Do you have your tickets yet?
Artists’ Talk: Yu Hong and Liu Xiaodong
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| Yu Hong, Colorful World, 1992, 70×71 in., oil on canvas |
Join us for a very special visit from preeminent Chinese artists Yu Hong and Liu Xiaodong. They will present a lecture on their work with curator and translator Michelle Loh.
The husband and wife pair both teach at the Central Academy in Beijing and have shown their individual artworks across the globe, with a recent solo exhibitions at Mary Boone Gallery in New York (Liu Xiaodong) and Guangdong Museum of Art (Yu Hong). Liu Xiaodong’s work is in public collections including the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; Shanghai Art Museum, China and SF MoMA. Yu Hong’s work is in public collections including the Ludwig Gallery, Germany; the Dong Yu Art Museum, China and the Singapore Art Museum, Singapore.
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| Liu Xiaodong, Hot Bed No. 1 (+4 others; set of 5), 102×393 in., oil on canvas |
Michelle Loh is a New York-based art consultant who specializes in organizing art fairs and group exhibitions. Michelle advises individual and institutional collectors about contemporary Asian art. Her most recent projects include FOCUS SHANGHAI: Two Contemporary Chinese video Artists at Thomas Erben Gallery, and Trans-Realism: Contemporary Art from China at Christie’s. She was part of the founding team of the Asian Contemporary Art Fair, New York, 2007 and 2008, and the co-publisher of Art Asia Pacific from 2003 to 2005.
All lectures are free and open to the public – we’d love to see you there!
The Armory Show
The 2011 Armory Contemporary Fair was an exciting and stimulating event in the face of today’s often uncertain art world. As an undergrad in NYC I had the chance to visit a handful of the other art fairs during Armory Week, but this was my first time visiting the Armory Fair. I and several of NYAA students decided to see Scope and the Armory Fairs together. Upon arriving at Pier 92 we were blown away by the sheer magnitude of it all. To access the Contemporary section you walk through part of the Modern fair and then descend from the catwalk. Booths extend as far as the eye can see, gallery after gallery laid out in front of you, it is daunting and exhilarating in the same moment.

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| Tony Oursler, Lehmann Maupin Gallery |
Visiting the Armory Fairs provides a taste of the Art World. It offers an insight into the machine that we are all a part of. For some of us the experience was a little frightening, being in the belly of the beast. Others were repulsed at the prospect of having to become a part of that reality.
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| Student Nic Holiber looking at work by Marc Sijan, Cuadro Fine Art Gallery |
Despite the overwhelming commercial vibe of the fair, the work itself definitely had a positive impact. I left the fair having seen some work by artists I’ve been following on my own, and the opportunity to speak to dealers about the artist’s process and studio practice was very exciting. Dressing the part of the collector allowed for some interactions that I otherwise would not have been privy too – and showed me that the art world is not as out of reach as it seems. The surprise on the dealer’s part when they found out that I was in fact an artist and not a potential collector was amusing.
The majority of the artwork was not mind blowing; it was similar to what we’ve been seeing the past few months in galleries, and based on the high level of publicity the show receives I think our group expected to see some extremely profound work. That said, some of the work on view clearly stood out of the crowd. The critic’s pick – Los Carpinteros – two Cuban artists who create objects and installations that comment on contemporary culture in a playful and often humorous way.

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| Mucho Caliente, 2010, Madera, metal. 213 x 128 x 28 cm. Colección Fundación Helga de Alvear, Cáceres |

Contemporary painting was represented strongly by Irish and Scottish Galleries – particularly by the Irish gallery Mother’s Tankstation. Their booth was dominated by Mairead O’Heocha’s evocative landscape paintings of her daily experience in semi-rural Ireland.
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| Van and House, Bray, Co.Wicklow, 2009, Oil/board, 39 x 50 cms |
All in all, the experience showed us that the harder we work, and the better our work is, we actually have a chance of ‘making it,’ if the Armory Fair is a measure of making it. With our eyes on the horizon, I think it is safe to say that the art world eagerly awaits an equally exciting fair in the coming year.
–
Jon Beer
Artist – http://www.jonathanbeer.com/
Director, Blind Artists Society
LIVE FROM THE STUDIOS: Mary Harju
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| Bakasana, oil on canvas, 2011 |
Professional Development Summer Workshop
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| Sharon Louden & Academy Alums |
- $600 = Current MFA Students and Alumni*
- $675 = Current Continuing Education Students
- $750 = All Others – this workshop is open to all artists.
- *As a special bonus, registered Alumni who are not yet members of the Alumni Association will receive a year-long membership in the AANYAA.
REGISTRATION DEADLINE: JUNE 1, 2011
Studio Shots: Aliene de Souza Howell, Mitchell Martinez, Sean Hyland
Aliene de Souza Howell (Painting, Class of 2011):
Mitchell Martinez (Painting, Class of 2012):
Six Things You Should Know About the Color Green
The New York Academy of Art is pleased to share a new note by Hilary Harkness. Regularly posting her “Notes from Studio Lockdown,” Hilary blogs with us as she prepares for her upcoming exhibition in May at Mary Boone Gallery in New York City. Follow her on this blog for sneak peeks into her studio practice!
Dear friends,
Now is a good time to give your palette a thorough cleaning and freshen your color choices for springtime.
1. Green has more possible connotations and symbolic uses than any other color. Green means go, is the color of envy, and it stands for an environmental movement. Everyone knows that if you eat a green m&m it will make you horny. As a child during the cold-war 80’s, the wisdom in my schoolyard was that as the nuclear bombs come in– best way to go out was in a bathtub full of green jello.
One of my favorite artists, Cary Liebowitz a.k.a. Candy Ass, has given a new blush of meaning to the color green: not only is it the color of indigestion, it is the color of apology.
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| Cary Leibowitz |
2. There are more than three ways to achieve the color green using paint.
You can use a green pigment, you can mix it from blue and yellow, and you can also mix it using black and yellow. I like to juxtapose all three, as well as using color-proximity to imply that a yellow or a blue might in fact include a touch green.
Here is a riddle for students: when depicting a piece of yellow fabric, how do you keep the shadows from looking either greenish or a darker yellow? Please chime in!
A friend of mine recently was choosing a shade of green to paint her living room walls. She showed me nearly identical paint chips from different brands of paint, but the corresponding test-patches of colors on the walls were quite different. This is because of the endless ways green paint can be formulated. A more opaque pigment will make a deader color on the wall, but an uncomplicated mix of a dye color will make the room look so bright that you might wonder if martians have landed.
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| Ross Bleckner |
3. There are more shades of green than any other color.
The color that spans the least number of shades is the color red. Artist Ellen Altfest exploits the full potential of green in many of her paintings, as you can see in this nuanced image.
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| Ellen Altfest |
4. A green painting is the most difficult to color-correct when reproduced photographically.
It is important to carefully check that your digital image matches your real-life painting.
5. Green paintings are the least marketable. This is the word on the street. However, no art dealer I have spoken with will go on the record as having difficulty in selling anything.
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| Inka Essenhigh |
6. Green is the most atmospheric of any color.
This seems to fly in the face of the use of blue to connote distance in Renaissance paintings, but on a sunny day, when the sky is blue, the air outside seems the clearest to me visually. There just isn’t a lot of “air†to paint.
I remember the day when I was nine years old when a tornado ripped down the main street of my town, passing only three blocks from my house. As the air raid sirens were blasting a disaster alarm, I noticed my mother was missing from the shelter of our basement. I found her on the front porch, enjoying the spectacle. The air was a satanic green as the wind picked up.
Yours very truly,
Hilary Harkness
Studio Shots: Adam LaMothe, Nicholas Borelli, Angela Gram
“My current body of work explores embarrassment, vulnerability
and absurdity through a series of intimate portraits.”
“In my current series I’m trying to channel Kafka and
Cronenberg to explore human/insect transformations.”
“My work addresses human decay and intends to challenge
this taboo through the aesthetics of nature.”
Help this Gentle Lion find a Happy Home and WIN 2 Cocktail Tickets to Tribeca Ball!
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| James de Pasquale, Lion, 1983, Acrylic on canvas, 72 x 136 in. |
Distinguish Yourself as an Artist by Painting from Life
The New York Academy of Art is pleased to share a new note by artist Hilary Harkness. “Notes from Studio Lockdown” is Hilary’s blog with us as she prepares for her upcoming exhibition in May at Mary Boone Gallery in New York City. Follow her on this blog for exclusive views of her studio practice!
Dear friends,
You might wonder why an artist like me, who paints imaginary scenarios, is a proponent of painting from life, but I do it quite regularly. I travel to significant locations to do preliminary studies from life to get a handle on how color behaves, I buy relevant props to paint to add touches of verite, and sometimes even ask my girlfriend to throw a right hook so I can depict a boxer convincingly.
On the other hand, I often make up color schemes that I use in a systematic fashion to make my scenarios seem real. For instance, I know blue light will create cool highlights and therefore the objects will cast warm shadows. I use the rule that highlights are sharper on shiny objects. I scour the works of Fragonard to try to guess at his color system. In addition, the journals of Eugene Delacroix are very useful because he described the exact pigments he used to create reflected light in the shadows of flesh.
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| Hopper |
But here are three examples of why painting from life, at least at some point in your process, is unbeatable. In looking at the following paintings, let’s ask: Why is her face green?
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| Hopper, detail |
A girl looks out from the shadows of her tenement window onto a bright snowy backyard scene. Looking closely, we see that her face has indeed been created using green paint. But in the context of the painting, it is obvious her face is not actually green. No color system in itself tells us why this use of green rings true. We can see from her rosy cheeks that her face is pinkish. If the local color of her face was yellow, then a reflected blue light from the snow could combine with that to make her appear greenish. Maybe the room she is in is green, but she is standing too close to the window for it to affect the appearance of her face. Perhaps the green skin is meant to make her cheeks seem an even more feverish bright red be contrast. The dullness of the green pigment (perhaps the earth color terre verte) makes her cheeks seem to actually radiate heat and light. It adds pathos: is this girl too sick to go out and play? Is she experiencing vicarious delight despite being at death’s door? The use of green in this girl’s face makes this painting transcend any illustration of a snowy scene, and I think this transcendence has sprung from years of observational painting.
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| Van Gogh |
You would have to go to MoMA yourself to see that Vincent van Gogh uses green pigment in the flesh of his subject Joseph Roulin.Great painters don’t simply depict exactly what their eyes see like they are photographic machines; there is interplay between the artist and his subject, and the artist and his canvas.
Van Gogh has selected a limited palette and created a tight color envelope that allows certain greens to read as more neutral flesh-tones. In addition, the contrast of the even greener wallpaper behind Joseph Roulin pushes his face back toward a ruddy alcoholic complexion.
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| Nicole Eisenman |
Nicole Eisenman has made many lovely paintings of scenes in nighttime beer gardens. She captures the conviviality of the moment, as well as the darker moments her characters could be experiencing. Eisenman is obviously a close observer of not only the unusual night-time lighting in this type of scene, but the varied emotions of the characters within them.
Yours very truly,
Hilary Harkness