Art

Canada’s, Sable Island Wild Horses, Subject of Roberto Dutesco Photography

This is the tale of a man and an island—and how, in the course of time, their stories became entwined. It is also a tale of devotion to a craft, passion for a cause, and the recognition that sometimes, when we least expect it, fate charts an unexpected course for each of us.

The man is Roberto Dutesco, a Romanian-born photographer splitting his time between New York City, Montreal, Canada and San Paulo, Brazil. The island is Sable, a tiny spit of sand in the North Atlantic, far removed from civilization as we know it. The passion is Dutesco’s concern for the preservation of the island and its wild horses. As for devotion to a craft—that is manifest in his photographic studies of the horses, which are on exhibit at the SoHo, Wild Horses Gallery, in New York City.More

The Art of Fairfield Porter: An American Painter Celebrated a Sense of Place

The fourth of five children born to James and Ruth Porter, Fairfield Porter grew up in Winnetka, Illinois, just north of Chicago. His father’s mother had owned the land that later became Chicago’s Loop area, and the Porters were very comfortable; Fairfield never had to work, except for some years in the forties. His chief artistic influence as a child was his father, who was an architect and had built the Greek Revival house they lived in. His father loved Italian pictures and placed photographs of famous paintings and buildings and plaster casts of Greek sculpture all over the house. There were trips abroad to the great picture galleries of Europe and Fairfield developed personal opinions about art and the history of painting by the time he was fourteen.More

Print Maker, Roxanne Faber Savage, Lets the Medium Speak for Itself

An industrial park is not a likely spot to discover passion, at least not the kind we report on in ARTES e-Magazine. But, the big, black SUV in the parking lot means that the ‘artist is in the house’. Print maker, Roxanne Faber Savage approaches her task with a particular passion that makes the process of creating art look both deliberative and revelatory at the same time. Roxanne is fast becoming a master of the trade, but allows herself to be surprised by the process of print making each day. This trait serves as a critic’s marker for what expertise in any creative endeavor should be all about: allowing for the element of surprise in a medium that an artist has come to know well.More

Contemporary Art Strives for Something Other Than Beauty!

saville_reverse_2003 — Jenny Saville, Reverse, 2003

And by obligation, of course, I mean the artist’s motivation to deliver a work of art to the world that represents a highly individualized statement about a relevant theme or subject. In doing so, should the impact, legitimacy and enduring success of that creative effort be measured by the response of the viewer, alone? Is art deemed ‘important’ or ‘timeless’ if it resonates with the consciousness of the public? Or is it ultimately a private exercise in expression by the artist, requiring no moral or didactic justification, wherein capturing the attention and interest of the viewer is merely incidental? Is it true, as French artist and critic, Théophile Gauthier, argued in the 19th century, that the artist’s embrace of, ‘Art for art’s sake’ would protect him from the purely utilitarian and pragmatic demands of public taste and other external influences? And must art remain aloof from the currents of public taste to remain cogent today? This polemic is at the heart and soul of the long-standing debate about the creative forces that have shaped the artistic arena in the modern era.More

Chace Center in Rhode Island Features the Clay Wizardry of Arnie Zimmerman

The Museum of Art’s, Chace Center, the largest gallery at Providence’s Rhode Island School of Design (RISD), was filled to the brim with an astonishing array of architectural scale models and tiny figurines, fashioned entirely out of clay. The mash-up of small male figures – the sculptor’s version of Everyman with strikingly similar facial and bodily characteristics–brings to mind countless crowd scenes found in Hollywood-version, Depression Era movies. A collaboration of New York ceramicist Arnie Zimmerman and Lisbon architect Tiago Montepegado, the convoluted twists and turns of this bustling model city readily invite reflections on the history of man. Think Balzac’s La Comédie humaine or the densely populated panels of Pieter Bruegel and Hieronymus Bosch: here mankind is seen variously at work, daydreaming, carousing, or marching off to war–in short, going through the daily grind of an industrialized society.More