Peter Thiel, the founder of PayPal, likes to say that degrees from the nonprestigious schools are just expensive dunce caps. He means that today higher education is close to worthless, except that degrees from the top schools still get you interviews. I think he’s right. Don’t go to college unless you’re in the right STEM…
For the most part, I’ve stopped showing the early stages of my paintings. One thing that I’ve learned after running this site for 8 years is that readers assume that I only post finished work–the opposite of what I actually do. But one of the reasons for this blog is pedagogical. I like sharing information…
We painters are lucky. We already self-isolate when we paint, so when the pandemic s**t hits the fan, we can continue painting and just carry-on as usual. Last week I ordered some oils from RGH, and today it was delivered to my porch. No delays; business as usual. This was a small order–a tube of…
I talk about the history of the French Academy of Fine Art and defend it from charges of kitsch. Artists mentioned: David, Manet, Courbet, Watteau, and Fragonard among others.
I pick up last episode’s discussion about Clement Greenberg and the avant-garde and kitsch, and talk about academic art. Artists mentioned: Gerome, David, Bouguereau, Ingres, and Thomas Couture.
In this podcast, I look at Clement Greenberg’s influential article from 1939, ‘Avant-Garde and Kitsch.’
Bah! I am grinding my way (trying to anyway) through a volume of Clement Greenberg’s essays. In case you haven’t heard of him, Greenberg was once considered the preeminent writer on post-war American art. Greenberg’s writings are filled with hilarious pronouncements hurled from the Marxist Olympian heights. As a champion of the Abstract Expressionists, he…
At the Whitney Biennal last spring, protestors made headlines when they demanded that the museum destroy an artwork they found offensive. The protesters didn’t want the painting removed from the Biennial, they wanted it destroyed. The painting by Dana Schutz, Open Casket, is based on a well-known photograph of Emmett Till in his coffin. Till was an African American…