American Values in Art
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July 2021
Mary Lou Parker
Mary Lou Parker was a well-known and respected professional artist, poet, newspaper journalist, art teacher, her church’s minister, gospel song-writer, and pianist who made her family’s home in Mt. Vernon, Illinois. Ms. Parker married local mortician Joshua Sanders Parker and was the mother to Betty Hawthrone and Roberta Derixson. Parker is remembered today for writing
Ray Kass on John Cage
This week’s blog introduces the interview with Ray Kass and Howard Risatti, co-founders of the Mountain Lake Symposium and Workshop, a Virginia institution from 1980-2017. In this excerpt, Ray Kass characterizes the influence of John Cage on the greater art world.
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Monetization: Digital Entertainment or Visual Analysis
The raging world-wide pandemic has revealed many realities but key among them is the fragility of the market. The market must be fed everyday or it falls apart. Museums though in essence are not “of the market” they must function as if they were, or fail. With nothing to sell per se, museums, like newspapers
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The Art & Justice of Agnes Gund
Dispelling misconceptions is but one function of Art and maybe this blog. This week we peek into the life and times of Agnes Gund. Lost in the swirl of today’s chaotic world is Gund’s recent and surprising creation of the non-profit organization Art for Justice Fund. Gund created, only in 2017, this non-profit by selling
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Gossaert’s Adoration
Imagine a world without the constant barrage of digital images. The Renaissance was such a world where fantastic paintings like Jan Gossaert’s Adoration of the Kings were viewed only in special places like churches or abbeys. This painting was finished in 1515. Among the greatest technological achievements at the time were European ships just beginning to circumnavigate
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New Year Calling
Have you ever spent New Year’s Day calling family or friends, especially ones you haven’t seen in a while? This is the grand tradition when on New Year’s Day gentlemen would spend all day traveling to the homes of as many family members and friends as possible. It was a happy, festive day and
John Singer Sargent
One of the most remarkable artists in the Cedarhurst collection is John Singer Sargent, an American by birth, who lived his entire life based in Europe. Born in Florence, Italy to wealthy American parents, Sargent often traveled to America for commissions, but settled permanently in London. Sargent was the preeminent society portraitist of his
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Beauty, Truth, and a New Year
Since the time of the Greek philosopher Plotinus, Beauty has been regarded as inextricably linked to Truth. Modern writers John Ruskin, Walter Pater, and Oscar Wilde shared this conviction. In appraising Beauty, we sense something greater than the sum of the form’s parts. No single attribute defines the object, it is a cumulative effect. During
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The Myth of Icarus & The Object of Art
The word “object” can be associated with art through three related, though differing, meanings. For this essay, I use it to mean first and foremost, the actual work of art itself. The term will also employ the second, and related meaning, to mean the “goal” of art; what does art strive to accomplish? Third,
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