#artmews

[ditavonteese]

Me and my little vessel of love @aleistervonteese 🖤 This photo was taken last time I was performing in Paris @crazyhorseparis_official. My #chouettesouris has traveled all over the world with me, my constant companion for 15 years, through it all. He’s going in for surgery tomorrow for a bulla osteotomy for a polyp in his ear. Good thoughts appreciated🖤 Unretouched image by one of Aleister’s favorite people, Maestro of Glamour™️ and Glambassador of Snacks™️ @alimahdaviparis #artmews #aleistervonteese (at Paris, France)

[ronthroop-blog]

“Today Professor Lichtenstein Said, ‘What Level of Narcissistic Boob Posts Her Art On Instagram?’ Really Brad! What An Old Fogey!” 2019. Oil on canvas, 72 x 55”

[2dmen]

Last Kiss 

[nishadesigns]

5 Fun Christmas Arts and Crafts to Make With Your Family- Milan Art Institute- Nisha Designs

5 Fun Christmas Arts and Crafts to Make With Your Family- Milan Art Institute- Nisha Designs

Photo caption: Using vintage greeting cards in your holiday crafts adds a nostalgic touch. Image by ArtMew from Pixabay.

Few things go together as the Christmas season and arts and crafts projects. Call it a perfect storm if you will. (Literally.) Cold, blustery weather shuts us indoors for weeks and Christmas inspires creativity and fun. 

It’s the perfect time for family fun in the form of…

[ditavonteese]

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#Repost @aleistervonteese ・・・ Pawtographs for my @antoine_kruk fine art print! A small number of these original pawtographs are available via @jenavonteese (email jena@dita.net) and prints ink-stamped with a duplicate 🐾 are now up at shop.dita.net 😸 Teese.us/print #pawtograph #artmews #aleistervonteese #pawprintsfortunasnacks

[ronthroop-blog]

“In 1958, Lichtenstein Must Have Felt Like This: Painting Abstract, Then 18th Century Native, Then What, and Who Will Care?” 2019. Oil on canvas, 20 x 16”

[ronthroop-blog]

“As An Amateur Art Historian and Gossip, I Believe Fame Took Its Toll On Roy Lichtenstein, and Nobodyness Kept Carolyn Blish’s Ease of Living In Tact” 2019. Oil on board over image by Carolyn Blish, 35 x 24”

The best history story about Lichtenstein happens in 1957, five years before his ascension to international fame and small fortune. During that fateful year the Lichtensteins bought their first house in Cleveland Heights, Ohio. A mini-palace in a land of beautiful houses. Six bedrooms, a few baths. Isabel might have been employed still as assistant interior decorator at Jane L. Hansen, Inc., however, doubtful while shouldering responsibilities of two preschool boys. The younger Mitchell, not yet a year on earth.

Roy never kept a job for more than 6 months during the bulk of the decade, and his new job as engineering draftsman making furniture for the Republic Steel Company was work, but not work that could afford a 1950’s down payment on an upper middle class property.

Was their a recent inheritance? Something to look into.

But the big question is why, in August of the same year, did Roy take a job as assistant professor at Oswego State Teacher’s College 350 miles away from his new home? The family rented an apartment in a duplex at 11 West 6th Street before the start of the Fall semester.

What a year of tumult, for better or worse. Things must have been pretty desperate on some level for such a drastic uprooting. Perhaps frantic. Eight paintings produced during the whole year. Eight paintings that took no time away from a harried move. Rushed work. Lazy work. Stolen hours’ work.

At 34 years old, I believe Roy was settling in for the duration. Baby boys, a wife who had always supported him… He didn’t make this move to “get closer to the NY art scene”. So many historians make the claim in their usual paragraph (maybe two) written on the most significant change in the artist’s life to that point in time. Obviously, none have made the trip to Oswego, nor thought much about being an unknown painter in the American year, 1957.

Everything that happened then created what was to come.

In the painting above, Roy and Isabel appear to be dancing. Both figures are copied from paintings he made in 1952. The house and address take you to the grounded reality of their lives, and no thing at that moment in time had the power to predict a future Elvis Presley fame in an international art world.

Babies need to be fed. Rents and mortgages must get paid. At a starting salary of $6,300/year, Roy was well on his way to surviving barely in a cruel world.

[2dmen]

[2dmen]

[2dmen]

HE SAID YES!

[2dmen]