HAPPY NEW YEAR January 2011

No images of my paintings this month. In fact, not much evidence of may painting except three works in progress not yet ready to display. We'll see if they pass muster.

BOOKS AND A MOVIE

Here's an idea: A novel by STEVE MARTIN (for heaven's sake!) entitiled AN OBJECT OF BEAUTY. I haven't read it yet so you are on your own. However the review maikes me want to check it out and I'm not a Martin fan.
"An attractive, ambitious young woman rises through artist and writer boyfriends, curators, FBI agents, international dealers and art collectors. The talk is contemporary art and ...money." The reveiwer (also a painter) goes on, "Steve gets the art world, human nature, body language, as well as the dark and funny twists of fate. He know his stuff and he nails it."
This is my guess about what we can expect to take away. Much of the stuff that calls itself art IS, but much of it IS NOT. So enjoy what you like and ignore the rest. Collectiing contemporary art in order to make money is a little like buying and selling Wall Street stocks. You've got to depend on someone promoting the artist and making a market for his/her work. You may get lucky and pick some winners for your grandchildren to sell and make money, but don't count on it.
Now thanks to my friend Mary Langford who is an author, a retired librarian and a supervisor of librarians, I have two really good books to recommend that I have read. Mary receives new books sent to her by a publisher to read and rank. Both are good reads but only one is marginally about art.
The first one has some small relationship to Michelangelo and the Italian art world, but the grander story is about the court and specifically the queen of King Phillip II of Spain. In THE CREATION OF EVE by LYNN CULLEN the protagonist, a female painter of some renown, was allegedly included in Giorgio Vasari's famous chronicle of Italian Renaissance artists. I scoured the list in the two volumes of THE LIVES OF THE MOST EMINENT PAINTERS by VASARI that I own and did not find evidence of her anywhere in my books. But this maybe-not-so-historical novel is a really good one. I believe it gives true insight into the lives of two women, an artist and a queen, who lived in the sixteenth century. Try it you'll like it.
If kings and queens intrigue, be sure to see THE KING'S SPEECH with Colin Firth. This is a movie sure to earn some academy awards.
Moving forward in time, THE SCENT OF RAIN AND LIGHTENING by NANCY PICKARD is a wonderful "page turner". It's a novel about a successful ranching family revered in a nearby small town. It has twists and turns, suspense and chills, and an abundance of wonderfully drawn characters both good and evil. I have pictured it above on the coffee table in our study. It is a great read especially for us Texans and westerners in the U.S.

AUSTIN MUSEUM OF ART
Finally, as a former printmaker, I recommend that you visit AMOA downtown to see ADVANCING TRADITION: TWENTY YEARS OF PRINTMAKING AT FLATBED PRESS. Mark Smith and Katherine Brimberry have fostered printmaking in Austin and introduced it to many U.T. and Austin artists and patrons. For more information about Flatbed, please follow this link to read an interview with Mark and Katherine. http://www.printeresting.org/.