MAGAZINE
  
   
 

-Fernando Botero

The Art World Legend

    
   
 
--Fernando Botero is one of the most successful contemporary artists right now, his paintings sell for millions. The ageing Botero is returning to his troubled homeland, Colombia, where he was raised in the same city as the drug lord, Pablo Escobar, the subject of one of Botero's most controversial paintings.

--The artist has been target of kidnap attempts and must now be accompanied everywhere by armed guards. --As Fernando Botero touches down, a huge storm is blowing up over his son, a charismatic politician dubbed the "Kennedy of South America", Botero senior is mortified by his son's self-destruction and anxious about the reception he himself will receive from his long-suffering countrymen.

--Despite millions in the bank, private jets at his beck and call, and homes in Monte Carlo, Paris and Manhattan, among others, the Great Master yearns to be accepted into the pantheon of great painters.
--Is that why he has produced his boldest work in decades, paintings that explore the horror of Abu Ghraib jail in Iraq...?

--The scandal over abuse at Abu Ghraib surfaced when pictures of guards humiliating naked iraqi prisoners became public tarnishing the military's image in Arab countries and worldwide, and sparking wider investigations into detainee abuses.
  
 
 
   
 
Art and Stardom
Protocol Pointers
-- For many artists, the primary purpose of their website is to attract the attention of art galleries and dealers. A well designed website showcasing quality Art will get the attention of arts professionals when they see it.
-- But how do they find you in the first place?
-- Send Letters of Invitation!
-- It sounds so obvious but many artists forget that galleries are accustomed to invitations and query letters by mail. In the past, we all sent packages of slides, bios, prints, press clippings, etc... to galleries.

-- Tour website considerably simplifies the process. Simply send an invitation to the gallery to view your work on your website. Your website becomes your convenient, always-available-to-anybody portfolio.
-- Be sure to include your site address ( URL ) and email address in the invitation.
 
 
Andy Warhol
Hang Him on my Wall
--No other artist is as much related with Pop Art as Andrew Warhola, worldwide known as Andy Warhol... The Prince of Pop.

--For many of you who still don't know this peculiar uniqueness of the artist, Warhol loved cats and images of them can be found in many of his artworks.

--One of the artist's best friends described him as a committed workaholic.

--Nevertheless, most importantly, for all of you concerned with the cause and effect magic ( ...or chemistry... ) it's quality information to state that Andy Warhol was truly and deeply obsessed by the ambition to become very, very famous and incredibly wealthy.
--What do you know!
--And he was wisely aware enough of the price he had to pay in order to achieve his goals.
--In short, he always knew deep down inside that the fastest way in order to achieve the so called American Dream, was through a breathtaking process of highly intensive hard work. Fact.
Francis Bacon
 Painter of a Dark Vision
--Inseparable Art and Life?
--For most of his many years it was simply not to speak or write of Francis Bacon's private life, whispered to be not merely disreputable but punishable, at least in his first half century, by sanctions almost as harsh as those for treason and murder!
--Though to critics of any sensibility it was obvious that his private life was largely the source of imagery and energy in his paintings and unquestionably crucial to his aesthetic development, there were others who - through overwhelming prominence on the Arts Council and our television sets, almost as celebrated as himself for their performances as his interpreters - gave us a Francis Bacon distorted and bowdlerised.

--In their constructs he could discern little of himself, but in a sense he was content with their dissembling, for it kept him camouflaged and his private life remained largely private to the end.
Though he knew them to be in error, his conviction was that in time their interpretations would be recognised as fraudulent, then discarded, letting his paintings at last speak for themselves.
--- "Painting is its own language and is not translatable into words".
Aspiring Art Stars
 Guidelines
--People you do business with aren't necessarily your friends.
--They are not people you go home with. They are a fact of the Art world and once you're done with them, that's it until next time. In certain cases you have to tolerate them and perhaps they tolerate you.

--You may think they are wrong - or know they are wrong - fine. Deal with it.
--For example, if your gallery introduces you to someone who proceeds to rub you the wrong way, there's likely a reason for the introduction, so do what you can to maximize the outcome. Hold up your end of the conversation, keep them happy.
--You do what works best to get what you want done and that's how the game is played.

--And please, oh please, remember the good people who helped you along your Yellow Brick Road to OZ.

--The best artists acknowledge their pasts and never forsake them. Ignoring your past and only talking about where you are now or where you are going, dissociating yourself from where you've been and people you've known is counterproductive, especially to those who have known you.
 
   
 
 
Contemporary Artists
  Digest 
 
--Most artists would rather cut off their right arm (... or their ear off !!!), then engage in the entrepreneurial dance that Artcity21 call "SELLING".
--For many artists, that's because trying to make a dale feels like an uncomfortable means to an end.

--But selling your art doesn't have to be forced and awkward. Artists can develop a sales cycle that fits their personality and isn't offensive to the buyer using these C's.
--Confidence, Conversation, Community.

--Confidence is imperative for success. If you want to be successful you must be willing to do things that put yourself out there as an artist and an entrepreneur.

--So on a scale of 1 to 10, how would you rate your confidence level as an...
 
 
 
Nana Andersen
  The Mystery, the Beauty ... and the Best!
 

--Belief in the dramatic value of a strange vision of the world and human nature, is on the whole the artistic flame of Nana Andersen, sometimes showing plainly those traits which all human beings have in common, some other times assimilating aspects of those different emotional peculiar energies of the grotesque beauty, by exploring in her quality artworks, form, body, soul and spirit, inevitably presenting fundamental questions about nature and the human, matter, being and meaning.

--The mysterious nature of human provides Nana Andersen her constant subject, like all detectives, she is an artist who draws creative power and striking inspiration from the most controversial ( and unspeakable ) sides of the human soul.
--There's a peculiar and very specific type of vision shared by Nana Anderson's Oeuvre, an amazing game of scenes which the art lover eye ...
-Sonia Rijnhout
Absolutely Cutting - Edge! 		 
--Today, in the beginning of the New Millennium, when contemporary art very often seems to be reaching that stand by point of helpless lack of innovation and originality, it's good to know that it's not quite so after all, when under our normal daily systematic research process, Artcity21 stumbles upon a magnificent high-level of artistic performance, amazing inspiration and striking creativity, such as Sonia Rijnhout's artworks.

--Sonia Rijnhout shows us a newness signs of aesthetic originality and a straightforward and uncomplicated artistic brlliance, unquestionably a young contemporary phenomenon within the current art scene coherence.
Moreover, Sonia Rijnhout simply transcends any preconceived definition of contemporary tendencies as a whole, presenting us and surprising us with extremely successful combinations of colors and rhythmic forms.
-Nina Nolte
An Insight of Paradise
 
--The work of Nina Nolte is, strange as it may seem, utopian. She portraits a universe prior to the expulsion of Paradise, with clothes and attidudes strictly contemporary, just like the masters of Renaissance and Baroque, who painted characters from the mythologie or the Bible with garments and gestures of their time. We find in Nina´s work a inalienable will based on two principles: figuration - censured so many times and even considered finished - and contemporanity. But at the same time never loosing sight of her edenic vision of mankind. Looking at her canvas and in spite of the discredit of painting in general, in favour of more recent and less conventional artistic techniques, no one could ever think that the subject has a dark side. Furthermore, that innocence does not translate into candour, but serenity, dignity, like in the wonderful portraits with a trait that owes as much to Ingrès as tu Dürer. That is to say, in the awareness of the prime of life and in the promises of the moment.
Juan Béjar’s
Poisoned Sweets
--Transparent, nearly always swollen little faces with generous double chins. Dark eyes that show little or no emotion. Self-satisfied little mouths; ringlets; perfect outfits. Such are the children’s portraits by the Spanish painter, Juan Béjar (1946). But they are not real portraits; not replicas of real people but metaphors.

--Béjar, just like Pablo Picasso, was born in Málaga; but whereas Picasso moved to Paris at an early age never to return, Béjar is to this day a man of Málaga. He is a highly-reputed artist in his country of birth. In Spain there is a waiting-list for his work, which makes Béjar proud but at the same time stressed. His production is limited on account of the immense amount of work put into each painting.
 
     
 
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