating ideas and publishing new approaches to our very own art and culture.The core of our effort has been the crafting and printing of high quality books.

A quick overview of some of our works follows: As might be expected Yassavoli has presented many volumes of Iranian poetry, in all its many forms with particular attention to our national treasures: Hafez, Sa'di, Ferdowsi, Omar Khayyam and Nezami. Our extensive collection of works on ancient and modern painters and miniaturists have received critical acclaim, as have our publications on calligraphy- another area where Iran has made a special contribution. Our many books and albums on Iranian handicrafts has pride of place and our popular and academic texts on carpets, rugs, gelims, terme, tacheh, and even nomadic horse trappings are the envy of our competitors. Responding to demand we have slowly generated an outstanding library of travel and photographic books covering Iran in all its geographical, ethnic, and climatic diversity. All these works are richly illustrated with black and white or color photographs by Iran's skilled photographers. A number of the books cover the Nation in its totality; others cover special regions and/or cities such as Isfahan, Shiraz, and Kashan. As might be expected there are special publications on our exciting mountain ranges, enormous deserts, diverse tribal groups, famous archaeological sites and great monuments. Our most recent archaeological books on Persepolis are destined to be classics.

In addition to the books and albums mentioned above our effort to publicize Iranian art and culture has become as diverse as possible. Yassavoli Publications thus issues beautiful postcards, greeting cards, Now Ruz cards, posters and calendars.

We also carry a full range of supplies for aspiring calligraphers. Our books are sold in every book store in the land and our remarkable posters grace most hotels and many government offices
Galleries
I am represented exclusively by Trailside Galleries in Scottsdale, AZ and Jackson Hole, WY.

Paintings, at this time, are sold on a draw basis. To get on the Morgan Weistling Mailing List call (480) 945-7751.

Publications
Art of the West Magazine / April 1999 - cover and feature article

Southwest Art Magazine /Nov.2000 - cover and article

US Art Magazine/Dec.1998 - cover and article

Persimmon Hill Magazine/ Summer 2001- cover and feature article

American Artist Magazine/August2002-feature article

Southwest Art Magazine/June2002-feature article

Art of the West/November2002-cover and feature article

Art of the West/Jan. 2004 feature article

American Artist Workshop Magazine/summer 2005 feature article

Art of the West/April 2006 feature article on my studio
Trademarks & Symbols
Author: Kuwayama Yasaburo
Hardbound, Fifth Edition, 2006



Bouf-e Kour
Author: The Society of Iranian Graphic Designers, English translation: Karim Emami
Paperback, First Edition, 2002
US$ 25


Ralph Schraivogel in Tehran (out of print)
Paperback, First edition: 2002
US$ 15


The Book of Signs
Author: Bijan Sayfouri
Paperback, Second edition: 2002
US$ 30


Iranian Contemporary Graphic Designers (5) Kourosh Parsanejad
Paperback, First Edition, 2005
US$ 35


Iranian Contemporary Graphic Designers (4) Houman Mortazavi
Paperback, First edition 2005
US$ 35


Iranian Contemporary Graphic Designers (3) Alireza Mostafazadeh Ebrahimi
Paperback, First Edition 2003
US$ 35


Iranian Contemporary Graphic Designers (2) Mostafa Asadollahi
Paperback, Second Edition, 2006
US$ 35


Iranian Contemporary Graphic Designers (1) Masoud Nejabati
Paperback, First Edition, 2006
US$ 35


Iranian Contemporary Graphic Designers (8) Nour-od Din Zarrin Kelk
Paperback, First Edition, 2006
US$ 35


Iranian Contemporary Graphic Designers (6) Farzad Adibi
Paperback, First Edition, 2005
US$ 35


Iranian Contemporary Graphic Designers (7) Ghobad Shiva
Paperback, First Edition, 2006
US$ 35


Iranian Contemporary Graphic Designers (9) Farshid Mesghali
Paperback, First Edition, 2007
US$ 35


Molavi, The Second Iranian Typography Exhibition
Author: Bijan Sayfouri
Paperback, First Edition, 2004
US$ 25


Hamdast
Author: Majid Abbasi , Saed Meshki , Alireza Mostafazadeh , Bijan Sayfouri
Paperback, First Edition, 2005
US$ 25


Iranian Proverbs
Author: Majid Abbasi, Saed Meshki, Alireza Mostafazadeh, Bijan Sayfouri
Paperback, First Edition, 2006
US$ 25


Signs: Morteza Momayez's Attempts in Sign Design
Author: Saed Meshki
Paperback, First Edition, 2005
US$ 35


Iranian Contemporary Graphic Designers (11) Ali Khorshidpour
Paperback, First Edition, 2007
US$ 35


Zir O Zebar
Author: Hadi Farahani
Paperback, First Edition, 1998
US$ 25


Regards sur L�Iran
Author: Hosain Seyhoun
Paperback, Forth Edition, 2007
US$ 25


Regards sur L�Iran (First Volume)
Author: Hosain Seyhoun
Paperback, Forth Edition, 2007
US$ 25


Trademarks & Symbols
Author: Kuwayama Yasaburo
Paperback, Fifth Edition, 2006
US$ 35


Signs Morteza Momayez's Attempts in Sign Design
Author: Saed Meshki
Hardbound , First Edition, 2005
US$ 40


Iranian Contemporary Graphic Designers (10) Saed Meshki
Author: Saed Meshki
Paperback, First Edition, 2008
US$ 35


A COLLECTION OF GRAPHIC WORKS BY ALI VAZIRIAN
Paperback, First Edition, 2007
US$ 35

Western Art Collector/ Jan.2008 feature article
Yassavoli Publications, a leading publisher on Iranian art, culture, history and travel is pleased to present an updated list of its offerings.

The reader may find many of the items listed to be excellent additions to his or her own library or collection of souvenirs on Iran. All Yassavoli Publications- even those glorious works of "table top size" such as our "Selection of Hafez' Lyrics" or Ferdowsi's "King's Book of Kings"- are crafted and published under rigorous norms for our discriminating public.

The Yassavoli name is your guarantee of quality.
sfahan, Pearl of Persia
Yassavoli Publications
Photographer: Ali-Reza Hosainzadeh
First edition, 2007
English
ISBN: 978-964-306-397-9
Hardbound
224 pages
23x34
US $100
Tehran:
The 200 years Old Capital
Yassavoli Publications
First edition, 2006
English-Persian
ISBN: 964-306-366-6
Hardbound
168 pages
23×22
US $40

I generally do (unless I am talking about narrow sectarian disputes) talk about "modernism" as a very broad general category that encompasses a number of different fashions and sects that have developed over the past 100 years or so. The reason I do so is because I don't consider the differences between the various movements to be significant relevant to their opposition to good art. Whether a given movement opposes good art on the grounds that tradition is bad, or that clarity of meaning is bad, or that skill is bad, or that flat canvas is bad, or that white males are bad, or that the old masters were bad, or what have you, the "sides" are still the same... genuinely good art on one side and an endless parade of arguments against it on the other. It is natural that such an irrational and unfounded attack on art would have to constantly be shifting positions and following fashions as one after another failed argument falls. That is exactly what we have seen over the course of the modernist era...each particular kind of charlatanry arises, has its day in the sun, and fades into obscurity as it fails to accomplish its expressive goal.

Look at it this way, if one was to explain what is wrong with quack medicines and why people are taken in by them, would one carefully distinguish between sellers of snake oil, magnetic bracelets, and homeopathy? Or would one generalize about them all together? Of course this would be almost certain to raise the ire of practitioners of one or the other of these "cures", but that doesn't mean that the broader issues aren't basically the same for all of the sub-categories. I'm doping the same thing when I talk about abstract expressionism, pop art, post-modernism, and all the rest by a single name rather than enumerating each individual sub-category one at a time.
Q: Isn't it impolite to be critical of any art? Wouldn't it be better if we were always positive about it all?

It is true that feelings can be hurt when art is criticized. So what? What is more important, understanding and spreading the truth or soothing the hurt feelings of hacks and those who have become convinced for whatever reasons to adopt an emotional attachment to their work? There's no need to be overly rude, but the idea that one should never make anyone upset by departing from an erroneous orthodoxy is a recipe for intellectual stagnation and the perpetual spread of error. That's a lot worse than the risk of making someone upset.

In any other area of human endeavor it is plain why we should not adopt this Pollyanna point of view. If we refused to distinguish between good doctors and incompetent or quacks, what would happen to the medical professions? If we failed to distinguish between good chefs and rotten ones, what would our food be like? Should it come as any surprise that the art world has, since adopting the relativist creed, degenerated in just the way that you would expect? You couldn't only conclude that there is a benefit from soothing the feelings of those who are in error by telling them that they are right if you thought that there was not thing to be gained by an understanding of the truth and nothing to be lost by the spread of falsehood. I shouldn't have to explain why I think otherwise.
Art Renewal Center, is a 501C3 Educational Foundation, and reserves the right to accept or reject any school, applicant or candidate, program, advice or suggestion, or to change your or their status or realign, or create or discontinue any category or designation, program, project or services at any time. ARC as well as it�s officers, directors, members, stockholders, and employees, agents or surrogates, will be held harmless for any errors and omission, or damages, real or imagined, compensatory or consequential, that might occur due to using the ARC website, applying to ARC or agreeing to be listed on the ARC website or participating in any ARC activity, programs, projects or competitions, or taking ARC�s advice, which you may or may not do by sending in any other ARC form or by participating in any way with ARC or making use of its website, programs, staff, advice, or any other benefits, programs projects, or services offered by ARC or in which ARC is a participant.

To make matters worse, many forms of this argument are actually examples of the "appeal to pity" fallacy (also known as argumentum ad misercordium), where the idea is essentially that the poor artist or defender of modern art is so wrong and so psychologically fragile that it would be cruel to argue against them.
Q: But it is impossible to make objective judgments! You are just arrogantly asserting your opinions as fact, aren't you?

That's more an accusation than a question, but it's one of the common ones I encounter.

The whole nature of evaluating the goodness or badness of something arises from how that thing relates to some purpose or goal. Is a rain storm good or bad? Well, that depends on whether you are a farmer hoping for a drought to break or a backpacker hoping to keep his sleeping bag dry. The goodness or badness isn't an intrinsic property of the thing itself (as if there's drop of goodness or evil somewhere inside the thing), but rather how the properties of the thing relate to some contextual goal against which it is being judged. It is important to note that this is not in any way the same thing as a relativist view of the good. The fact that something impedes or promotes a goal is a matter of objective fact which can be studied and evaluated and there are right and wrong answers to the question. It's not just a matter of subjective or relativist opinion, it's a matter of objective fact.

When it comes to man-made objects there are some special considerations that become relevant which make no sense when it comes to natural phenomena. You can't ask a question about the qualities of a natural object with regard to their purpose or "goal orientation". A stone is hard not because it seeks to serve some purpose but because that's just how stones are. The moon is grey because of the nature of the materials that make it up, not in order to achieve some goal. By contrast, you can ask such questions about man-made objects and situations. The head of a hammer is hard because it increases the impact of the head when it hits something. A wheel is round so that it will roll smoothly. Most manmade things are created as they are in order to achieve some goal, and to evaluate such things the proper way to do it is by measuring it against that goal. To use Aristotle's example, the reason we have knives is for cutting things. To that end we say that knives are good knives if they facilitate cutting better than others. A strong and sharp blade, a comfortable handle, and so on are key features of a good knife. In some cases a knife might have a special purpose such as cutting fruit, meat, metal, or in fighting with people, and in those cases additional properties might be good criteria for judging the goodness of a knife such as its size (not too big or small for the thing that is intended to be cut), creating a jagged cut or a smooth one (jagged perhaps being better for fighting since it would be more painful but worse for fruit). The point here is that depending on the purpose one intends for some man-made object, different properties might be good or bad even though you can still make generalizations about that class of objects.

Now let's consider how this applies to art. In general the purpose of art is to express ideas, and in particular it is the expression of ideas by the means of selective recreation of aspects of reality (as opposed to other means of expression of ideas like journalism, exposition, lecturing, screaming, etc.). Given that general goal, there are some general things you can say about any of the arts with regard to what makes for good art.

One is a set of issues related to the circumstances of its creation. For example, if the artist has excellent control over his medium (you could call it "craftsmanship") his ideas are more effectively transferred to the medium. Weak craftsmanship means that the effectiveness of the expression will be undermined.

Another is cultural context, which is how the work relates to the cultural context of the audience. What I mean by this is that a poem written in Chinese is going to be meaningless to most Americans so if you hope to express something to them it would be best to write your poem in English. The same goes for traditional matters of the medium. We should not pretend that the audience has never seen a painting, sculpture, novel, or string quartet before. We should make accurate assumptions about audience understanding and experience in making art for them if our art is to be of maximum efficacy.

Another is sensory accessibility, which has to do with the ability of the audience of the work to apprehend it effectively. A painting too large or too small to see, a symphony too quiet to hear, or a sculpture in a room too dark to see or feel would be ineffective in expressing their artistic ideas.

Another is comprehensibility, which is the property of the work that allows the audience to comprehend the intended expression. A work of art whose comprehension depends on esoteric knowledge (like what the artist had for breakfast for example) can't very effectively express anything to anyone but him. There's nothing inherently wrong with this as long as the artist and his promoters remember who the art is for. A work intended for the comprehension of a single person doesn't belong in a museum. A work exclusively intended for the comprehension of Masai warriors belongs where those people can see it, not in some American museum. It isn't accomplishing its artistic goal anywhere else.

Another general category has to do with pure sensory factors regarding the pleasure or discomfort of experiencing the work. Pleasant colors, somber hues, harmonious sounds, discordant notes, murky or confusing patterns, beautiful sculptural materials, and so on can on a very general level imply something about the work that may or may not be compatible with the meaning that is being expressed.

There's also another general issue of "design unity" which allows a work to hang together with a coherent meaning rather than having divergent styles, distractions, and inconsistent meanings. I am sure that you can think of more principles of this general kind, but I wanted to just point out a few examples to give you an idea of what these kinds of principles are and how they can relate in a general way to the quality of an artwork and how they can be objectively evaluated.

As we consider specific arts by themselves such as painting, there are several general kinds of issues which lend power to the expression or detract from it. For example, the effective use of composition to highlight important aspects of the work and minimize unimportant ones (and influence the order in which the work is experienced) is a key tool of the artist. Another is the choice of subject as appropriate to the idea being expressed. Another is the effectiveness of the use of color in setting moods, bringing attention to aspects of the painting, and diminishing attention on unimportant parts. Another is the use of illusion to create a sense of reality or unreality of a scene, there are a lot of ways of doing this. There are others specific to painting, but I think you get the idea, and I'm sure you can come up with more yourself for the other arts.

Lastly, we can consider the effectiveness of various properties of a painting with a specific subject in mind and ask whether in a particular case the design, composition, color, brushwork, craftsmanship, selection of subject, etc. effectively accomplish the expressive goal of the work or not. It is hard to make firm generalizations about this because there are so many options to pick from, but on its own terms you can judge how effectively a work pursues its own particular expressive goals using its own particular combination of artistic tools.

This is not just a matter of how you feel about the work or whether you like it (though such emotional reactions are an important indication of if and how an artist is using his medium to express things to you). To evaluate the objective quality of a work of art one needs to determine what the expressive goal is (which ideally should be easily determinable by looking at it rather than having to reading a biography of the artist or even the little plaque next to the painting) and then judge how the tools of the medium are used to pursue that goal. Again, this is not a matter of emotional preference, nor arbitrary preference, nor conformance to some kind of formal set of rules, it is a matter of judging the effectiveness of the work through an analysis of how the artistic tools are used. The tools themselves have properties, and therefore there are right and wrong ways to use them and formal methods much of the time provide useful formulas for using them with maximal effectiveness, but that's not anything like claiming that there's some kind of static formula by which an artist can use a cookie cutter to pound out works by just applying a recipe without thinking and judging the consequences. It is also different from the idea that creativity is a matter of ignoring and eliminating considerations regarding the properties of the conceptual and physical tools that create art, the nature of art, the medium in which the art is expressed, and the audience's needs and abilities. Real creativity consists of discovering effective ways of using these tools in order to achieve the most effective kind of expression.

There's one more kind of criteria on which art ought to be judged and that is the nature of the message itself. Some works of art express ideas which are true and others are false. Some promote views which are good and others which are evil. Some tend to enlighten the viewer and others tend to degrade his character. This evaluation is different from the issue of pure artistic quality, but it is not an irrelevant question, and it is one that generally gets too little attention these days as nihilists seek to eliminate all such evaluations from life. For example, there's something wrong with an otherwise excellent painting that promotes the idea that ignorance is bliss that isn't wrong with an equally excellent painting that promotes the idea that ignorance is a cage.

Alas, the 20th century art world was ruled by people teaching that there are no right and wrong ways to create art, that no art is better or worse than any other, that creativity means ignoring the properties of the medium and the audience, pretending that they either don't exist or can be anything, and that novelty is itself the goal of art, not the actual artistic expression of ideas. This whole line of thinking is nonsense, and fortunately, the world seems to be slowly turning away from that view. When it comes to "arrogance", which is more arrogant, to observe the facts and draw rational conclusions from them or to insist that understanding is impossible and that anyone who claims to know anything is wrong (and a terrible person!) merely because of the claim to know anything at all? That's arrogance of the kind that condemned Galileo, and it's alive today in our artistic institutions, and it needs to be exposed for what it is... arrogant, strutting, self-righteous ignorance and error.
Calendar 2008
Welcome to Iran
Price: US $35



There are many custom calendar services on the market these days, but only the great-looking Yassavoli Publication's features the attractive, stylish, and practical "flip-and-stand" calendar available in two versions, Christian era and Solar. Yassavoli's is a unique, beautifully designed, personalized photo calendar for a table, desk or mantelpiece, customized with fifty-four of your favorite photographs. The photographs are packaged in a box that flips open to make an attractive stand. At Yassavoli Publications, we combine high standards of design and production with a commitment to first-rate service
LCOME. You have just entered the largest on-line Museum on the internet. A work in progress, steadily expanding with thousands of high quality images of the greatest paintings and sculpture in history, the Art Renewal Center is building an encyclopedic collection of essays, biographies and articles by top scholars in the field.

ARC is the Eye of the Storm, at the core, hub and center of a major cultural shift in the art world. With a growing body of experts, we are setting standards to become ARC Approved� for artists, art schools, systems of training, museum exhibitions and historical scholarship, to bring guidance, direction, goals and reality to an art establishment that has been sailing rudderless for nearly a hundred years.

Additionally, the Art Renewal Center is a non-profit educational organization committed to reviving standards of craftsmanship and excellence. Only by gaining a full command of the skills of the past masters can we create the masters of tomorrow. This is a step forward for our culture. Experimentation and creativity can only succeed and prosper when built on a solid foundation of past accomplishments, with the tools which empower artists to realize their visions.

Nothing has been more restricting and debilitating than the theories of modernism, which eliminated these tools, along with the skills to employ them. We are providing a forum for artists, scholars, collectors and the public to appreciate great art, and to recognize that they're not alone in their suspicions about the emptiness of modern and postmodern art. These suspicions are fully justified by the overwhelming body of evidence and historical facts
Annigoni Museum Opens in Florence




The Annigoni Museum, dedicated to the works of Pietro Annigoni, the greatest of the 20th-century Realists, opened in Florence, Italy, on November 15th, 2008. It is housed in a stupendous palace, the Palazzo Bardini, on Costa San Giorgio, with a wonderful view over the entirety of medieval Florence and its world-famous cathedral. The museum comprises eight or ten perfectly lit rooms and contains many of Annigoni�s masterpieces, such as the great 1946 Self-Portrait, the Solitudine series, the portrait of Annigoni�s son Benedetto as a young man, a portrait of the artist�s daughter Ricciarda, as well as many of Annigoni�s breathtaking drawings, allegories and landscapes.

Michael John Angel, Lynne Barton and Jered Woznicki of the Angel Academy of Art, Florence, were at the opening, and Benedetto Annigoni explained to them that the museum will also host conferences on art and discuss the rebirth of Realism (and its future directions), thus making the museum a museo vivo, as he called it: a living museum. It is also the intention of the museum to exchange some of the paintings from time to time and show many more works by the maestro.


The museum is the result of years of work by the artist�s family, most notably by Annigoni�s son, Benedetto, and the maestro�s beautiful widow, Rosella. During his life, Annigoni was a rebel and a champion of Realist painting, who was very much at loggerheads with the art establishment; however, shortly after his death in 1988, the government of Florence mounted a huge show in the Palazzo Strozzi. It was a delight to see the artist�s work so beautifully honored by the very art establishment that had fought with him throughout his lifetime. And now, too, there is this spectacular, official museum, where art students and the modern masters of the New Realism can see the work of the painter whom Bernard Berenson called the greatest artist of the 20th century.


Pietro Annigoni was born in Milan in 1910 and moved to Florence with his family in the mid-1920s. He leaped to fame with his 1955 portrait of Queen Elizabeth II of England and, after this, was recognized as the greatest portrait painter in the world. As well as portraits (usually in oil-tempera), he painted many allegories and frescoes for churches throughout Italy. His work is in many royal collections and public museums, such as the National Portrait Gallery in London, the National Portrait Gallery in Washington, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the Uffizi Gallery in Florence and the Vatican Museums in Rome. His students and �artistic progeny� include such painters as Michael John Angel, Antonio Ciccone, Benjamin Long, Nelson Shanks, Daniel Graves, Romano Stefanelli, Silvestro Pistolesi, Fernando Bernardini and Gianni Cacciarini. A biography of Annigoni can be found on the ARC Museum and on Wikipedia. There are many other on-line sites and many books, as well as a biographical film: Annigoni: Portrait of an Artist.

In conjunction with her first book, Classical Drawing Atelier, Ms. Aristides has created not only a major work of technical knowledge, historical enlightenment and visual beauty, but has also made a definitive case in proving that realism in art, when used to communicate shared human experience and beauty, is the highest form of visual art. Aristides' Introduction to Classical Painting Atelier will make even die-hard modernists and devotees of abstract art stop and think. Her book itself is powerful enough to change minds. The rational art lover, even if he or she remains convinced of the "greatness" of abstract art, will come to see that realism, by its very nature, is rich with meaning and purpose and is completely relevant in today's art world. And if they pride themselves on being free-thinking and democratic, they will see that realism has as much a right to be championed as modernism. Indeed, the realism of today is modern...so let the artist choose his or her tools freely...no limits.

Aristides shows us that if abstract art reflects our angst as a culture, than realism offers us hope. Her arguments are solid, based on long studied historical and philosophical materials, which she uses freely and interweaves gracefully, not only in the Introduction, but through out the book. This second book, argues even more impressively, the role of realism as our finest form of visual art, because it is written with a maturity and confidence that comes from a continued willingness to see and hear and read all arguments and to then find over and over again that realism satisfies us humans in way that other forms cannot.
Realism is no more out-dated than the five senses themselves. Aristides has determined this after years of studying our present culture and the historical events that have brought culture to where it is today...often a very bleak, dark and impersonal place...stylish as that may be. She synthesizes all data as a philosopher, writer, painter and audience of the arts herself...and most importantly as an intelligent and caring human being. This last skill, probably the most attacked by modernist philosophy, because it seems sentimental, is indeed the most important determiner. Because isn't that why we humans make art...to reach out to other humans? But the best way for me to show you the importance of this book and why it should be read, seen and talked about, is in the book itself.

So rather than write on with an admiration that might grow boring and indulgent, I would like to let Juliette Aristides speak for herself. I want to give you the opportunity to read her Introduction, because it expresses so clearly and beautifully why Juliette Aristides took on this major task to begin with. Like a master painting, her Introduction and the way in which the whole book has been conceived, builds, using the concepts of greatness with attention to form, style, color, voice, subject, emotion, mathematical balance, originality, and a return to and reinforcing of major points, so that the book itself is a work of art. I also want you to be able to take a look inside the book and enjoy some of the visual delights and the successful technical descriptions of the actual process of painting, as well as her philosophical points.

Ms. Aristides has again taken the bold approach of placing side by side contemporary and living artists of the Realist Tradition with the great masters of the past. These contemporary artists hold up beautifully and reinforce the power and relevancy of realism in today"s culture. The numerous color plates are gorgeous and well chosen. These examples demonstrate that there is a growing return to realism and a large and prospering base of artists who have mastered these skills. This older generation is now mentoring and passing on these skills to a younger generation who want and expect to be able to paint realistically if indeed they want to call themselves artists.

So, please, enjoy Aristides Introduction, and then look on and take a glimpse into this fascinating and visually delicious book.

Farhad, you are a liar and a cheater in the face of God!

Thanks for showing everybody that you are manipulate votes!
Here with the comments and everyday with your pictures!