tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14405804071266249232026-09-07T09:34:16.026-07:00Christopher Volpe's Art BlogOne artist/art historian's random take on the world's great paintings.Christopher Volpehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04169170001831304788noreply@blogger.comBlogger222125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1440580407126624923.post-81909964798334445842026-09-02T10:56:00.000-07:002026-09-02T10:56:00.243-07:00Don't Beg, Just Borrow and Steal
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<!--[if gte mso Christopher Volpehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04169170001831304788noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1440580407126624923.post-51302158600836342742026-08-04T10:41:00.000-07:002026-08-04T10:41:00.236-07:00Tree HuggerThis compelling painting is part of a show in Boston this summer (2026) at HallSpace in Dorchester called "What Do Trees Know?" The write-up pasted here featured in the excellent Boston online arts mag, The Arts Fuse:Joel Janowitz is a Boston-area painter who work can be found in numerous public collections including the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Minneapolis Institute of Arts, The Christopher Volpehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04169170001831304788noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1440580407126624923.post-3680132905919979322026-07-29T10:28:36.071-07:002026-07-29T10:28:36.071-07:00And Then You Do: A Poem by Tom Clark
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var s = document.getElementsByTagName('script')[0]; Christopher Volpehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04169170001831304788noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1440580407126624923.post-68432613423746861012024-08-09T15:10:00.000-07:002024-10-10T17:59:00.128-07:00Painting is a Revelation of Being
Albert Pinkham Ryder, The Canal, 1890, 19" x 25"
“Painting isn’t about beauty. Beauty is about consciousness. Beauty is a gateway, an adornment and invitation to space. The space within the painting. And space is consciousness. Space is being. When we paint we are exploring being. That is why we need the three dimensional illusion – it isn’t an Christopher Volpehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04169170001831304788noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1440580407126624923.post-37441285765546167242023-10-28T11:24:00.000-07:002023-10-28T11:24:14.398-07:00Vermeer's Geographer (an Enigma)
Vermeer, The Geographer, 1662
The Mapmaker
Vermeer's geographer goes on looking
out of the window at a world that he
alone sees while in the room around him
the light has not moved as the centuries
have revolved in silence behind their clouds
beyond the leaves the seasons the numbers
he has not seen them out of that window
the world he sees is there as weChristopher Volpehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04169170001831304788noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1440580407126624923.post-89306376961266465902022-12-06T07:55:00.003-08:002022-12-06T07:55:45.268-08:00On Presence: Notes on Painters' PaintersWarning: Wayward philosophical-aesthetic ramblings ahead!When I've pondered the meaning of the phrase "a painter's painter" before, I've pretty much decided that it describes an artist whose work appeals strongly to other painters, often moreso than it appeals to other audiences. Other painters admire the paintings such artists make for their daring and original answers to the myriad "Christopher Volpehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04169170001831304788noreply@blogger.com14tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1440580407126624923.post-91838787268233600922021-09-30T13:00:00.009-07:002021-09-30T13:15:54.937-07:00The Curious Case of the Too-Talented ArtistRobert Longo was once an art world rockstar. Alongside the likes of Barbara Kruger, Cindy Sherman, Sherrie Levine, and David Salle, he became a "household" (ha! - not in 'Murca!) name. Above: This enormous, insanely destructive-looking wave drawing in charcoal dominates the room - it's a composite from photos, so it couldn't exist in nature. For Longo it's both an ominous nod to climate Christopher Volpehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04169170001831304788noreply@blogger.com12tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1440580407126624923.post-58206835336004803092021-09-02T18:17:00.004-07:002021-09-04T10:26:13.029-07:00"Abstracting the Seacoast" at Discover Portsmouth
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var s = document.getElementsByTagName('script')[0]; Christopher Volpehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04169170001831304788noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1440580407126624923.post-72077908351436852082021-06-18T13:37:00.012-07:002021-09-02T16:41:14.713-07:00Emenations of Time and EternityShen Wei, Untitled No. 11, 2013, oil and acrylic on linen canvas, 82 x 211 inchesRadical visions of existence, tumultuous, atmospheric, at once primordial and apocalyptic - the monumental paintings of multidisciplinary artist Shen Wei fuse Western abstract-expressionism at its most emotional with the perennial goal of Chinese landscape painting: to render the magical nature of consciousness as&Christopher Volpehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04169170001831304788noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1440580407126624923.post-17564117373641211782021-05-26T14:02:00.005-07:002021-05-26T14:04:12.164-07:00Redeeming Darkness: Notes on Resilience
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var s = document.getElementsByTagName('script')[0]; Christopher Volpehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04169170001831304788noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1440580407126624923.post-5852732254581052662021-03-08T11:33:00.117-08:002021-05-28T06:11:48.446-07:00Reading the Sexual and Social Dynamics in Degas' CompositionsIt's no secret to art historians and discerning viewers that Degas did not make pretty pictures of ballerinas. His paintings of the ballet in Paris are a conscious and (back then) shocking elevation of actual contemporary life to the level of high art. Yet they also include stark, wry, and unflinching commentaries on the social and sexual dynamics of bourgeois culture, hidden as it wereChristopher Volpehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04169170001831304788noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1440580407126624923.post-47355027863006634212020-12-09T14:35:00.001-08:002020-12-09T14:35:34.007-08:00Hayley Barker: The World as Ecstatic MysteryIn “The Grass is Blue,” a series of paintings by Hayley Barker that just closed at SHRINE gallery in New York, nature is captured in colors that never appear in nature. Ferns are cobalt blue, poplars are deep purple, rivers run blue, red and marigold. The effect is somewhat holy. You look at the paintings and understand how, in pre-industrial times, people stood in nature, and experienced God. Christopher Volpehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04169170001831304788noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1440580407126624923.post-53619751875922936672020-11-10T05:55:00.003-08:002020-11-13T07:31:14.552-08:00Painting the Woods with Deborah Paris“We can paint any number of things. But finding the things we were meant to paint is what we are after. Each of us must find our own country.” Such is the painter’s calling, as worded by landscape painter and tonalist Deborah Paris. Her marvelous book, due out this month, Painting the Woods: Nature, Memory and Metaphor fits the common definition of “instant classic.” Paris’s book Christopher Volpehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04169170001831304788noreply@blogger.com18tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1440580407126624923.post-17116051206374300772020-02-16T09:05:00.000-08:002020-02-16T12:17:21.214-08:00Helen Booth: Life, Death, Memory, and Paint
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var s = document.getElementsByTagName('script')[0]; Christopher Volpehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04169170001831304788noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1440580407126624923.post-72744953218009796592019-11-20T06:59:00.003-08:002019-11-20T07:41:53.907-08:00Cat Balco's Exploding Stars in NYC
The sparks fly at Cat Balco's solo show My Exploding Stars at Rick Wester Fine Art in New York through January 25, 2020.
Cat is a fellow writer for Art New England, which is how we met. She makes large, dynamic geometric abstractions that envelop the viewer in color so vibrant and electric you can practically sun bathe in it.
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var ga = document.createElement('script'); ga.type = 'Christopher Volpehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04169170001831304788noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1440580407126624923.post-21189266633586871342019-10-03T05:46:00.002-07:002019-10-07T05:08:44.466-07:00Beauty, Death, and The Otherworldly in Art - Bill Jensen, PainterBill Jensen makes resonant, living paintings of great emotional density that resist the application of definitions, ideologies, and “pictorial strategies.”
Bill Jensen, Louhan (Dark Angel), 2010-11, 28x23 in.
This painting, for example, doesn't represent anything in a traditional manner, and yet, at least in my experience, if you stand in front of Louhan (in eastern Christopher Volpehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04169170001831304788noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1440580407126624923.post-38148906491214935182019-01-21T11:49:00.003-08:002019-01-21T11:49:42.172-08:00The Poetic Landscape: Edward SeagoEdward Seago (1910-1974) was a traditional British landscape painter, known primarily for his oils and watercolors of beaches, big-sky landscapes, and street scenes. He began painting, sans formal training, under the spell of Alfred Munnings, best known to art historians as an anti-modernist painter of the British aristocracy and their horses.
Here Seago depicts the British landscape throughChristopher Volpehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04169170001831304788noreply@blogger.com53tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1440580407126624923.post-32353276990727318372018-11-25T08:47:00.000-08:002019-10-07T06:08:47.422-07:00The Poetic Landscape: Maurice Sapiro
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var s = document.getElementsByTagName('script')[0]; Christopher Volpehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04169170001831304788noreply@blogger.com15tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1440580407126624923.post-15648649849073016402018-11-13T06:26:00.001-08:002018-11-13T06:31:55.409-08:00Lucy Dodd - Painting as a Poetics of Earth, Water, Air
Nothing here but an excerpt and a link to uber-critic Jerry Saltz's review of Lucy Dodd's 2013 show Cake4Catfish at David Lewis Gallery (NYC) along with some images of subsequent work. He says it better than anyone else I've read, so I'll just post this nugget from a NYTimes review to get you to keep reading:
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Christopher Volpehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04169170001831304788noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1440580407126624923.post-52932103227293837052018-11-01T16:44:00.002-07:002018-11-04T08:05:21.361-08:00The Poetic Landscape: Douglas Fryer
Douglas Fryer paints pensive contemporary realist landscapes inspired by the agricultural valley where he lives with his family in Utah. His work avoids the formulaic by drawing not only upon what he actually sees but also upon strong underlying abstract design as well as what he thinks and feels about the land and the people who live and work on it.
Nearly all of his paintings balance Christopher Volpehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04169170001831304788noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1440580407126624923.post-31361823947626736002018-10-21T18:18:00.005-07:002023-06-04T19:18:41.005-07:00Corot again
Camille Corot (1796-1875), French
Souvenir of a Visit to Coubron, 1873Excerpts from "Corot" by Elbert Hubbard. Images copyright National Gallery UK ;-)
"The pale silvery tones of Corot, the shadowy boundaries that separate the visible from the invisible ... Before a Corot you would better give way, and let its beauty caress your soul. His colors are thin and very simple—Christopher Volpehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04169170001831304788noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1440580407126624923.post-2734881083750029812018-09-30T16:48:00.000-07:002018-09-30T18:00:43.796-07:00Fred CumingPerhaps because Britain largely sat out game-changing abstract expressionism, straight-up representational landscape painting is practiced, celebrated, and even, in some circles, revered in the UK.
Joan Erdley, Summer Fields, 1961 - National Gallery, Glasgow
"Abstract landscapes" (vigorous, expressive, often Turneresque palette knife landscapes and, actually, seascapes in particular) by Christopher Volpehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04169170001831304788noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1440580407126624923.post-73718048448229175602018-08-25T20:57:00.000-07:002018-08-26T10:34:48.560-07:00Tom Hall at Corey Daniels Gallery
Maine artist Tom Hall makes stark, apparently simple yet quite complex, mostly black and white paintings that deliver a visceral jolt of recognition - these aren’t paintings descriptive of Maine, they’re evocations of what Maine is and what it feels like to confront its landscape as a reflection of our troubled relationship to the natural world.
Hall lives in a tiny house andChristopher Volpehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04169170001831304788noreply@blogger.com9tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1440580407126624923.post-50257944600642703452018-07-29T14:47:00.001-07:002018-07-30T06:48:22.466-07:00Helen Frankenthaler in Provincetown
"My pictures are full of abstract climates and not nature per se, but a feeling."
-Helen Frankethaler, 1962
Helen Frankenthaler (1928 - 2011) was a giant among the mid-twentieth century "second generation" New York abstract expressionists. Her contribution was original and exerted a major influence on postwar American art.
Frankenthaler at PAAM.
There's a knockout show of Christopher Volpehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04169170001831304788noreply@blogger.com7