Fine Arts News

Edgar Degas' Little Dancer Aged Fourteen is on display at the National Gallery of Art until Jan. 11. Collection of Mr. and Mrs. Paul Mellon/ Courtesy of the National Gallery

A century-old teenager is the focus of a musical and an art exhibit in Washington right now. The National Gallery of Art is showing Edgar Degas' statue Little Dancer Aged Fourteen in conjunction with the Kennedy Center's Oct. 25 opening of Little Dancer, a new show inspired by the sculpture.

Ballet students Brittany Yevoli and Ava Durant, both 14, see themselves in Degas' statue. Looking at her, they stand as she does — fourth position, weight on the left leg, right leg forward, foot turned out to the right. They recognize her tutu, her shoes and her perfect posture.

"It looks like she's standing in rehearsal," Yevoli says.

They also notice the young girls hands, clasped firmly behind her back. "Maybe showing respect," Durant says, "but also just sort of the way that we're supposed to stand in class."

Little Dancer is charming, even entrancing, yet the French had a less flattering nickname for the Paris Opera Ballet corps. "They called the students rats," curator Alison Luchs says. "They were little; they were thin; they scampered; they came in from the streets."

Luchs sees determination in the young ballerina's face — one writer called her "Miss Bossy Pants" — but conservator Shelley Sturman sees a bit of mystery. "Her eyes are half closed, her head is tilted," Sturman says. "She's ready to rise above that rat of the opera mystique."



Degas used a real bodice, tutu, ribbon and even real hair in his sculpture.

Degas' Disappearing Muse

Degas made many sculptures, but Little Dancer is the only one he ever exhibited, and he worked on it for years. He made dozens of drawings before he began to sculpt with clay and beeswax, shaping and re-shaping this National Gallery original. X-rays show he stabilized the 39-inch figure with lead pipe wrapped in rope, and used wire for her arms.

"And to make them stiffer and firmer, he actually put in old paint brushes," Sturman says. To tilt her head, he put a spring coil — maybe from a chair or mattress — inside her neck. And then, he dressed her. It was totally unconventional: He gave her a real cotton bodice, waxed so it looks bronzy; a real tutu; a real silk ribbon tied around a braid made of real, blond human hair; and real linen slippers – pink and also waxed.

How did critics react in 1881? "A lot of them thought it was awful," Sturman says. "They were stunned by the realism. They were used to seeing sculptures of women in marble and bronze."

They were also used to seeing goddesses, not a flat-chested, skinny, coltish adolescent like Marie Van Goethem, the ballerina who posed for the sculpture.

"[Her name is] written on a Degas drawing," Sturman says. "[Her] parents came from Belgium. The father was a tailor; the mother was a laundress."

Marie started modeling for Degas around 1878. Curator Allison Luchs says her dance career ended four years later. "She was dismissed from the ballet. The implication is that she was missing rehearsals or getting something wrong. And she disappears. We don't know what became of her."

The new musical Little Dancer imagines Marie's life.

A Talented Street Urchin

Lynn Ahrens, who wrote the book and lyrics for the musical, says she got the idea for Little Dancer when she saw a bronze replica of the statue at the Clark Art Institute in Massachusetts. Curious about the story behind it, Ahrens did some research on Degas and Marie.

"I began to see a story emerging about an artist who was beginning to go blind, who was frightened that he was losing his power to paint," she says. "And into his life, somehow, walks a little girl who inspires him, in some way, because she is such an urchin, such a spirit and a stubborn soul, and he begins to sketch her and suddenly decides that he wants to sculpt."



Tony Award-winning actor Boyd Gaines plays Edgar Degas opposite the New York City Ballet's Tiler Peck, as Marie Van Goethem, during a Manhattan rehearsal. Paul Kolnik/Courtesy of the Kennedy Center

Ahrens and her collaborator, composer Stephen Flaherty, have created a musical that's both historically informed and highly speculative. In a Manhattan rehearsal studio, many of Degas' most famous paintings and sketches are taped to the wall — ballerinas slumping in exhaustion, rich men in black hats checking out the girls, absinthe drinkers. Director and choreographer Susan Stroman has put them all onstage, but says the heart of Little Dancer is the story of a prickly artist finding his equally prickly young muse in one of those ballet rats.

"You want to believe that she had language," Stroman says, "and she, you know, was like an Artful Dodger almost. And so that's what we have created, in essence."



Peck says she sees her character, the young Marie Van Goethem, as a survivor. Matthew Karas/Courtesy of the Kennedy Center

New York City Ballet star Tiler Peck plays young Marie as a street urchin — a very talented street urchin, but one who has no qualms picking people's pockets, including Monsieur Degas', to get money for pointe shoes.

"What I see her as is just like a survivor," Peck says. "She does anything to make her ends meet. You know, there's no hope for her at home. She goes home and her mom's drunk all the time, her mom's asking her for her money. And I feel like the ballet is the one sort of happy hope that she has in her life."

She's caught between many things, says composer Stephen Flaherty. "She's not a child; she's not an adult. She's sort of in between, in the cracks, and that's one of the things we really wanted to capture." It's that "in between-ness" that attracts Degas.

While the musical comes up with the reason Marie is dismissed from the Paris Opera, it doesn't exactly say what happened to her afterwards. There's a dream ballet which offers a variety of possible paths, and the character of older Marie quite literally haunts the show.

"By having an adult Marie and a young Marie, we're saying that she survived," director Susan Stroman says. "And that's a good thing. And that's what we would hope for.



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Tourists take photos and listen to an audio tour in front of El Greco's 'The Disrobing of Christ' inside Toledo's cathedral. Lauren Frayer for NPR

At a small exhibit at the Historical Museum of Crete, a visiting artist gazes at an early religious painting by El Greco.
"The Baptism of Christ" is a vividly colored, two-dimensional, egg tempera-on-panel work from the second half of the 16th century. But it already showed hints of the style that would later make him one of the Western world's most famous painters.

Sophia Vorontzova, a Russian artist now living in Germany, calls it his "signature in art."

"These longer forms, the colors, and for that time, for his time, I think it is very extraordinary," she says, pointing around the two-room exhibit. "You feel like El Greco was so interested in [telling a] story no one else saw."
The painter had mixed fortunes in life, but his works are being celebrated this year in Crete and in Spain on the 400th anniversary of his death.

El Greco was born Domenikos Theotokopoulos in Crete in 1541, and information about his early life is sketchy at best. What is known is based on a few documents and three Byzantine icons he painted, says Nicos Hadjinicolaou, an art historian and professor emeritus at the University of Crete who has written several books and studies on El Greco.

Hadjinicolaou says the evidence shows Theotokopoulos was already an established icon painter in his early 20s.



The Baptism of Christ by Domenikos Theotokopoulos, commonly known as El Greco is displayed at Christies auctioneers in London in 2004.

"We know that in 1563, he was a master, he had the title of a master, which means that he had a workshop, which means he had people working for him," he says.

Hadjinicolaou says there's also evidence that Theotokopoulos was married and perhaps even had children.

But because so little can be verified about the artist's life on Crete, the Greeks have gotten a little creative with it. The 2007 film , for instance, depicts him as a melodramatic young genius from a politically rebellious family who dance like warriors at funerals. (More galling for El Greco aficionados is the film's claim that he was persecuted during the Spanish Inquisition, something that never happened.)

Claims to El Greco

In northern Crete, a village of orange farmers called Fodele claims it is the painter's birthplace, even though a court document shows that he stated he was born in the city of Candia (modern-day Iraklion) about 17 miles away.
Village president Yiannis Fakoukais says Spanish academics declared Fodele as the painter's birthplace a century ago. Fakoukakis says Theotokopoulos even has descendants in Fodele.

"This is what generations of people here have lived and died knowing," he says. "People talk about us, books are written about us, and why should some document erase that?"

Each year, Fodele attracts busloads of tourists who visit a small museum that villagers claim is the painter's childhood home. The humble stone house, restored with money from the Greek government, is decorated with copies of his works and yellowed newspaper clippings of villagers declaring their relation to him.

The village also has a cafe called Domenicos and a taverna called El Greco. Even Maria Thanasa's olive-oil products shop profits from the association.

"Of course Domenikos Theotokopoulos helps us economically," she says. "Because we have tourists. And the restaurants work, the cafes work, even the women who make macrame work."

Hadjinicolaou, the art historian, says the fuss is more about Greek identity than El Greco himself.



Cafe Domenico in Fodele, Greece, which claims to be El Greco's hometown, though documents suggest he was born in another town nearby.

"Partly the interest is founded in Greek nationalism," he says. "Because this fellow came from here, because he is Greek, there is an additional kind of pride which has nothing to do with recognition of his art."

El Greco Leaves Home

Theotokopoulos left Crete sometime around 1567, departing for Italy, where he spent the next decade experimenting with his artistic style. He then moved to Spain, where he made his home.

"During his lifetime he was called either Domeniko Greco — Greco is Italian, Domeniko Spanish — in official documents in contracts, or, occasionally, Domeniko Theotokopouli, Griego," Hatzinikolaou says. "Then everyone got to know him as El Greco."

Greeks recognize the artist is famous for the work he did in Spain, not Greece. But Hatzinikolaou says they revel in the fact that he never lost his roots.

He always signed his paintings Domenikos Theotokopoulous, "down to the very end, with Greek characters."
Though his works were signed in Greek, El Greco painted them in the Spanish Renaissance style he helped invent.
El Greco's adopted Spanish hometown, Toledo, has held several exhibitions of his work this year. His works have been transported from museums all over the world, coming together in Toledo en masse for the first time since the artist's death.

A greets arrivals at the town's train station. But in the city center, many draw a blank at the name Domenikos Theotokopoulos.

"No idea! Who is that?" says Spanish tourist Angela Fernandez, visiting Toledo from nearby Madrid.
But American tourist Ann Thompson perks up when asked if she knows who Domenikos Theotokopoulos is.
"I do! It's El Greco!" she says. "And I know because my family is from Crete."

Squabbles with Spain's King

El Greco came to Spain to become rich and famous, says his biographer Fernando Marías, author of El Greco: Life and Work and El Greco of Toledo.

"He was very ambitious," says Marías, who also curated one of this year's exhibitions in Toledo. "He tried to raise his status. He thought Spain was a country or a land where his skills would be appreciated, and that he was going to make a much better living."

El Greco's first commission in Spain was an altarpiece for King Philip II, "The Disrobing of Christ," which the king wanted to hang in a monastery north of Madrid, in El Escorial. But El Greco was a perfectionist. He complained about the paint colors he was given, and his fee. Was the king impressed?

"No!" says Marías. "He didn't like it. The relation with El Greco was hard, to say it in a word. The king was angry. Because we know that he had to write a letter, 'Well, there is this Greek who is complaining!' So let's just say it was not the best way to address the king."

King Philip II held a grudge. He never hung El Greco's "The Disrobing of Christ" in his El Escorial monastery. Instead, it now hangs in Toledo's Cathedral.



View of medieval bridge in Toledo, Spain, where El Greco once lived and painted.

El Greco Arrives in Toledo — and Falls in Love

Out of favor with Spain's royals in Madrid, El Greco moved 40 miles south to Toledo. It had the country's biggest cathedral, and a demand for religious art. It's here that El Greco developed his signature style: eerie, elongated figures of saints, in lurid colors, against stormy Toledo skies.

It was in Toledo that El Greco also found love — perhaps for a second time. He had a relationship with a woman identified in some court documents as Jeronima de las Cuevas, but he never married her. Urban legend in Toledo says Jeronima was a prostitute, or a nun — and thus El Greco couldn't marry her. But Marías, his biographer, says it's more likely because he was already married in Greece.

"He was trying not to rouse suspicion. That's probably the reason he didn't marry the mother of his son," Marías says. "He probably was married in Crete. If he had married for a second time in Spain, he could have been labeled a bigamist and persecuted by the Spanish Inquisition."

El Greco had a son with Jeronima. At age 8, the boy, named Jorge Manuel Theotokopoulos, went to work in his father's workshop. He had some of El Greco's talent for painting, but was a better architect. He helped design some municipal buildings in Toledo, and the cathedral's cupola — which still stand today.

Always an Outsider

The Catholic Church didn't know what to make of El Greco. He was a foreigner, and not a Catholic. He'd fallen out with the king. But nobles bought his work.

El Greco got rich, and then overspent, says Inma Sanchez, an art historian and tour guide in Toledo.
"He was trying to live as a nobleman, at a moment that being a nobleman meant to dress with very expensive clothes, to rent some rooms in a palace," Sanchez says. "So he was living a life that was over his possibilities."

El Greco died in Toledo loaded with debts. He was always an outsider. He never learned Spanish. Sanchez gazes at his grave inside a medieval convent in Toledo, still run by nuns.

"Can you see that little coffin in there?" she says. "Well, this is all we have. And of course the dust inside. That's all."

Almost Forgotten

El Greco was almost forgotten until a little more than 100 years ago, when painters like Cezanne, Picasso and Jackson Pollack rediscovered him. They spotted something very modern in his work, some 300 years before Abstract Expressionism. Now El Greco has become one of the West's most popular painters.

If the artist only knew, Sanchez says.

"I always wonder, I ask myself, can you imagine if I could whisper in the ear of El Greco — '400 years later, we're going to do a monographic exhibition just to remember you, in this place, with paintings from all around the world,'" Sanchez says. "He succeeded! He got what he was really looking for — the fame, and to be remembered."



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Edgar Degas' 1875 painting Au Café Concert: La Chanson du Chien is part of billionaire Jerry Perenchio's collection being donated to the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. Los Angeles County Museum of Art

In a gift the Los Angeles County Museum of Art says is the largest in its history, billionaire Jerry Perenchio is donating art worth an estimated $500 million to the museum.

From member station KPCC in Los Angeles:

"The collection — at least 47 pieces with an estimated value of $500 million — includes work by such European masters as Pierre Bonnard, Edgar Degas, Édouard Manet, Claude Monet, Camille Pissarro, René Magritte, Pablo Picasso and others."

The paintings and other works collected by Perenchio, 83, won't go into the museum's permanent collection until after his death.

"He has offered to us to show some of the highlights very soon," Museum CEO and Director Michael Govan tells KPCC. "In fact, in a matter of months, so you'll get a taste of that."

The donation also includes a requirement that the museum follow through on plans to rebuild its campus.
The Los Angeles Times reports that the public donation is a divergence for Perenchio, who has largely avoided the spotlight.

"In this case, I've decided that it's worth a temporary step into the spotlight and to encourage other collectors to give to LACMA and support the fundraising," Perenchio tells the newspaper.

A former talent agent and TV executive, Perenchio scored a billion-dollar payday in 2007 when he sold his part of Univision, the Spanish-language network he helped buy in 1992.

Longtime sports fans might also recall that Perenchio was the promoter who put together a famous 1973 tennis match between Billie Jean King and Bobby Riggs, billed as the "Battle of the Sexes."


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Andy Warhol's Triple Elvis [Ferus Type] is set to be auctioned at Christie's, and expectations are high — but Warhol's estate won't see any of the money. Christie's Images LTD. 2014

It's fall auction season in New York, and two Andy Warhol silkscreens are on the block at Christie's. One is of Elvis Presley — it's called Triple Elvis; the other is Four Marlons — as in Marlon Brando. In the late 1970s, a German casino bought both works for $185,000. This time around, they're expected to fetch more than $100 million. Andy Warhol's estate won't see any of that money: Unlike musicians or novelists, visual artists don't earn future royalties. But that may be about to change.

In 1973, a team of documentary filmmakers was following art maven Robert Scull for a movie called America's Pop Collector. Years before, he'd bought a painting from the artist Robert Rauschenberg for $900, and it was being auctioned at Christies for $85,000 — a windfall for the collector, not the artist. The film crew captured a legendary moment when Scull greeted the artist Robert Rauschenberg — who scolded Scull for profiting off of his artwork.

Scull argued back that the sale benefited the artist, if not directly, because his work would rise in price. Rauschenberg didn't see it that way. He spent years lobbying Congress to get royalties for artists when their works are sold down the line.

The idea didn't get any traction then, but now there's a bill in Congress, called A.R.T. — American Royalties Too — which would mandate that 5% of every auction sale go to the artists or their descendants, with a cap of $700,000. The sponsor is New York congressman Jerry Nadler, who says says the Copyright Office used to be the biggest obstacle. "Back in 1992, the Copyright Office looked into this whole matter and came out against it."



Warhol's Four Marlons is expected to sell for around $60 million — a German casino bought it (along with the Elvises above) for $185,000 in the 1970s. Christie's Images LTD.

But then Australia and the U.K. passed similar laws in favor of artists, which got the attention of the Copyright Office again. "Earlier this year, having taken a fresh look at it and looking at what other countries have done, and how it's worked out, they said this would be advantageous in the United State," Nadler says. And he adds, the bill may escape partisan gridlock. "Intellectual property is a very unusual area in Congress. You as a general rule, you can not predict where someone is going to be on an issue like this or on music licensing by knowing that he's a Democrat or Republican."

Christie's and Sotheby's would not agree to an interview. They're lobbying to kill the bill. That upsets artist Frank Stella, whose work has been auctioned for millions. "When the auction houses are against the resale right, there's a kind of not very nice preemptive stance saying that the artist doesn't count, only the collector and the auction house," he says. "I think it's not right."

But some artists are against the bill. Loren Munk says it would give money to a top echelon of artists that are already very successful, or dead. He also worries the law could discourage collectors from investing in mid-level artists. "Artists are like whores," he says, "and a lot of them are like old, old whores on the street" who would be worried about scaring away potential clients.

"I know that it doesn't take much for people to decide that something is just a little bit too much trouble to have to deal with — or if they're going to have to deal with that kind of problem, better to go with something safe."

Another concern is that royalties could drive collectors away from auction houses, towards galleries and private sales, which are exempt in the bill. University of Ohio law professor Guy Rub says at least auctions are public. "The information is public – so one of the problems with the art market is there's a lot of secrecy there. And that's not good to any market, it's not horrible but it's not good," he says.

The A.R.T. Act may get tucked into a bill that deals with larger copyright issues — but by some accounts, it does appear to have a slim chance of passing.


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Pedestrians pass the display windows at Bonhams New York auction house. The Mexican government accuses Bonhams of auctioning off artifacts that were stolen from Mexico, and says others that were offered as ancient were modern fakes.

Bonhams Auction House sold more than 100 pre-Hispanic artifacts Wednesday in New York City, including several Aztec and Mayan warrior statues. The Mexican government claims that at least half of the pieces are fake, and the rest are stolen. In a Spanish-language statement translated by NPR, Mexico's National Institute of Anthropology and History said:

"Mexico's National Institute of Anthropology and History condemns the auction by Bonhams in New York of pre-Columbian, Mexican artifacts. The auction took place without regard to legal and ethical norms. The sale not only violated Mexican laws but the Treaty of Cooperation Between the United States of America and the United Mexican States Providing For The Recovery and Return of Stolen Archaeological, Historical and Cultural Properties that was signed on July 17, 1970."

The institute says it made Bonhams aware of the "violation" through Mexico's Consulate General in New York. The institute says its experts went to New York to examine the artifacts, and they found that several showed evidence of modern manufacturing.

NPR's Carrie Kahn told our Newscast Unit on Tuesday that a spokeswoman for Bonhams said the auction house's specialists researched the artifacts thoroughly and stood by their assessment. The Associated Press reports:

"A Bonhams spokeswoman also said, "We work closely with Interpol, government authorities, the Art Loss Register as well as institutions and academics with expertise in this area to ensure that provenance is correct and that we have complied with applicable legal requirements, which is exceptionally important to our business."

But Wednesday, a Bonhams spokeswoman said the auction house is evaluating "new information" about the items.
Mark Van Stone, a Mayan art expert at Southwestern College, told NPR that the legal threshold for auctioning questionable items in the U.S. is rather low. "If you can smuggle an item into the United States, there's no law against buying and selling it," says Van Stone. "Even if it was illegally obtained and illegally smuggled. Once it's past customs, there's no law against buying and selling it."

Van Stone also raised some questions about the Mexican government's claims. "I've looked at the catalog, and I would not say half the material in that catalog is fake. I would say, at most, 5 or 10 percent."

But Van Stone also notes that a lot of art auctioned in the U.S. has questionable origins. "Generally if you buy something that you don't know the provenience of before, say, 1980, there's a good chance you're buying something that was smuggled into the United States. A lot of collections have things that came in dubiously."

The highest-valued piece at the Bonhams' auction went for $68,750.


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Peter Milton often includes famous artists in his work. In this etching and engraving, called Train From Munich, the doorman is modeled after Marcel Duchamp.

In 1962, Pop Art was taking off in a frenzy of color: Andy Warhol debuted the Marilyn Monroe and Campbell's soup can silkscreens that would revolutionize the art world, and Roy Lichtenstein was at work on his giant paintings in the mode of comic strips. That same year, artist Peter Milton, then 32, went to get his eyes tested.

At the time, Milton was teaching at the Maryland Institute College of Art in Baltimore, and he'd had a show of some of his paintings. "It got reviewed and someone referred to how warm and sort of pinky the landscapes were," he says, "and I was horrified."



Peter Milton was a painter when he was diagnosed with colorblindness.

Pink was not what Milton thought he'd been laying down on the canvas. So he made an appointment at Johns Hopkins University. "It was a brutal test because what they do is they give you 25 — I think that's the number — 25 discs."
Each disc was a different color of the spectrum, from red to violet, and Milton had to put them in order. So he did, and he thought it was fine — until the lab technician started correcting his work.

"She started moving all the pieces around and substituting, putting some farther down the scale and others up," he says. "It was a massive redoing."

The diagnosis: red-green colorblindness, or deuteranopia. That was on top of the nearsightedness that Milton had known about since he was a kid.

"Peter Milton does not have total colorblindness, but it's fairly severe," says Michael Marmor, a professor of ophthalmology at Stanford University and co-author of The Artist's Eyes: Vision and the History of Art. "We see color because we have three types of cone cells, or receptors, in the retina, one of which is mainly blue sensitive, one is red sensitive and one is green sensitive. Some people are born with abnormal red or green sensors. If they're somewhat abnormal, a person doesn't quite discriminate colors on the red-green end of the spectrum as well, but they may see them if they're bright."




For Milton, greens look more like a neutral gray with some yellow, and the color maroon looks like mud.

The Elegance Of Black And White

Colorblindness isn't that uncommon — about 1 in 10 men has some form of it — but Milton was a painter. He studied art at Yale under Josef Albers, who wrote the book on color. Literally. It's called Interaction of Color.

"I was told at one point ... that he thought very highly of my work," Milton says. "And this is very bizarre because I'm the colorblind person, he's the color guru."

Milton wasn't going to abandon art, but he did feel he had to abandon color. And so he embraced black and white. In 1969, he and his family moved to a big yellow house in Francestown, N.H., and in the four decades since, Milton has been making extraordinarily intricate black and white prints. You almost need a magnifying glass to take them in: ballerinas, dogs, children and men on bicycles float in and out of ornate train stations and cafes. They're visual puzzles in which past and present seem to merge, but looking closely won't yield an answer. Milton says it's all about invoking a sense of mystery and a mood.

Take the engraving called Mary's Turn. It was inspired by a 1908 photograph by artist Gertrude Kasebier which shows a woman lining up a billiard shot. In Milton's version, the woman is the painter Mary Cassatt, and the billiard balls are floating in the air.



Milton's Mary's Turn also features Mary Cassatt and Edgar Degas paintings hanging on the wall.

"She's playing this magical game and characters from her paintings have all assembled and come and watched her play the game," he says. The painter Edgar Degas, who had a fraught relationship with Cassatt, is also looking on with a puzzled expression. The whole thing has a sort of graininess to it, almost like an old black and white photograph.

"It's really an examination ... of not having color anymore," Milton says, "of using tonal and texture as your medium. Black and white is almost more elegant; maybe it's fully more elegant than color, unless color is used ... with great elegance in itself."



Milton's The Ministry (Second State) was inspired by the story of Marcel Proust and James Joyce sharing a Paris taxi in 1922.

'I Don't Miss Color'

Of course, Milton isn't the first artist to have worked through eye problems. The two subjects of Mary's Turn, Degas and Cassatt, also had compromised vision.

"Degas probably had a congenital retinal problem," says Stanford's Michael Marmor, "and he had progressive visual loss spanning about 40 years. Mary Cassatt had a different problem: She developed cataracts fairly late in her life."

Claude Monet also had cataracts, eventually losing his ability to tell colors apart. And the 19th-century artist Charles Meryon, who was famous for his etchings of Paris, was colorblind. You might have heard the theory that Vincent van Gogh was colorblind — that one's actually not true.

"He used vibrant greens in many paintings," Marmor says, "and green is a dangerous color for a colorblind person because it lies right between yellow and blue, and to their perception it actually greys out — it loses color."

Marmor says that, like Milton, most artists who found out they were colorblind just switched to printmaking or sculpture. And Milton says his diagnosis kind of took a weight off his shoulders: "I don't miss color. It helps to have a disability — I use that word; it's a strong word — but it helps it have a disability because when you can do anything, which of all the things you can do are you gonna choose? So something has to help you make the choice."

Or, as Degas put it, "I am convinced that these differences in vision are of no importance. One sees as one wishes to see. It's false, and it is that falsity that constitutes art."



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Anselm Kiefer's Sprache der Vogel belongs to one of Miami's best-known private collections.

Miami has a lot going for it. But as a young city, the one thing it doesn't have is a great, publicly owned art collection. (Though it recently built a $220 million art museum to house one.) What Miami does have is some great private collections of contemporary art that are open to the public. Those private collections helped attract Art Basel, a yearly event that turns Miami into a giant art fair. Every December, Art Basel draws top galleries, top buyers and tens of thousands of visitors.

One of the private collections that helped draw Art Basel is the Margulies Collection. Housed in a large warehouse, it was started by developer Martin Margulies 30 years ago and includes sculptures that are figuratively and literally monumental. Sprache der Vogel, a piece by sculptor Anselm Kiefer, sits just inside the warehouse entrance. It shows two bird wings sprouting from a stack of ancient books. The wings span 17 feet and the work weighs 3 tons.

Nearby, there are other large pieces by Willem de Kooning, Joan Miro and George Segal. The Segal is a well-known sculpture from the 1960s called Subway. Curator Katherine Hinds explains the Margulies Collection's curatorial philosophy: "It's not important to have a George Segal," she says. "But it is important to have the right George Segal for this collection." She calls it "connoisseurship" — finding significant works of art to build a collection around.



George Segal's Subway was thoughtfully acquired by the Margulies Collection, which aims to build its collection around significant works of art.

The man behind this collection, Martin Margulies, doesn't like to give his age, but he's at a point where the parties and nightlife associated with Miami Beach and Art Basel hold little appeal. At his desk, with Hinds at his side, he goes through a stack of invitations.

"Dancing until early morning?" he reads quizzically.
"You have to go to that," Hinds says, pointing to another Art Basel party invitation, to which Margulies answers, "Maybe."
Depending on whom you talk to, Miami is home to between five and 10 major private art collections. Just about all are focused on contemporary art, and for good reason. "You're not gonna see someone getting first-grade work of [Claude] Monet or [Edouard] Manet or [Pablo] Picasso or constructivist kind of work," Margulies says. "It's a young city and contemporary is the only area ... they can reach for."

Just blocks away, another private collection is housed in another warehouse — one that used to serve as a confiscation center for the Drug Enforcement Agency. It's called the Rubell Family Collection and it was founded by Donald and Mera Rubell. They started buying art as a young married couple in New York in the 1960s. Fifty years later, they're celebrating their golden wedding anniversary with new works and an exhibition of their favorites.

While showing visitors through the exhibition, Mera steps into a room with paintings by artists who helped define the New York art scene in the 1980s. "You've got Jean-Michel Basquiat, David Wojnarowicz, Keith Haring and George Condo," she says. Mera knew some of those artists personally: She remembers climbing through George Condo's fire escape in 1984 because he hadn't paid his rent and the landlord had locked him out.

Don says it was the quality of the art they were collecting that pushed them to acquire a large space where they could make it available to the public. "The artists always gave us their best pieces, or at least allowed us to buy some of their best pieces," he says. "And it did not seem right that they should go into storage."

The Rubells were instrumental in luring Art Basel to Miami Beach 12 years ago, and Miami's interest in contemporary art has been growing ever since. Art galleries and artist studios led to the gentrification of some formerly gritty neighborhoods, and the Institute of Contemporary Art, Miami — led by private collectors Irma and Norman Braman — recently announced plans to build a new museum and sculpture garden.

"The region ... has gone art crazy," Mera says. "And of course when you see all the condos that are being built, it doesn't hurt that people have a lot of wall space. And why not decorate my home with something original and something special?"

The connection between art and real estate is hardly new, but Miami has embraced it. Art dealer Gary Nader has announced plans for a new museum of Latin American art in downtown Miami showcasing works from his private collection. Nader says the museum will be part of a larger development that will include — and here's the Miami touch — two residential condominium towers.

"It's the only way I can build it," Nader explains. "And what is interesting is that these two towers are going to be built specifically for collectors." Ceilings will be 12 feet high to accommodate large art works and there will be an outdoor sculpture park.



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Her watercolor paintings (mostly portraits) tell stories of Americans whose work and traditions are fading into the past, but not before she documents their existence in artworks that could strongly stand on their own even without the meanings behind them. The ideal composition, color, and balance are there without question, but so are the individuals–the subjects, if you will. Look at them and you’ll see culture; look closely and you may see yourself or someone you know.



I recently asked Whyte, “when someone comes to you and wants to learn how to paint, what’s the first thing you tell him/her?” She was kind enough to share some valuable tips.

“When beginning artists come to me and tell me that they want to learn to paint, I tell them the very first thing they must do is learn how to draw. Drawing is absolutely essential to becoming a successful artist. (Agree with this? Tweet it!) So draw as much as you can, especially from life! Take a small sketchbook with you everywhere, and sketch everyday observations–your family, the dogs running at the park, the people in the waiting area at the dentist’s office, or the clutter on your kitchen table. Your sketchbook will become your daily journal, and bring you up the learning curve to becoming an artist faster than any other means. Drawing from life will hone your eye for proportion, perspective, composition, shape, line and value, and give you a greater understanding how form is described by light.”
Great advice! Whyte added that she tells her students that they need three things to become accomplished artists:
1. Something to say
2. The ability to say it
3. The courage to do it
I couldn’t agree more. If you’re inspired by Whyte’s paintings, learn how to paint from her with this special offer:Watercolor Portraits of the South with Mary Whyte is included in North Light Shop’s 50% off sale (scroll down for an extra 10% off coupon, plus free shipping details). As a special bonus, watch the above video coverage on Whyte and her story-filled portrait paintings. It’s from one of my favorite TV shows, CBS Sunday Morning.

An anamorphic installation portrait of Malian actor Sotigui Kouyate by French artist Bernard Pras.



Fooling the eye – with trick-niques like anamorphic sculpture, trompe l'oeil paintings and other optical illusions – is a centuries old artistic pursuit.

From the ancient frescoes of Pompeii through Rene Magritte, M.C. Escher and Salvador Dali, certain visual experimenters have wrangled with reality in a special way.

Such tricks are also up-to-the-minute contemporary. Take a look at this video of a clever 2013 anamorphic installation — by French artist Bernard Pras. It morphs from a portrait of a man to a mundane pile of objects — depending on how you look at it.

If you find the work of Bernard Pras fascinating, you can see more video explications of his installation portraits on the Internet, including French football star Zinedine Zidane and Malian actor Vincent Noel

Or at a convenience store...



A 7-Eleven in 2008.

Tricking the viewer – like a magician or a three-card monte dealer – can cut two-ways. If the viewer "gets it", then there is a connection; but if the viewer "doesn't get it", the experience can be unsatisfactory. Like for those who can never see the image in a Magic Eye creation.

The Eye Of The Beholder

So why does an artist like to fiddle with a viewer's perception?

Trompe l'oeil "is virtuosic," explains Lois Parkinson Zamora, author of The Inordinate Eye, "so perhaps virtuosi enjoy being virtuosic. They may also enjoy pushing the medium to its extreme ... questioning the nature not only of realistic representation but also of reality itself."

In trompe l'oeil, says Lois, who also teaches comparative cultural studies at the University of Houston, "metaphysics accompanies technique in a very particular fashion ... form and content merge, that is, the realistic status — the reality — of the painting is the subject of the painting."

Explaining pictures at an exhibition in Houston, Lois wrote that the artistic devices of spatial illusion were honed by European artists during the 17th century, in the era known as the Baroque period. The desire to deceive the eye, she observed, "was in response to cultural anxieties occasioned by revolutionary scientific discoveries, revolutionary religious upheaval, also by the new taste for virtuosic visual display."

She continued, "The authority of perception was being undermined, and Baroque artists responded accordingly—and often fantastically—with structures intended to deceive the eye."

As evidence, Lois points me to a well-known 1874 work of trompe l'oeil by Pere Borrell del Caso. The original is in the Colección Banco de España, Madrid. "Maybe the title of the painting," she suggests, in a questioning way, "has something to do with the allure of trompe l'oeil?"

It's called "Escaping Criticism".



Escaping Criticism by Pere Borrel (1874). Collection Bank of Spain hide caption

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A still from the art film #Blackmendream. The film features nine men, turned away from the camera and talking about their hopes and fears.

Nine men sit turned away from the camera; their faces are never shown. Many are shirtless or naked. They answer questions like: When did you become a black man? Do you cry? How were you raised to deal with your emotions?
This video is the latest piece by Philadelphia-based multidisciplinary artist Shikeith Cathey.



His work centers around the social, cultural and political misconceptions about black men in America, and the new film explores the emotional experience of black men, born out of those misconceptions.

The men seem both vulnerable and powerful as they thoughtfully respond to these basic, but piercing, questions. To the viewer, there's a feeling that you're eavesdropping on a therapy session.

"That's the response that I would get after wrapping the interview," Shikeith, who goes by his first name, tells NPR's Arun Rath. "The participants, the men, they would say, 'I haven't been able to express like this in so long and it feels like a weight was lifted off of my shoulder.' "



Shikeith Cathey, 25, works in many platforms — photography, sculpture, installations and video art.
He says most of the interview subjects were strangers, but it wasn't hard to get them to participate.
"Honestly, I just asked — and that was the point. These questions, as simple as they are ... they aren't discussed. I couldn't remember a time when someone asked me, 'How do you feel?' " he says.
"I think it's just assumed that I'm angry as a black man. It's assumed that I don't possess these feelings that are part of my humanity."

Shikeith does all of his work in black and white and says the aesthetic composition of this piece — the nudity, the fact that we never see the faces of the subjects — is all symbolic.

"I wanted to expose what it was like to be dressed in assumptions, before even opening your mouth to say hello."
He adds, "My work is a reflection of that internal battle all black men have to face when you're not necessarily seeing things in black and white, but rather in gray."

This project has gained a lot of attention, as it adds to conversations about race and police use of deadly force. But Shikeith says that the timing is mere coincidence.

"I don't look at what's happening now as situational," he says. "It's not trendy; it's not something that just began. It's something that has been ongoing in this country for a very long time."

“ I don't look at what's happening now as situational. It's not trendy; it's not something that just began. It's something that has been ongoing in this country for a very long time.

- Shikeith

The inspiration for #Blackmendream actually came two years ago, Shikeith says: "I posted a status on Facebook that said, 'What do black men run from?' "

He was expecting answers that revolved around misconceptions of black manhood. But instead, he got a lot of negative stereotypes — mostly from primarily African-American men and women.

"They were writing, 'Black men run from the police, black men run from love, black men run from child support.' "
Disappointed, he set out to create a project that would change that conversation and showcase an emotional side of black masculinity.

He got a grant from the Pittsburgh Foundation Advancing Black Arts initiative. Going forward, he hopes the film and the hashtag will add to a more complex discourse around black manhood.
"We can be different. We can be ourselves. We can respect individuality within our own community. And as we project that, I think the community at large will understand more what it exactly is to be a black man. Overall there'll be a healing."
Watch the film.



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