Where does vernacular art – like quilt making – fit in the art world? Should it be compared directly to mainstream art? Or, does it belong in its own category, such as “outsider art”. Categorization seems beside the point if mainstream and self-taught artists have “converged on compositional commonalities that make many people’s eyes respond in equivalent ways.”
There is an unmistakable air of excitement around this artist. Beasley uses garments soaked in resin to form evocative, free-standing shapes or to press into painting-like panels. One writer comments that they “hum with memory and reference, a life’s ordinary baggage preserved beneath an impeccable Old Master shine.”
Ouch! After positive reviews in Switzerland the Baselitz retrospective has opened in Washington to an absolute pasting. Decrying Baselitz’s “bloated reputation” and odd decision to display his works upside down, the writer continues: “[H]is sense of color is haphazard and his drawing weak … he has never quite managed to tie his influences … into taut and commanding art.”
Many illustrious design studios, such as the Bauhaus, struggled for profitability. Jensen avoided this fate by finding a broad clientele and having a distinctive aesthetic – “combining gleaming sculptural forms and lush ornament. Hammer marks are a unique part of what the house does … [it] almost gives the pieces a little bit of a soul as opposed to bling.”
Facing huge demand for his society portraits, Gainsborough relaxed by drawing landscapes. And he wasn’t just doodling. Unlike highly geometric French landscapes, he showed “picturesque” nature – irregular and meandering. It was a new vision of nature making him the “progenitor of an English landscape tradition” carried forward by Constable and Turner. “He was a one-man avant-garde.”