The Academy Blog

LIVE FROM THE STUDIOS: Mary Harju

Join Mary in her studio when we broadcast

LIVE FROM THE STUDIOS at the New York Academy of Art.
Watch & Chat LIVE Tues. 3/22/11 at 1pm EST

Mary Harju is a graduate of both the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts and the University of Pennsylvania, where she received a BFA in painting. She has shown in galleries in and around Philadelphia and was featured in the Artists’ House Emerging Artists Exhibition in 2008. Currently she is living in New York City and completing an MFA in painting at the New York Academy of Art.
Tune in for a rare glimpse of the artwork Mary creates as a 2nd year painting major. Spread the word – it’s a great way for any prospective student to get an “inside view” of the Academy!


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Bakasana, Mary Harju, oil on canvas, 2011
Bakasana, oil on canvas, 2011

Professional Development Summer Workshop

Sharon Louden & Alums enjoyed the first Professional Development workshop - Register now!
Sharon Louden & Academy Alums
A very good professional practice is essential for artists, especially during this current time of economic uncertainty. This 5-day program is designed to provide the tools you need to successfully navigate the art world marketplace. Professional Practices instructor Sharon Louden will help lay out strategies that will help you maximize both selling and showing opportunities. In addition, at least one guest speaker will visit each day to give a different voice and point of view. Those speakers include a gallery dealer, museum curator, grant writer, critic and others.  This intensive course is a fantastic opportunity to participate in a high-energy environment where you and your peers will absorb tremendous amount of information. This workshop will build a community and increase your network while acquiring important professional habits that will enable you to step forward and further your career!
  • $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.
Please contact John Cichowski at 212 966 0300 x968 or johnc@nyaa.edu to reserve your spot now.
 

REGISTRATION DEADLINE: JUNE 1, 2011

Studio Shots: Aliene de Souza Howell, Mitchell Martinez, Sean Hyland

Photo of Aliene de Souza Howell

Aliene de Souza Howell (Painting, Class of 2011):

“I’m exploring ideas of social constructs and how we’ve 
chosen to define ourselves as humans. I’m using animals in my work 
to highlight the herd mentality within us and bring an element of humor.”

photo of Mitchell Martinez

Mitchell Martinez (Painting, Class of 2012):

“I’m using a combination of painting and sculpture 
to create a whimsical symbolic landscape of the universal mind.”

photo of Sean Hyland
Sean Hyland (Painting, class of 2012):
“I love to explore bright colors in a semi-surrealist environment. 
My paintings tend to exist in their own world…not quite too far from this one.”

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.

Artwork by Cary Leibowitz
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.

Artwork by Ross Bleckner
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.

Artwork by Ellen Altfest
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.

Artwork by Inka Essenhigh
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

Adam LaMothe painting

Adam LaMothe (Painting, Class of 2012):
“My current body of work explores embarrassment, vulnerability
and absurdity through a series of intimate portraits.”

Photo of Nicholas Borelli
Nicholas Borelli (Painting, Class of 2012):
“In my current series I’m trying to channel Kafka and
Cronenberg to explore human/insect transformations.”

photo of Angela Gram
Angela Gram (Painting, Class of 2012):
“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!

Many years ago we inherited this gentle Lion. Though he is very quiet and doesn’t eat much, he’s a big guy and we know in our hearts that there is a happy home for him out there. Please help us place him a good home in a charitable organization, a children’s hospital or maybe a school. Cadogan Tate, our favorite transporters, will take him wherever he is set to go, whether it’s Kansas, Salt Lake City, Palm Springs or the Upper West Side.

So we invite you to participate in a contest
to find a place where he can bring joy to others, too.
  1. Recipient MUST be a charitable organization, a children’s hospital or a school (documentation must be provided) in the United States
  2. Contestants must show proof of approval from the receiving institution and provide a contact name and info
  3. The winning location will be chosen by the Academy and Cadogan Tate
  4. Recipient organizations are asked to send photo of ultimate location – before and after installation
  5. The winning contestant will receive 2 COCKTAIL TICKETS to the Academy’s upcoming Tribeca Ball on April 4, 2011
Contest to run March 1 – 31, 2011.
EMAIL ALL ENTRIES TO CONTEST@NYAA.EDU
Thank you and good luck!

Cadoigan Tate moving, storage, and shipping
James de Pasquale, Lion, 1983, Acrylic on canvas
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.

Backyards, Greenwich Village, by John Sloan
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?

Backyards, Greenwich Village detail, by John Sloan
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.

Artwork by Van Gogh
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.

Artwork by Nicole Eisenman
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

Printmaxing!

by Aliene De Souza Howell (MFA 2011)

I started printmaking again last semester after years away from it.

Since taking the Narrative Printmaking Seminar, I started creating relief linocuts inspired from poetry. This acted as a significant catalyst in freeing up the imagery in my work. I felt I could get away with anything because of the graphic quality of the black and white and the finality of carving that lent a certain austerity to the image.

I’ve just started using animals as a lens to look at ideas of social practice and how, as humans, we’ve chosen to cultivate ourselves. I’ve always responded to the impact of life size work where you could really enter into the image and have always worked large in my paintings, so I thought I’d push my printmaking and began to work on a 36†x 60†image.

Printmaking instructor John Jacobsmeyer, Yi Cao, Post-Graduate Teaching Assistant Jan Pecarca and Aliene setting a printing press
Printmaking instructor John Jacobsmeyer, Yi Cao, Post-Graduate
Teaching Assistant Jan Pecarca and Aliene set the press.

Due to its monstrous size, I needed assistance printing it. The press bed was maxed out and we even had to re-adjust it (a risky feat) and send the block back through the press a second time in order to print the entirety of the image. It worked out and I’ve just begun my second large print!

Printmaking instructor John Jacobsmeyer, Yi Cao, Post-Graduate Teaching Assistant Jan Pecarca and Aliene pull new print from the press
Pulling it off the press – a first look…

Finished linocut
The linocut, finished!

Don’t miss the last Open House! March 19, 2011

Final Masters of Fine Arts open house, March 19th, 2011 MFA OPEN HOUSE DATES



March 19th, 2011

**Attendees will have their application fee reduced from $80 to $60! Please click here to register.

The 2010-2011 Open House postcards feature recent graduate Tamiko Stump in the Academy printshop. (See post about the Academy’s new Griffon Series I lithography press.) To request Open House postcards or electronic copies to distribute, please email admissions@nyaa.edu.

Facebook, Curator of Culture: Salon des Refusés

EDITOR’S NOTE
After the Academy posted a response on this blog to facebook’s removal of Steven Assael’s artwork (Jan 31, 2011, 5:22pm), The New York Times, Gawker, MSNBC, The Cornell Daily Sun, The RegisterARTINFO, and other news sources have covered this story. Please see below for photos facebook has removed from the Academy and Academy Alum’s accounts.

Where do you draw the line?

 Steven Assael, Simone, ink on paper
Steven Assael, “Simone” ink on paper.
Artwork image removed by facebook, 1/31/2011
from the Academy’s “Uncovered” exhibition on facebook.

Alyssa Monks, Press, oil on canvas, 2008
Alyssa Monks, (MFA 2001) “Press” oil on canvas, 2008.
Artwork image removed by facebook, 9/2010.
Alyssa’s original facebook account was disabled.

Richard T. Scott, Hermetica, oil on canvas
Richard T. Scott (MFA 2007) “Hermetica” oil on canvas.
Artwork removed by facebook, 1/30/2011

John Wellington, Break Clean From the Past, oil on aluminum
John Wellington (MFA 1990) “Break Clean From the Past” oil on aluminum.
Artwork removed by facebook, 2/13/2011
(John has since posted “facebook-is-keeping-you-safe”
censored images on his facebook page.)

Judy Fox, Venus, 2004. Filled Resin, Casien
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Judy Fox, “Venus” 2004. Filled Resin, Casien 67 x 21 x 17
Artwork removed by facebook, 2/22/2011
from the album of the Pu
t Up or Shut Up exhibition
by outstanding faculty of prestigious MFA programs
in the greater NYC area. Also included in the exhibition
were artists Vito Acconci, Jesse Bransford, Maureen Connor,
Patricia Cronin, Vincent Desiderio, Julie Heffernan, Edgar Jerins,
Sharon Horvath, Keith Mayerson, and John Torreano.
________
NB: This image was removed from the Academy’s facebook page
after this article was published in The New York Times.

Gary Schneider, Young Man, 1908, 2008,pigmented ink on paper
Gary Schneider, “Young Man, 1908, 2008” pigmented ink
on paper, 52.5 x 38.5 in.
Artwork removed by facebook, 2/22/2011
from the album of the Pu
t Up or Shut Up exhibition. 
________
NB: This image was removed from the Academy’s facebook page
after this article was published in The New York Times.

Patricia Cronin, Canto 6: Circle Three, The Gluttons, watercolor on paper
Patricia Cronin “Canto VI: Circle Three, The Gluttons”
watercolor on paper, 60 x 40 in.

Artwork removed by facebook, 3/1/2011
from the album of the Put Up or Shut Up exhibition.
________

NB: This image was removed from the Academy’s facebook page
after the story was published in The New York Times
and also by many other news sources. 

Judy Fox, Venus, 2004. Filled Resin, Casien
Artwork: Judy Fox, “Venus” 2004. Filled Resin, Casien 67 x 21 x 17
Article: The New York Times

Removed by facebook, 3/10/2011 
This album has been created to track artworks that have been 
removed from the Academy’s page. The “offending” artworks appear 
with text from articles posted by news sources reporting on 
facebook’s censorship of artwork on the Academy’s page.


JUNE 13, 2011, 3 months later…
After three email messages of “photo removed” received today (in these instances, facebook does not tell you which photo has been removed, so now we’re on the hunt for them…), facebook – in an unexpected turn – sent us this “Please Review” notice upon login: 
Facebook content warning message
“We’ve received one or more reports that content you posted violates Facebook policies.
We have not yet taken any action. If this content threatens or harasses anyone,
or contains nudity or excessive violence, please remove it immediately to avoid
your account being warned, blocked, or disabled.

If you don’t think this content violates our policies, you don’t need to do anything.
If you choose not to remove this content, please keep in mind that
Facebook may still take action on the content and your account.”

Of course we don’t think this content violates facebook’s policies. The images that the New York Academy of Art (an internationally-respected graduate school teaching traditional skills and techniques in the service of vital contemporary art with an emphasis on the human figure) has posted are of student, faculty and alumni artwork. The Academy was founded by Andy Warhol, has been visited by President Clinton, and even enjoyed patronage conferred by HRH Prince of Wales.  
Where facebook has become an entity that can affect real cultural ripples, as in the “toppling” of Hosni Mubarak, how does the perception of artwork weigh in? The question remains: how and who shall evaluate what – in a public forum – the public may see?
Art has always asked and responded to this question. If the name of the game is communication and the spread of ideas, should a social network use different criteria to evaluate (art) content than an art history book or a museum? 
Screenshot of facebook page
Well, folks, what do you think?
censured artworks by Aleah Chapin
And on the same day, current student Aleah Chapin’s facebook profile photo was removed as well.
She reposted it, as seen here.  


August 12, 2011: 
“The needs of many outweigh the needs of few…”

 John Jacobsmeyer, Planet New Hampshire, 2007. Oil on Canvas
Artwork: John Jacobsmeyer, “Planet New Hampshire” 2007. Oil on Canvas 36 x 36 in. 

Removed by facebook, 8/12/2011
John Jacobsmeyer was Chair of Faculty at the New York Academy of Art.