Studio Shots: Jon Beer, Jacob Hicks, Nicolas Holiber
I’m creating spaces and worlds where the past and present exist simultaneously.
“I’m focused on the meaning of my name – Jacob – which means ‘to supplant.’
I supplant my visage and personal narrative into the continuously
reproduced mythologies of Western culture.”
Nicolas Holiber (Painting, class of 2012)
is currently painting a series of meat still lives that are about
our relationship to the animals we eat. Says Nic, “Eating is a moral act inextricably
bound to killing, and the implications and contradictions that arise out of that situation.”
Winter Fever
A new year of art is upon us. Though it may have gotten off to a slow start; blame the blizzards, there are some exciting things on the horizon. So shovel yourself out of your winter doldrums and go see these shows.
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| Donald Judd |
Pace has several formidable artists currently showing; Tara Donovan is already open in Chelsea. The show features Donovan’s intricate drawings that are painstakingly rendered environments unto themselves. Donald Judd opens Thursday. Judd is arguably the the father of minimalist sculpture and is singlehandedly responsible for making Marfa, TX the art destination it is today. The show will focus on lesser known materials that Judd introduced into his work during the final decades of his life. Also look forward to Zhang Huan opening at the beginning of the March.
Also on Thursday night in Chelsea check out Academy alumni Jane La Farge Hamill, Caitlin Hurd, and Christian Johnson‘s take on the figure at their opening Aloft at J. Cacciola Gallery.
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| Hurd, Johnson and Hamill at J. Cacciola |
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| Richard Butler |
Richard Butler hypochondriacatthegramercyparkhotel opens Friday at Freight + Volume. The British artist/musician (Psychedelic Furs) paints hauntingly elegant portraits of coming of age youth with a minimalist palette and space reminiscent of Bacon. I am most seduced by the way he uses oil paint to depict surfaces like latex and bubble wrap when masking his subjects.
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| Robin Williams |
Also in Chelsea go see Robin William’s show The Rescue Party at P.P.O.W. William’s work is a little Yuskavage, a little Currin, and a little early Micah Ganske. It is not to be missed by anyone interested in current figuration.
In museum news, there is a mid-career retrospective of George Condo’s work that just opened at the New Museum. Condo’s work constantly borrows from the historical cannon of western art as he subverts old and new masters.
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| George Condo |
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| David Wojnarowicz |
Finally, go see the Contemporary show at MoMA. There is a fantastic piece by everyone’s favorite censored artist, David Wojnarowicz. The show is an investigation on provocative artwork discussing economics, gender and ethnicity since the late 60’s.
Lecture: Jeanne Silverthorne
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| Jeanne Silverthorne, Nightshade, courtesy McKee Gallery |
Jeanne Silverthorne is an artist who lives and works in New York. She is best known for sculptures cast in rubber, but her installations often include photographs, videos and kinetic elements as well. She has exhibited at the Whitney Museum of Art, the Museum of Modern Art, the San Francisco Museum of Art, the Albright Knox Museum, among others, and her work is in the collections of those museums as well the Leum Samsung Museum, Korea, FINAC, Denver Museum, Weatherspoon Museum, Houston Museum, Sheldon Museum, the Contemporary Museum Honolulu, and the RISD Museum. She is represented by McKee Gallery in New York and Shoshana Wayne Gallery in Los Angeles. Reviews and articles about her work have appeared in Artforum, Art in America, Art News and Sculpture Magazine. A feature on her projects is scheduled to be published in a forthcoming issue of Sculpture Magazine. This year she has been awarded a Joan Mitchell Foundation Award. Since 1993, she has taught at the School of Visual Arts and for seven years she was on the faculty of the MFA program at Columbia University
All lectures are free and open to the public.
Watch the blog for upcoming lectures including Donald Kuspit & Phoebe Hoban.
Click here for a complete schedule of SPRING 2011 Lectures
The NYAA Library has these resources available exclusively for NYAA students.
Electronic access to Academic OneFile and GALEÂ (links only accessible in the NYAA campus):
- Neff, Eileen. “Jeanne Silverthorne: Institute of Contemporary Art.” Artforum International 35.2 (1996): 121+. Academic OneFile. Web. 14 Feb. 2011.
- Cotter, Holland. “ART IN REVIEW.” New York Times 13 Aug. 1999. Academic OneFile. Web. 14 Feb. 2011.
- Glueck, Grace. “Jeanne Silverthorne.” New York Times 12 May 2000: B34(N); E36(L). Academic OneFile. Web. 14 Feb. 2011.
- Johnson, Ken. “Jeanne Silverthorne.” New York Times 23 May 2003: E36. Academic OneFile. Web. 14 Feb. 2011.
- Frankel, David. “Jeanne Silverthorne: MCKEE GALLERY.” Artforum International 47.1 (2008): 459. Academic OneFile. Web. 14 Feb. 2011.
- Frankel, David. “JEANNE SILVERTHORNE.” Artforum International 38.5 (2000): 115. Academic OneFile. Web. 14 Feb. 2011
Fellows: John O’Reilly
While you’re in the middle of your Fellowship year, what do you find challenging and satisfying?
As a student getting ready to graduate, I had a specific line of thought I wanted to develop. Using the beginning of my fellowship year to “look inward,†I’ve been able to develop that strain of thought and also to “look outward†by seeing galleries and museums and other artists’ studios. Now I want to digest it all, react visually, and see how it adds to my original intent. My work explores “breath.†The intake, the absorption, the release… the pulse is getting stronger the breaths are getting deeper.
There are now so many “shadows†of ideas that are lingering and morphing into my work, I want to make more projects to elaborate… but the studio space I occupy is filling up quickly and I wish I had more area to create more work. I don’t want to discard anything I’ve started, but I have to – due to my space and time limitations (the Fellows’ Exhibition is coming up in September 2011) – be more selective about which themes I pursue.
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| John in his studio at the Academy |
It’s a constant continuation and evolution. The more things I do, the more they inform each other and reveal a dialogue with myself. I find satisfaction in letting my intuition take over in the process. It becomes meditative where everything slows down and I’m able to sift through ideas and discoveries that manifest themselves in a physical object.

Put Up or Shut Up
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- Vito Acconci
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- Vito Acconci
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- Vito Acconci
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- Vito Acconci
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- Vito Acconci
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- Anthony Aziz
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- Hugo Bastidas
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- Jesse Bransford
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- Jesse Bransford
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- Gerard Brown
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- Arthur Cohen
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- Maureen Connor
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- Patricia Cronin
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- Vincent Desiderio
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- Stephanie Dinkins
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- Simone Douglas
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- Stella Ebner
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- Judy Fox
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- Allen Frame
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- Glenn Goldberg
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- Nancy Goldring
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- Nancy Goldring
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- Julie Heffernan
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- Sharon Horvath
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- Deborah Jack
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- Edgar Jerrins
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- Martin Kruck
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- Julie Langsam
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- Seung Lee
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- Keith Mayerson
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- Tyrone Mitchell
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- Donna Moran
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- Nobuho Nagasawa
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- Frank Olt
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- Winn Rea
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- Christopher Robbins
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- Gary Schneider
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- Mark Shetabi
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- Patrick Strzelec
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- John Torreano
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- Stephen Westfall
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- Kit White
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- Eva Wylie
College Art Association NY AREA MFA EXHIBITION
Participating Artists:
Emily Davis Adams
Kiley Ames-Klein
Elina Anatole
Corinne Beardsley
Demetrio Belenky
Ramona Bradley
Aleah Chapin
Diana Corvelle
Cara De Angelis
Alexandra Finkelchtein
Charlotte Foyle
Jeffrey Gipe
Jason Sho Green
Ian Healy
Adam LaMothe
Shanga Manning
Gary Murphy
Monica Olsen
Guno Park
Joseph Ventura
Tyler Vouros
Shawn Yu
From the distance of a map-maker
The recent talk of censorship in the arts has me thinking more about the relationship between map-maker and mapped; gardener and garden; artist and artwork.
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| US Department of Interior survey plat, New Mexico, 1880 |
As I develop my farmland images in paint (departing from my earlier works on photographs), I’ve been thinking more about the way maps feel. I get a sense of awe with the aerial view of farmland because what I see vacillates between map and fields. In the true-to-form representation of the landscape as photograph or painting, the image may still be read as non-objective.
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| (Developing farmland in oil paint, stage I) |
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| (Developing farmland in oil paint, stage II) |
It it is interesting to me how the distance between the map-maker and the thing mapped, the dissociation of the person from the place or thing they are arranging, allows for a relationship in which the subject is a non-objective thing to the map-maker. Some contemporary voices note the violence that can arise from this distance; that the agricultural policies and practices responsible for the farm-grids are violent, environmentally and socially; that there was violence in the homesteading maps, violence in the reservation mapping, violence in Indian assimilation policies (the mapping of one culture’s visual presentation onto another)*.
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| Students, Carlisle Indian School: photograph by John N. Choate, before and after entrance to the school. Pictured are Wounded Yellow Robe, Timber Yellow Robe, Henry Standing Bear (Archives and Special Collections, Dickinson College, Carlisle, PA) |
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| Edward Burtynsky, Kennecott Copper Mine No. 22, Bingham Valley, Utah 1983 |
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| Agnes Martin |
Facebook, Curator of Culture
It’s not “Contemporary vs. Traditional†or “Disegno vs. Colore.†It’s much more universal and it drives to the heart of the age-old dialogue in visual culture: What is Art?
Just today, facebook alerted me that an image which violates their Terms of Use was removed from the New York Academy of Art’s facebook page. This image – a drawing by Steven Assael (see below) – is in an exhibition curated by the Academy and shown at the Eden Rock Gallery in St. Barth’s.
And this isn’t the first time… Alyssa Monks (MFA 2001) was censored by facebook, too. (Also read Huffington Post’s comments.) How does the de-facebooking of other works of fine art connect to the recent decision by the Smithsonian to remove David Wojnarowicz’s artwork from the National Portrait Gallery’s online and on-site exhibition?
As an institution of higher learning with a long tradition of upholding the art world’s “traditional values and skills,†we, the Graduate School of Figurative Art, find it difficult to allow facebook to be the final arbiter – and online curator – of the artwork we share with the world.
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| Steven Assael, “Simone” ink on paper. Artwork image removed by facebook from the Academy’s display of an exhibition on facebook. |
If it begins with Steven Assael, a modern master, who’s next? Is it Kurt Kauper? (His drawing is still on facebook.) And then… must we censor artworks by our own MFA graduates? In this online kingdom in which facebook seems to rule, allegedly as a tool of universal communication and equal opportunity advancement, how shall the New York Academy of Art continue to impartially promote its under-recognized artists?
If facebook is a new online Salon de Paris, where a faceless group of “curators†determine what artwork the public should see, well then please consider our website the Salon des Refusés!
And so we now ask: How is FACEBOOK controlling ART?
Elizabeth Sackler Lecture
Elizabeth A. Sackler is an arts activist and a public historian who lectures and writes on ethics and morality in the art market and beyond. The idea of a place, a center, bound to equality without artificial constraints led her to found the Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art at the Brooklyn Museum, home of “The Dinner Party†by Judy Chicago which honors women’s contributions in all fields throughout history. Her lecture will be about: “Moving Right Along: The Radicalization of Normal People” and we look forward to the Q&A portion of her lecture!
All lectures are free and open to the public.
Stay tuned to the blog for upcoming lectures including Donald Kuspit, Jeanne Silverthorne and Phoebe Hoban.
Click here for a complete schedule of SPRING 2011 Lectures
The NYAA Library has these resources available exclusively for NYAA students.
- Chicago, Judy, and Lucie-Smith, Edward. Women in Art: Contested Territory. Watson-Guptill: New York. 1999.
- The Dinner Party: From Creation to Preservation. Merrell: London. 2007.
- Lucie-Smith, Edward. Judy Chicago: An American Vision. Watson-Guptill: New York. 2000.Â
- Electronic access to Academic OneFile (links only accessible in the NYAA campus):
- “Dinner party finds new home in Brooklyn.” Art Business News 29.13 (2002): 54. Academic OneFile. Web. 8 Feb. 2011.
- Feitelberg, Rosemary. “New Breed of Feminism Brooklyn Bound.” WWD (2007): 26. Academic OneFile. Web. 8 Feb. 2011.Â
- Schjeldahl, Peter. “Women’s Work.” The New Yorker 9 Apr. 2007: 73. Academic OneFile. Web. 8 Feb. 2011.
- Stevens, Mark. “The history of herstory: the Brooklyn Museum’s new feminist-art center shows us that sisterhood can be both powerful and cliched.” New York 2 Apr. 2007: 78+. Academic OneFile. Web. 8 Feb. 2011.
- 384 images in ArtStor, collected in the Elizabeth Sackler/Judy Chicago > image group Judy Chicago.
Five Ways to Create Space in your Painting
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,
Recently I was asked for some tips on creating the illusion of space in a painting. I like this question, because as mysterious as the painting process may seem to be, most of what I do as an artist is very basic. Even as I am finishing a painting, my process is still all about the fundamentals. Here are five simple ways to create space in your painting – but please do chime in if there are more you can think of.
1. Overlapping
We all know this one – paint a person in front of a tree and the tree recedes. But here, Degas gets extra-tricky by slightly blurring, fading, or obscuring some of the background objects the moment before they dip behind the central figure.
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| Degas |
2. Dark vs. Light
Notice how in this painting by Josef Albers the black square seems to automatically recede. The lighter colors pop forward, and as I see it the constructed space flickers inwards and outwards. I challenge you to see this space as flat!
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| Albers |
3. Atmospheric Perspective
It is easy to find Renaissance paintings that have colors that fade out to blue in the distance, however, you can use any color yourself for this purpose if you lower the contrast as you push objects further back into space. Here’s a favorite of mine by Gerard David.
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| Gerard David |
4. Focus
Photographers use it, painters use it, and I sure wish more sculptors would use it! Here we have Vermeer’s Lacemaker – note how the objects on the front table seem miles closer to us than the girl’s head. When I look at this painting, I feel like I am microscopically tiny, looking toward a distant mountain that happens to be a girl.
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| Vermeer |
5. One and Two-point Perspective
All I can say is hit the books. Here is a website on this subject that is fascinating and T.M.I.
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| Canaletto |
An advanced perspectival technique is to determine how far the viewer’s eye is from your painting, and to then calculate how quickly things recede into space. Here’s a subtle case in which the artist William Bailey uses a very quick speed of spacial recession to make the viewer feel pushed far away from the picture plane. Our eyes are tricked into thinking these objects are on a narrow shelf, but we also know that each of these overlapping jars must be several inches in diameter. If our ‘eye’ was close to this still-life, the top lines and the bottom lines of the vases would not both be so straight and parallel to each other. This is indeed a painting of a still life as viewed from across a room, and that is why the space seems so shallow and flattened in some ways.
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| Bailey |
Yours very truly,
Hilary Harkness