Poor Little Rich Girl - Mary Cassatt

As we come to a close of Women's History Month, I did not want to miss an opportunity to talk about Mary Stevenson Cassatt (May 22, 1844 - June 14, 1926). Don't get all worked up about the title of the blog entry. It's just how I see it. She was a great artist and I'm sure she was lovely but without the benefit a wealthy family, I have to wonder if she could have achieved as much. Mary was an American painter and printmaker. She was born in Pennsylvania and was another of the fortunate artists born to successful parents.

She lived much of her adult life in France, where she first befriended Edgar Degas and later exhibited among the Impressionists. From an early age, she traveled abroad and had exposure to many great artists at the peak of their careers. Her first exposure to French artists Ingres, Delacroix, Corot, and Courbet was likely at the Paris World's Fair of 1855. Also exhibited at the exhibition were Degas and Pissarro, both of whom would be future colleagues and mentors.   During this time, the very wealthy felt that travel was a valuable part of an education.

Lucky girl, right? She sat there painting away as the country was drowning in a civil war. I come at it from a modern day view when women are fighting for their right to go into combat.  I am not criticizing her but more the time in which she lived.  It reminds me of that Creedence Clearwater Revival song "Fortunate One." If you are not familiar, This is an antiestablishment song of defiance and blue-collar pride, both anti-Washington and against the Vietnam War. John Fogerty and Doug Clifford were both drafted in 1966 and discharged from the army in 1967. "The song speaks more to the unfairness of class than war itself," Fogerty said. "It's the old saying about rich men making war and poor men having to fight them."  In that regard, not much has changed. I know I make some big leaps but I think it's right on the money.

Despite the prevailing thought of the day, she had a strong mind and a strong will.  That's what happens when you expose a strong mind to critical thinking.  Art school had it's limitations for women.  For example, she could not draw from live nude models like her male counterparts.  At some point, she left school and decided to study from the old masters themselves.  

Her parents were not crazy about the idea of her becoming a professional artist but finally relented. She moved to Paris with her mother and other guardians in 1866. She studied with the masters from art school since she couldn't go there herself. She sat in the Louvre and made copies of great works. She did what she could with all the limitations around women and never gave in.



While a lot was going on in the art world of Paris, Cassatt continued to paint subjects around her. The impressionism movement was just beginning and artists were looking for alternatives to the strict academic traditions of art education. Mary's works depicted the social and private lives of women, with particular emphasis on the intimate bonds between mothers and children. While other were focused on the Avant Guard ideas of the day, she continued to lean toward the great masters and continue to create in a traditional way. I have to wonder if she did this to prove she could still accomplish what was taught in the academy even though she could not attend. I know that's where my head would have been if I faced that adversity. I can relate to her determination to do what she wanted to do. She had a little honey badger spirit in her. (The honey badger is my spirit animal. It doesn't care and takes what it wants.)

She faced some challenges in her family throughout her life as an artist.  Returning to Pennsylvania as the Franco-Prussian war was beginning, her father insisted that her art pay for itself. He paid for her basic needs but refused to buy art supplies. I think he had started to appreciate her vision but it was all business for him.  If she wasn't going to get married and settle down, she needed to learn accounting and make her art support itself.  She showed some works upon her return but had a tough time selling anything.  She got so mad that she tore up her fathers portrait and didn't paint for weeks. She wanted to get back to Europe where she felt more accepted as an artist if that was even possible. I reckon the bar was pretty low.  She went to Chicago to try to earn money and ended up losing paintings in the great fire. Fortunately, an Archbishop in Pittsburgh commissioned her to make copies of paintings by Correggio. He advanced her the money to return to Europe. This time she went with a fellow artist. I'm sure that was done while thumbing her nose at her father. 

"O how wild I am to get to work, my fingers farely itch & my eyes water to see a fine picture again"

She began to sell art again and got even more outspoken. You go girl. Don't think she got rich. She didn't. It was tough going. Degas invited her to show with impressionists because she was having such a hard time with the traditional venues. That was like going into the rough part of town. These bohemians were described as "afflicted with some hitherto unknown disease of the eye".  I am sure there were some lively conversations, unlike what was going on at the Salon with the refined members of society.  Finally, some men that understood being the outcasts of art high society.  They showed their work in open air exhibitions. What choice did they have?

Degas changed her life in many ways. She admired his work and he taught her.  Her style had gained a new spontaneity during the intervening two years. Previously a studio-bound artist, she had adopted the practice of carrying a sketchbook with her to record the scenes she saw, outside and at the theater.  How do you like me now daddy? His hard line probably made her even more stubborn to succeed.  She never married.  She didn't see how it would work with a career.  Maybe she had a little Elizabeth I in her bones.  She didn't see how that would work for her career either.  Can you see Degas's influence in the painting below?

Her parents ended up following her to Paris for a time.  Her sister, the subject of many of her works died.  It was devastating to her and left her unable to work for a while.  Her father ultimately did show some compassion for Mary.  He insisted that her work cover her studio but he also didn't want to see her sell her soul to make paintings that were trite. He wanted her to be relevant. It would be like giving up your vision to paint rainbows and unicorns just because they sold. Her father even welcomed Degas into their family home for dinner.  They were making progress, that family.

Eventually, the Impressionists disbanded. Mary was able to get a few works shown in the states but it wasn't the recognition she deserved.   The 1890s were her busiest and most creative time. She had matured considerably and became more diplomatic and less blunt in her opinions. She was a role model for a lot of young American artists.



It is hard to believe that she received such little recognition in the art world and by her own family.  Her brother was President of a railroad so I guess that was a little more exciting.  He had tangible results to show the business-oriented family.

An increasing sentimentality is apparent in her work of the 1900. Her work was popular with the public and the critics, but she was no longer breaking new ground, and her Impressionist colleagues who once provided stimulation and criticism were dying off.  I think she thrived off the stimulation of those inspired to do new things.  She was hostile to such new developments in art as post-Impressionism, Fauvism and Cubism.

Mary suffered with diabetes, rheumatism, neuralgia, and cataracts. It did not slow her work but after 1914 she was forced to stop painting as she became almost blind. What a cruel thing to happen to an artist.  They eyes are our most valuable resource.  She took up the cause of women's suffrage, showing eighteen works in an exhibition supporting the movement in 1915.

In recognition of her contributions to the arts, France awarded her the Legion d'honneur in 1904.
She died on June 14, 1926 at Chateau de Beaufresne, near Paris, and was buried in the family vault at Mesnil-Theribus, France. 

Her life makes one beg the question: What is Feminist Art? Art historians and theorists debate whether Feminist Art was a stage in art history, a movement, or a wholesale shift in ways of doing things. Some have compared it to Surrealism, describing Feminist Art not as a style of art that can be seen but rather a way of making art.

I think Mary probably did not set out to be a model for the feminist movement or the suffrage.  She just wanted to paint.  Without patrons to the arts, so much is lost in the world.  How many great artists could have contributed had they benefited from the resources of a wealthy family.  How important is it that we have art scholarships today?  Art has historically describe societal attitudes and is a great testimonial for the progression of humankind.  When you have a chance, support a struggling artist.  Offer encouragement.  Buy their art.  You never know which artist is the next Mary Cassatt.  Her paintings sell for millions now.  That would have bought some paint and brushes.

Gustav Klimt's Jugendstil

    

One of my favorite artists, Gustav Klimt, is considered one of the best decorative painters of the twentieth century. Born in Austria in 1862, he was a renowned advocator of Art Nouveau, or, as the style was known in Germany, Jugendstil ("youth style").

Klimt also produced one of the century's most significant bodies of erotic art. Initially successful as a conventional academic painter. He received commissions to paint public buildings. Clearly, that bored him to tears. Sometimes, clients will commission us to paint something totally ridiculous in our own mind. We do it to pay the rent but I pretty much hate every moment of it and I am relieved when it is out the door.


His encounter with more modern trends in European art encouraged him to develop his own eclectic and often fantastic style. He was criticized by his contemporaries for developing the style we most love him for today.





I hear the same arguments going on today. I hear it in the fine art world as well as the tattoo community. I once had a tattoo artist employed at my shop that criticized any style that he wasn't working on himself. He felt that realistic color layering was the only style worth it's salt in today's world and that the traditional style was rudimentary and could be done by anyone. I like to work with artists that can pull off a lot of styles but focus primarily on one style becoming an expert in their field. Needless to say, the outspoken artist that thought he knew how everyone else should work is no long with us.

Ok, so I know there are those of you that can't gap that bridge between Klimt and tattooing. For me all those things blend together. I love styles and mediums. I am first and foremost an artist. I don't pretend to be a great art critic. I just know what I love and try to find ways to identify with the artists I admire. I learn a lot from understanding their lives.  I sympathize with their struggles.  I love the work and I love the process.  I want to get in their head.  After all, it's my blog right? I can have any opinion I want. I digress.. back to Klimt.

Klimt strongly believed in the equality of fine and decorative art, and some of his work shows his ambition to create aGesamtkunstwerk ("total work of art"), a union of the visual arts that might be created through ornament. This made him one of the most influential artists of the art nouveau movement that made it's way through Europe in the 19th century.

Although his art is now widely popular, it was neglected for much of the 20th century, and provoked opposition in his own day, facing charges of obscenity and objections to his lightly allusive approach to symbolism. His treatment of erotic themes was generally delicate and veiled in his paintings, but his drawings gave full expression to his considerable sexual appetite.

Maybe it was the time but there were a lot of artists during that period that were pushing the envelope of sexuality. It had the same quality to people of that era as the shocking journalism and photo exploitation we see today. People felt oppressed by what was socially appropriate so they spoke out. It's just become much harder to push the envelope today than in Klimt's day. How will our future generations view our version of "pushing the envelope"? Only time will tell.

He was never married but it is suggested that he fathered 14 children. He never courted scandal, but it dogged his career. It did not seem to both him much or stop him.

Gustav Klimt led a group of artists to resign the Viennese Künstlerhaus, a state-sponsored art institution under the jurisdiction of the Ministry of Culture. The dispute was not merely a conflict between contrasting aesthetics, but rather a question of value and status of art itself. The resigning artists believed that art and culture should be left to the artists, rather than statesmen. This break led to the formation of the Vienna Secession and Vienna’s entrance in the ranks of the European avant-garde. Quite a troublemaker he was!

In Freud’s mind, he was certainly a troublemaker. Discoveries in psychoanalysis played a great role in the development of modern art and literature. The notion of the unconscious as the driving force of human behavior uncovered certain truths that many conservative members of Viennese society were not always comfortable. Freud’s idea that the instinctual passions are stronger than reasonable interests created many problems for a culture based on traditional and dynastic order. By analyzing dreams, Freud discovered that the source of all immorality and even “perversion” lies right at the centre of humanity, namely in the unconscious of every human being. Talk about being in different corners of the boxing ring. I would have loved to be a fly on the wall for that fight. 

There is no historical record of Klimt’s own interpretation of his works. He never did a self-portrait. We are lucky to have photographs of him. He cleans up nice in his formal photos but he looks a bit deranged in his group picture with the secessionists. I saw another one where he was holding a cat. He just has that look in his eyes. I'm just saying. It's that stare that only an artist lost in his work has. That eccentric gaze that depicts with genius or madness.




He was reluctant about giving his opinion on his art and believed that the viewer should interpret its meaning. I am sure there were lively debates with his fellow secessionists. He has a great body of work. Most of what the everyday art lover would recognize today are the depictions of women. Those were done primarily within the last 15 years of his life. His human figures seem to be caught between dream and reality.


"Whoever wants to know something about me - as an artist which alone is significant - they should look attentively at my pictures and there seek to recognize what I am and what I want." - Gustav Klimt




The world lost some of his works in during WWII. Many of Klimt’s paintings had been evacuated to Schloss Immendorf, where in 1945 the retreating SS troops set fire to the castle to prevent it falling into enemy hands. Klimt’s University paintings, along with many other of his masterpieces were lost in the fire. I mourn for the suffering of humanity and although it can't compare to human suffering, I also mourn the loss of beautiful art that was lost to the world because of the Nazis.  All this happening to art created by a man that was long dead.  Blows my mind.

While some critics argue that Klimt's work should not be included in the canon of modern art, his oeuvre - particularly his paintings postdating 1900 - remains striking for its visual combinations of the old and the modern, the real and the abstract. Klimt produced his greatest work during a time of change and radical ideas, and these traits are clearly evident in his paintings.

I am grateful for those that came before me that took risks and marched to the beat of their own drum. 

-Renee Bangerter

Bee Stings and Art in the Spring

They say it's springtime although it doesn't feel much different here in Southern California. The hills get a little greener for a couple months.  In other parts of the country, they are not sure it's spring either.   It is still cold and people are yearning to see the daffodils start to break through the snow.  It is a time of renewal.  Flowers bloom and animals have babies.  We rifle through our belongings determined to put forth a fresh outlook to remain organized.

We think of flowers when we think of spring.  Flowers make me think of Georgia O'Keeffe.  Flowers have long been a favorite subject for paintings. Some of the most popular art that we sell includes photographs of flowers, floral paintings, and fine art prints of such favorites as roses, magnolias, poppies, sunflowers and tulips. The Impressionists had a long-standing love affair with flowers and gardens in their art.

Probably no other artist celebrated the bloom like Georgia O'Keeffe. Flowers are her earliest memory growing up in Wisconsin on a dairy farm.

“Most people in the city rush around, so they have no time to look at a flower. I want them to see it whether they want to or not.”- Georgia O'Keeffe

Eighty years ago when Georgia began her career, women were not recognized in the art world. She grew up poor.  She received her formal art education at the Art Institute of Chicago and the Art Students' League in New York City.  She worked as a teacher but continued to paint when she had time.

I remember being taught that her work often contains a vaginal motif. It never occurred to me until then and now is really not hard to notice. I also took a horticulture class for orchids once and was amazed at how much sex was involved in pollination   

O'Keefe creates an image of the female form that is erotic and sensual, not degrading or demeaning. It would be difficult for someone to look at her paintings and alter the concept of the female form from a naturally beautiful being to an object. Her paintings, while depicting only a vaginal motif, do not allow the viewer to reduce the female form. I now have a whole new appreciation for the work. 

“When people read erotic symbols into my paintings they’re really talking about their own affairs,” O’Keeffe said. 

Death didn’t soften the opinions of the art world toward her paintings. Years later, many continue to dismiss her as a prissy painter of pretty pictures or, I should say, pretty genitalia. Even when hailed for being “the most famous and highly paid woman artist in America,” she gets saddled with a qualifier.

I am always amazed at how far we have come as women. It took activism to allow women to show their work in galleries. The MoMA honored O’Keeffe with a retrospective in 1946. It was one of its first solo shows for a woman. She had her haters. A critic said her work was “little more than tinted photography.” She threatened male artists (sex was their territory!) Edward Hopper and John Sloan were “furious” that she’d been elected to the National Institute of Arts and Letters in 1949 and “tried to intervene.”

In 1921, some photos of Georgia that were taken by her husband included some nudes. He became quite famous for them and said “When I make a photograph I make love.” O’Keeffe, who later recalled the “heat and excitement” of the photo sessions, opined that “nothing like them had come into our world before.”  She was a woman ahead of her times for sure.  She reminds me of my own mother.  She did what she wanted to do but it came with a price.

Still, the sexualized misconceptions of her work devastated her. “I almost wept,” she wrote of one review in 1921.

Yet the same nude photos triggered a backlash against O’Keeffe. Forever after, her work was seen in purely sexual terms. That would have never been an issue if she had been a man.  That probably would be no big deal in 2014.

When the flowers do start coming peeking through the ground, take a moment and think about Georgia and her struggle to be taken seriously as an artist.  She was an intense woman but felt the bee sting of social circles in the art world.

- Renee Bangerter

Let's Play Ball with Édouard Manet

Tomorrow is the first day of spring.  I am working on a commission in a smaller size than I usually work for this type of subject matter.  The subject is baseball at Fenway Park.  Baseball is one of those things that you think about as the weather warms and the days get longer. I like to paint thinking about emotions and the air, the sun, the intent.  

This work will be 11x14 in size, oil on panel.  I found a great photograph of baseball players running out of the dugout, one of players with both feet off the ground as his team mates are in different poses waiting for their turn to step up and out onto the field. I like the idea that there is excitement in the air.  The promise of something great to come.

I typically paint portraits and still life paintings in a more realistic style.  That works for a lot of paintings but I didn't see how painting in my comfort zone would really exemplify the spirit of the game and movement.  I started reviewing impressionist paintings that allowed the viewer feel something, a memory sensation of that moment in time,  the atmosphere of movement and excitement.  I want to evoke the viewer to think about comes next.  

In this painting called "Luncheon in the Studio", it leaves me wanting to know what is going on, what is the rest of the story?  What comes next?  What is he looking at?  What is the woman feeling with the slight tilt of her head?

It is good for an artist to step outside their comfort zone when approaching a new painting.  I used to think that you needed to have a brand, a style, a subject matter.  A viewer should be able to look at a painting and recognize it as one of yours.  That works for some artists.  Maybe I have not really ever established my brand.  At this point in my life, I don't want to be put into a box and will study the works of others to bring some of their approach into my own art.  For this particular painting, I am studying the approach by Édouard Manet.  Van Gogh did this too.  You can see what and who was influencing him at the time with many of his paintings.  You knew what was going on in his life at the time. 

Impressionism can be considered the first distinctly modern movement in painting. Developing in Paris in the 1860s, its influence spread throughout Europe and eventually the United States. Its originators were artists who rejected the official, government-sanctioned exhibitions, or salons, and were consequently shunned by powerful academic art institutions. In turning away from the fine finish and detail to which most artists of their day aspired, the Impressionists aimed to capture the momentary, sensory effect of a scene - the impression objects made on the eye in a fleeting moment.

Impressionism was a style of representational art that did not necessarily rely on realistic depictions. Scientific thought at the time was beginning to recognize that what the eye perceived and what the brain understood were two different things. The Impressionists sought to capture the former - the optical effects of light - to convey the passage of time, changes in weather, and other shifts in the atmosphere in their canvases.

The Impressionists loosened their brushwork and lightened their palettes to include pure, intense colors. They abandoned traditional linear perspective and avoided the clarity of form that had previously served to distinguish the more important elements of a picture from the lesser ones. For this reason, many critics faulted Impressionist paintings for their unfinished appearance and seemingly amateurish quality.

Ok, back to Manet.  Like so many great artists, Édouard Manet was born into an upper-middle class Parisian family.  The stability of family allows one to move away from the basic needs hierarchy and think of other things besides where the next meal shall come and where he will lay his head at night.  

His father, August, was a high-ranking civil servant and his mother was the daughter of a diplomat. Along with his two younger brothers, Manet grew up in a bourgeois environment, both socially conservative and financially comfortable. 

And also like so many before him, Manet had a passion for art from an early age, but agreed to make his father happy.  He went to the Naval Academy to appease his father. When he failed the entrance exam, he joined the Merchant Marine to gain experience as a student pilot and voyaged to Rio de Janeiro in 1849. He returned to France the following year with a portfolio of drawings and paintings from his journey, and used it to prove his talent and passion to his father, who was skeptical of Manet's ambitions.  

I am not sure if he proved his talent to his father or if he just relented and let Édouard  follow his own path.  As a parent that tried to guide children one way and see them go in another, it can be frustrating and at some point in their lives, you throw your hands up and let them do what they are going to do.

It worked out well for Édouard Manet.  He was the most important and influential artist to have heeded poet Charles Baudelaire's call to artists to become painters of modern life. He has long been associated with the Impressionists. He was certainly an important influence on them and he learned much from them himself. 

In recent years critics have acknowledged that he also learned from the Realism and Naturalism of his French contemporaries, and even from seventeenth century Spanish painting. This twin interest in Old Masters and contemporary Realism gave him the crucial foundation for his revolutionary approach. Finally, I understand where he is coming from. He looks at everything and pulls pieces of their techniques to fit the subject of his artistic endeavor.

"You would hardly believe how difficult it is to place a figure alone on a canvas, and to concentrate all the interest on this single and universal figure and still keep it living and real."

One thing I love about art, whether I am painting, sculpting or tattooing, I have to do a lot of prep work, study the subject, plan the composition.    Now it's time to play ball and get back to work creating that moment in time in the spirit of Manet.  It's outside my comfort zone but sometimes, that is required?

Mad Man or Genius - Paul Cézanne

It seems that when I research a piece of art or a particular artist, I find some common ground where I can related to what they do or how they felt about their art. Isn't that what our favorite pieces do for us? We can relate? They reach right out of the canvas into our hearts and minds, changing the way we feel. Certain colors and combinations along with an interesting composition are activate our emotional side.

Paul Cézanne rarely considered his paintings finished. His friend and dealer Ambroise Vollard observed that “when Cézanne laid a canvas aside, it was almost always with the intention of taking it up again, in the hope of bringing it to perfection.” One consequence of this was that Cézanne rarely signed his or dated his works making it difficult to determine the chronology of his works.

When I read this, I could relate.  I will start a painting and put it aside for sometimes months.  It clears my head because I get too close to the work and I can't see what is wrong with it.  Sometimes I take a photo of a painting and then quickly look at it.  The defects will appear almost immediately.   

Cézanne did not have the luxury of a camera of instant gratification so maybe that's why he set them aside.  

He knew that when he looked at it later, he would see the defect.  My sister always tells the story of how I would not part with work when I was a teenager because I always said, "It's not done."  Oils allow for that kind of dedication.  Other mediums are tougher, like watercolor or ceramic sculpture.  The clay listens to no one and forces closure whether you like it or not.

I also have a hard time signing my work for the same reason.  Sometimes I will frame a painting temporarily for a show when I know it needs work.  I fully intend to go back and revise something.  Sometimes I do, sometimes I do not.  I need to disengage from a work for a while and I have paintings that are six months to a year old that I have not touched.  I can't let them leave the studio at this point but I'm burned out on the daily engagement and need to put them aside.  Although it seems glaringly obvious to me, some viewers will not see it.  I am lucky that most of my own viewers are not professional art critics.

Cézanne can be said to form the bridge between late 19th-century Impressionism and the early 20th century's new line of artistic enquiry, Cubism. Both Matisse and Picasso are said to have remarked that Cézanne "is the father of us all."

Like many of us, we try to please our parents. Cézanne went to law school to please his wealthy banker father but he took drawing lessons on the side. His father eventually came around and supported Cézanne's decision to pursue his passion. He supported him in death with an inheritance that kept him drawing and painting.

He took a long time with his paintings, another characteristic for which I share.  It would take him hours to paint a small area.  It had to be right.  He may spend hundreds of hours on a still life and even more on a portrait.  He believed that you had to capture the moment.  Once it is gone, it is gone forever.

In the late years of his life, from 1890 until his death, he withdrew further into his painting, spending long periods as a virtual recluse. His paintings became well-known and sought after and he was the object of respect from a new generation of painters.  He was also suffering from diabetes. He had a hard time with relationships because of the disease, depression, and his intense focus. His work reveals a profound depth of feeling. 

I get that too. There are times that I just want to left alone and get really aggravated that I have to participate in the lives of others. It's crazy of course and I relent and do the right thing but there are days that I would love to just hole up in some remote area with nothing but my thoughts and art supplies. My ideal life would be to live in a warehouse somewhere with a bed thrown in the corner to take some naps. The rest of the space would have different areas where I could work on several different projects and mediums at one time. I'm sure that I would come to my senses and be more kind to the people that love me but it is definitely a fantasy that plays out in my mind all the time.  There never seems to be enough time.  

I love the skulls.  I love how Cézanne explored a great range of subject matter.  

Each of his paintings seem ready to explode beyond its limits and surface. Each seems to be the conception of an artist who could either be a madman or a genius. 

A week before he died, Paul Cézanne collapsed as he was doing a painting.  He always said he wanted to die painting.

The world will likely never know, as Cézanne's true character was unknown to many, if not all, of his contemporaries.  The more I learn about him, the more I want to know more about how he felt and viewed the world.  Something tells me that we would have a lot more in common than what is obvious.  Of course, neither of us would have time to find out.  There is work to be done.

By: Renee Bangerter

The Art Economy

Before I became a full-time artist, I had a career for nearly twenty-five years in mortgage banking. I woke up each morning and was at my desk between 6:30 and 7:00 a.m. to see what was happening on the east coast in the financial markets. That was the first indicator if it was going to be a good day or a bad one. The second indicator was weeding through an almost unmanageable number of emails from my colleagues on the east coast and rearranging my schedule to accommodate the knee-jerk reactions of the middle managers clawing their way through egos of the upper managers for a meager ration of attention. 

Although I don't immediately look stare at numbers in the morning, the economy has a strong impact on artists. Why? Because it dictates where people want to invest their money, if they have any left over from their tanking stock portfolios. My experience in the money markets give me a somewhat broad view of both the business side and the creative side of art.

It's undeniable: our economy is still hurting. Disposable income is diminishing and artists always feel the pinch early on. America is now firmly and uncomfortably ensconced in a new economic era. Not that long ago, the economy took a massive nosedive into the toilet and the mother of all flushes began to play out.

We had been living on borrowed money for too many decades. Banks loosened guidelines for mortgages so that a lot of people ended up in houses that couldn't possibly afford. We used many of those worthless mortgages as collateral for all kinds of speculative and unregulated "derivatives" like Credit Default Swaps to trump themselves up even more mountains of imaginary money. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to realize that imaginary money can't pay bills. It has been humbling to many that have lapsed into a resigned state of realization. We are worth a lot less than we thought we were.

How does this sad news shake out in artland?  On the buy side, less money, more regulation and tougher credit mean that discretionary capital (and the ability to access capital in general) has shrunk. As we all know, one of the great discretionary luxuries in life is art, and for many galleries and artists, selling it has become a lot more challenging than it's been in quite a while. To complicate matters, many so-called "art investors" who attempted to cash in either all or part of their pre-crash collections in order to raise quick cash when the economy scurried south were instead gifted with the rudest of awakenings, aka their art was far less liquid and at far lower prices than they thought it was.

According to one report I read, fine art was the worst performing collectible last year, with prices down 3 percent. The performance is based on an index from Art Market Research, which includes old masters, European 19th century, impressionists, modern and contemporary. The report said the overall art market is still down from its 2011 peak. Granted, over a 10-year period, art is still a good investment, according to the report, with a return of 193 percent.

You still need to have the cash right? There are those that still have money in a bad economy. Art is still popular with the wealthy who see it as more than a financial investment. The survey showed that among people worth $30 million, art is "growing in popularity"." Art is the most popular class of collectibles. It is just not very affordable for those of us paying rent and living one pay check away from disaster.

Art was followed by wine and watches, suggesting that pleasure matters more than profits when it comes to collecting. Cars were the best performing collectible in 2013, up 28 percent. Cars are also the top performer over a 10-year period, up 456 percent. That should make Jay Leno happy. If he spends all his money, he can sell all those cars.

 Artwork is a commodity just like any other, and just like any other, prices fluctuate. As we learned in the real estate market, that does not mean they always go up; sometimes they go down. They go up when money flows freely and supply gets tight; they go down when money dries up and studios, back rooms, and storage spaces begin to bulge with artwork. The moral of the story? A high tide raises all ships. You find out who isn't wearing pants when he tide goes out.

The other lesson here is painful for us artists.   You have to make your work indispensable to your potential buyer.  We need to acquire better marketing habits and get flexible about art pricing.  You have to think about your audience.  Be relevant.  An large-scale installation making a statement is powerful but may not be something that attracts many buyers.  I am not saying that you should stop making art for which you have a great passionate message, just make some saleable stuff too.

Acquiring better marketing habits means going after the people who have supported your work in the past: family, friends, and collectors. Use social media.  Find ways to reach more people for less money.   Make more affordable art.  Small sales generate loyal buyers and will keep you encouraged. Prints are even better, as you can sell them for $50 a pop and still hold onto the original artwork and weather the storm of a bad economy.

Though art prices fluctuate, remember this doesn't reflect your value as an artist. Use this downturn in the economy as an invitation to focus on the things that really matter in life: family, friends, inspiration, and art.

By: Renee Bangerter

Sister Wendy's Odyssey

I'm not a particularly spiritual person. OK, fine. I'm not actually spiritual at all. That said, I do try to be a good person. So the fact that a nun had an impact on how I view art is pretty ironic.  Sister Wendy Beckett was one of the first art critics to whom I ever paid any attention. She hosted a series of documentaries, mostly about the fine arts in the early 90's on PBS. I love PBS by the way but that's another topic for another day. 

I had pretty much abandoned my artistic endeavors to raise children and find a career that had a consistent income, a fate most artists endure at one time or another.  She made it ok to not be particularly educated in the arts to have an opinion, believing that everyone has the capacity to truly appreciate great works.   

She has no time for the snobbery that can come along with art critiques.  She believes art can help make one's life meaningful and bring peace to one's life when they truly see it without pre-conceived ideas.

Sister Wendy came to the public eye in 1991, when she was featured in a short film about England’s National Gallery. With her gentle lisp and insightful lectures, she quickly gained a following among television viewers. The BBC quickly ordered several television series to feature the “art nun” as she traveled through Great Britain and much of the world, discussing important works of art. There were only eleven episodes but they had an impact on how I viewed art.

I would love to tell you that I spent hours of time studying art but I didn't.  I spent more time making art than trying to understand it.   The sister was like no other nun that I ever saw.  She caught my attention immediately.  She was Oxford-educated and had a great passion for art and it came through like a beacon of light when she talked about art.  She did spend uncountable hours seeking out books and cards from museums.

Viewing art with an earnest heart seems so easy and so obvious when she explains how she looks at art through the eyes of innocence as a child would view it. When the series became available on DVD, I eagerly forked out the cash to have this in my collection, along with a great hard cover book about her time in the spotlight.  Every time I watch her, I am inspired all over again with an energy to explore and learn that I can't really explain.

"There is no life without work, anxieties or tensions. Peace is not found in avoiding these but in understanding them and controlling their force. " 

Sister Wendy became a nun at 16 and was in her sixties at the time of the series. That show made her, alongside Mother Teresa of Calcutta and Maria von Trapp, the most instantly recognizable nun in the world. There was even a West End musical, Postcards from God, based on her life.  She has spent her entire life in service and has found that art is a vehicle to God.

Before that, the sister was a teaching nun in her native South Africa with the Notre Dame de Namur order, but had to give up after a series of epileptic seizures, brought on by stress.

She has been absent from our screens now for a good few years. I found it really interesting that when I read about her again years after the series ended. She never wanted to do it in the first place and had she known how much time it would take, she would have never done it at all.

She never considered herself an adventurous person. She did not like to talk or speak to anybody all day apart from a few words.  It makes her parallel life as a television icon all the more extraordinary.  She had never even seen television when she hosted the series.

Since that time, she has spent decades away from the world as a hermit and consecrated virgin, living in a caravan in a copse in the monastery garden of the enclosed Carmelite convent in the U.K. She spends most of her life completely silent, not even speaking to the other nuns. 

It feels like everyone has something to say these days based on what is popular or how it makes them look.   Maybe we should all try to be more quiet and listen more than we speak.  We need to look at art though the eyes of a child and live in the moment.  I really wish she had a blog, don't you?  

Sister Wendy publications:  http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/sisterwendy/meet/books.html

Interview in 2007 where she discusses her experiences in front of the camera. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8pJsyXM0uVI

By: Renee Bangerter

Breaking Ground

It seems that most great artists have the good fortune of being born at the right time and the right place. 









I am convinced that unless someone recognizes and respects talent early, there are those that never stand a chance to further their artistic endeavors.

Born in Bordeaux France in 1822, Rosa Bonheur certainly was hit the lottery with her family. She had the great good fortune of being born to an artistic (and rather eccentric) couple. Her father, Oscar-Raymond Bonheur, was an artist, art teacher and ardent supporter of independent thought in his children, while her mother was a music teacher. 

I love her work and the painting above in particular.  She understands how to use light to bring forth an almost too realistic rendering in her work.  She loves animals and like many artists I have talked about before, she painted what was literally in her back yard.

Rosa was unable to attend art school due to her sex and was as a result educated by her father, a famous landscape painter. She had a great love for animals and drew her inspiration from the acclaimed English animal painter Sir Edwin Henry Landseer. 

Her most well known work is “The Horse Fair” which she exhibited to Queen Victoria on a visit to Scotland. It was also during this visit that she made her sketches for “A Scottish Raid” and “Highland Shepard”. Marie Rosalie Bonheur was the most famous female artist of her time and perhaps more so nowadays for appearing in men”s garb, claiming it was the more logical option for her work with animals.   

She is regarded as one of the early feminists. Rosa also worked in sculpture, casting bronzes (of animals, of course) early in her career. Rosa was a hit with the public, and exhibited yearly at the Salon beginning in 1841. Her sales were brisk due partly to the fact that everyone had heard of her. She was outspoken and earned a living as an artist, won awards, smoked in public, wore overalls (she needed a special license to do so) and visited slaughterhouses to study animal anatomy. In short, she was a notorious woman. Her non-conformity was outrageous for 19th-century Paris but, because she was so successful and independently wealthy, she forced many to reconsider the "role" of women artists.

For centuries, the tattoo industry has been dominated by men, both as artist and canvas but over the last decade or so the body art industry has definatley undergone a modern renaissance. The men have a rival in the form of female tattoo artists and plenty of "old-school" tattoo artists do not like it.  I read on a website for a local tattoo shop, "We are the real deal... no bored housewives."  I have not met any bored housewives that took up tattooing.   I have a feeling that was directed toward female tattoo artists in general.  I have become somewhat of a cynic and have a hard time giving some people the benefit of doubt.

Female tattoo artists had always been lone wolves but a lot has changed. They are no longer relegated to the reception desk. They own shops and run successful businesses. More positive perceptions of female tattoo artists is owed to the sea change the industry experienced when Kat Von D graced millions of TV sets as a cast member of the reality show Miami Ink, starting in 2005. It is more open now, but it’s still a man’s world for the most part. I never really hear negativity about women tattoo artists from other women. I hear it plenty often from the men. I hear how they hate Kat Von D, criticize her work (when their own art is nothing to write home about) and how women should not own tattoo shops. Jealous much? Say what you will but she's a very successful business woman that has diversified with a lot of income sources besides tattooing.  

More and more women are taking leadership roles within the industry.  In my neck of the woods, Kari Barba is a great example of a woman taking matters into her own hands. She started tattooing at age 19 in 1979. Since that she has won over 500 awards including Best Tattooist 3 times and a Lifetime Achievement Award in 2011. She is the only known artist to have won 1st place in every category at a single convention. In the 70's, 80's and early 90's only one convention took place in the US per year. It showcased the best of the best in the country/world. In 1991, Kari Barba won 1st place in every category at that National Tattoo Association Convention. This has never been accomplished by any other artist.   She has owned several shops and has the respect of many.  

Kari may be a modern version of Rosa Bonheur in changing the standards of the industry.  She didn't play by the rules but seems to respect the traditions.  She was going to do what she wanted to do and no one was going to stop her.

I never considered myself a feminist but plenty of people have described me that way.  It never occurs to me that I should not do something because of my gender.   When it does pop up in my life, it hits me as unexpected as a 2x4 across the forehead.  I don't respond well and I can carry a grudge for along time.  I am working on that.

I applaud those that came before me.  The strong women that took matters into their own hands.  The women that blazed the trails in both fine art and tattoo art.  They are my heroes.

By: Renee Bangerter