Fine Art Connoisseur May/June 2021

This March, the Charleston-based digital artist Mike Winkelmann (born in 1981 and known as “Beeple”) sold an NFT (non-fungible token) of his collage artwork for $69 million at Christie’s. According to the auction house, this sale places him “among the top three most valuable living artists.” An NFT is a unique digital file that exists only on a blockchain. The buyer gets limited rights to display the artwork it contains, but in many ways, you’re just buying bragging rights and an asset you may be able to resell. NFT marketing has exploded in the past month and seemingly everyone is offering one, including athletes and musicians. Until last autumn, the most a Beeple print had ever sold for was $100. As a technology, the NFT’s potential is unclear. We may see it…

Last Sunday I headed to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, partly to catch up on exhibitions and partly because it was raining. Manhattan has been comparatively sleepy during the pandemic, so I was astonished to find a long line of people waiting patiently to visit the temporary exhibition Alice Neel: People Come First. On view through August 1, this is the first retrospective devoted to Alice Neel (1900–1984) that New Yorkers have seen in 20 years. Its 100 paintings, drawings, and watercolors reveal her as one of the 20th century’s most daring painters, as well as a champion of social justice at a time when that wasn’t particularly cool. I personally had not encountered so long a line at the Met since its blockbuster featuring the late fashion designer Alexander McQueen in…

YOANN LOSSEL (b. 1985) is a French artist re-imagining the highly visual worlds of Roman and Greek mythology, Celtic folklore, and medieval romance in graphite, oil, and gold leaf. His large-scale, otherworldly scenes resonate like stills from an epic film — forms of time-intensive art that rarely emerge from someone of his generation. Although Lossel depicts fairytales and legends, he actually does not have to go far afield for inspiration. Living in the Brocéliande forest of Brittany, he is surrounded by enchanted woodland, with wide-open spaces ideal for roaming and dreaming. An avid reader, Lossel has assembled an extensive library of classic literature and art history books — including a first-edition collection of Golden Age of Illustration masters — that is at his fingertips in the studio, while his greatest muse,…

Founded in 1999 by the New Jersey collectors Fred, Sherry, and Kara Lysandra Ross with several of their fellow scholars, the Art Renewal Center (ARC) is a nonprofit educational foundation that encourages the re-emergence of traditional art and training techniques. The fruits of its labors are becoming ever more apparent as time goes by. ARC is probably best known to readers of Fine Art Connoisseur for its impressive website (artrenewal.org), which contains more than 80,000 high-resolution images by Old Master, 19th-century, and early-20th-century artists, along with artist biographies and related articles. The site has evolved into an invaluable reference for anyone interested in historical realism. ARC is equally committed to bringing this rich heritage up to date by highlighting the booming field of contemporary realism. In addition to its ever-growing roster…

Many good things come in pairs, including human beings. Though being on your own is absolutely fine, many folks prefer to be part of a couple. That relationship is often romantic, but not necessarily, nor does it necessarily remain so throughout. Moreover, there are plenty of friends, siblings (especially twins), dance duos, and work colleagues who thrive in couple relationships that have no hint of romance at all. And this is not even including animals, who often pair off for various reasons. Artists have long been intrigued by couples not only for their narrative potential (think Romeo and Juliet), but also because the body language of people who are just that comfortable with each other differs noticeably from other pairs’. As inveterate observers, artists get interested when they discern that distinction,…

The Ghanaian-born, New York-based artist Sam Adoquei (b. 1964) is an author, teacher, philosopher, and mentor — in a word, a polymath. I met him when I directed the National Academy Museum and School of Fine Art (1997–2007), where he was an outstanding member of the faculty. A demanding teacher, Adoquei was appreciated and sought after by the most dedicated and serious students. I valued his energy and his perseverance in imparting not only the essence, but also the rigor and technique essential to the art of painting. It is my goal here to offer new insights into Adoquei’s creations by surveying his unusual life journey and examining his techniques, all of which he has written about extensively in several popular books and articles.1 Measuring 6 feet high and 10 feet…