Fine Art Connoisseur November/December 2021

It is hard to believe a year has passed since we launched the first edition of Realism Live — a virtual art convention that teaches realist techniques for painting and drawing portraits, figures, landscapes, flowers, other still lifes, and more. The 2020 edition was a huge success, and now the team from Fine Art Connoisseur and RealismToday.com are putting the finishing touches on Realism Live 2.0. It’s designed for artists and enthusiasts at all levels of experience, from the highly accomplished to those just starting out. Beginner’s Day will occur on Wednesday, November 10, and the main program will follow on November 11, 12, and 13. By press time we were thrilled to have secured for our faculty some of the most outstanding artists in this field, including Sam Adoquei, Todd Casey,…

We all know the pandemic has altered a wide range of behaviors, some forever. When it comes to art, a survey conducted recently by a leading insurer, Chubb, took a helpful look at U.S. art collectors’ attitudes and purchasing decisions over the past year (spring 2020 through spring 2021). I won’t bore you with a blow-by-blow summary, but there are several findings worth pondering here. First, 74 percent of respondents have purchased, or would consider purchasing, art sight unseen. That confirms our impression that we have been combing the Internet more than ever before. Following from there, 79 percent of respondents used an online auction platform to buy or sell valuables or collectables, though of course they also bought via Artsy, Etsy, eBay, nonprofit arts organizations and clubs, and the websites of…

One of the most haunting true-life love stories is recounted in bronze and granite on New York City’s Upper West Side. When the R.M.S. Titanic was sinking in the North Atlantic on the night of April 15, 1912, Ida Straus apparently refused to get into one of the lifeboats reserved for women and children. She decided instead to remain with her husband, Isidor, and so, they perished together. A biblical passage from II Samuel 1:23, carved into the monument that commemorates the couple in Straus Park, reads: “Lovely and pleasant were they in their lives/And in their death they were not divided.” Ever since Jonathan Kuhn, Director of Art & Antiquities for the New York City Parks Department, first encountered those chiseled words while he was a graduate student at Columbia…

KOHSHIN FINLEY (b. 1989) is a Los Angeles-based portrait painter and poet who, at the young age of 31, has been exhibiting at blue-chip galleries, museums, and art fairs worldwide for years. A 2012 graduate of L.A.’s Otis College of Art and Design, he began receiving recognition almost immediately for his piercing black-and-white portraiture and still lifes, appearing in publications like The Los Angeles Times and Hyperallergic and making such hot lists as The Top 100 Figurative Painters Working Right Now. Beyond the well-deserved praise stands Finley’s imagery itself, which is as down-to-earth and close-to-home as art comes. He chooses to paint family, friends, and acquaintances from his community in the greater Los Angeles area, shining a light on their bonds and relationships that have withstood the harsh winds of life…

Even before the pandemic struck, there were the selfies. Thanks to the extraordinarily good cameras built into most smartphones, almost everyone can take a decent photograph of themselves. Most of the resulting images are not great art, so what makes the self-portraits of professional artists that much better? The answer, of course, is that they have skills the rest of us might not have — a knack for composition, technique, or finding a vantage or expression that communicates something more insightful than just “this is what I look like.” Since the pandemic began, many artists have been more isolated than ever, working alone (or in small pods) and thus more likely to gaze at themselves in a mirror. Not surprisingly, the Fine Art Connoisseur staff has received more self-portrait submissions than…

Maarten Platje (b. 1967) was born in the great port city of Rotterdam and still lives in the Netherlands, a country intimately connected with the sea and, not coincidentally, the birthplace of marine art as a genre. He is part of a long line of artists whose paintings, drawings, and prints of the sea, and of ships engaged in battle, racing, trading, and fishing, have become monuments to Dutch national identity. From the so-called Golden Age of the 17th century onward, these scenes have served as metaphors for the human condition as much as depictions of real experience. They memorialize life by, for, and from the sea. Since completing his studies at Ars Aemula Naturae, an art training institute in the historic city of Leiden, Platje has enjoyed international success while…