14 Dec

Posted at 14:05h in Blog

I'm rereading Somerset Maugham's The Moon and Sixpence and am struck by the scene in which the narrator begs Charles Strickland to explain himself. Why has the stockbroker abandoned his wife and children for la vie de bohème? "Do you mean to say you didn't leave your...

12 Dec

Posted at 12:22h in Blog

Though a living cannot be made from art, art makes life worth living. — John Sloan John Sloan was starving when he said what he said, so you have to forgive him. It is possible to make a living from art—and a decent one, at that. I...

05 Dec

Posted at 00:01h in Blog

Realist painter Robert Henri called the communion of connoisseurs "The Brotherhood." The Thought Police would insist we re-label that "mystical bond," but let's allow Henri to slide. What he had to say is too important to get hung up over one Victorian-era word. According to Henri, The...

18 Nov

Posted at 12:38h in Blog

Twenty years ago, I attended a lecture by the renowned architect Frank Gehry. Meek and plain-speaking—like most Canadians—Gehry described his signature design process: "First, you get the building  right. Then, you make it weird." Gehry meant a building must be structurally sound and functional first; a Gehry...

13 Nov

Posted at 12:45h in Blog

Art speaks to everyone, but some people don't listen. ― C. Vallo I'm a fortunate son. As a kid, living only eight miles outside Manhattan, I had the chance early in life to experience art in a global art center—indeed, the global art center in the day. My parents many...

28 Jul

Posted at 09:46h in Blog

According to the art dealers at New York's Agora Gallery, one of the best ways to establish the personality of a room is by decorating its walls with art. While furniture stores and big-box retailers sell mass-produced wall decorations, what are you really getting at these...