NEW YORK—There’s a group of artists who most of the general public has yet to know exist. These
are highly skilled painters, sculptors, and draftsmen trained in
ateliers or academies who are not embarrassed to utter the word
“beautiful” at a time when that word is generally scorned by the
contemporary art establishment. You’ll hardly ever see their works in
major museums or at major galleries for longer than a short stint. Most
of their works are whisked away by private collectors or are sitting in
their studios, waiting to be discovered.
These artists value quality over quantity, sincerity over cynicism,
intrinsic value over marketing hype, and the Western tradition of fine
art over the avant garde fixation on newness. In an ironic twist of
history, these traditional artists are perhaps the most radical and
marginalized group of artists living today. And yet their numbers are
growing.
Mostly awkward or humble when they try to describe their own work,
they don’t fit into any radical stereotype. Suspicious of labels, they
don’t know what to call themselves because they are too immersed in
creating visual art to be able to think about words. They have decided
to continue the Western tradition of art that has a reverence for
mastery and skill and to learn the fundamentals of a visual language
that developed over 700 years.
Jo van Gogh
Untitled, 2015, by Will St. John. Oil on canvas, 14 inches by 17 inches. (Courtesy of Will St. John)
“I was looking at Titian and Velazquez because I was letting myself
get pulled along by my own desire for excellence, for mastery, which is
naturally a human thing,” said Jacob Collins, during an interview at his studio. He’s the founder of the Grand Central Atelier.
This resurgence is happening now after more than one hundred years of
deskilling that led to the deterioration of visual art standards, which
started when all of the “-isms” arose, such as modernism,
postmodernism, and so forth.
“Banjo,” 2012, by Jacob Collins. Oil on canvas, 26 inches by 50 inches. (Courtesy of Jacob Collins)
Artists today who paint representationally, or realistically, are
then put in the awkward position of having to distinguish themselves
from those whose works need written explanations for people to
understand them. They shouldn’t have to call themselves anything other
than perhaps simply artists. “In Florence, one did not call oneself an
artist, but a painter; and when one earned the respect of others, … one
was given the title ‘maestro.’ These things made us feel that painting
was a noble profession, deeply rooted in craft, culture, and community,”
wrote Daniel Graves, founder of The Florence Academy of Art.
Beyond the Material
“Much of contemporary culture has become very exploitative. Our
culture has almost become embarrassed by the idea of the sacred—not in a
religious sense, but in the sense that something can be meaningful,
that the experiences we represent in works of art can be meaningful in a
real way,” said Jordan Sokol, the artist and director of The Florence Academy of Art—U.S. in Jersey City, New Jersey.
These artists experience the world deeply. When they represent the
world visually, instead of allowing random impulses to overtake them,
they create consciously. They observe nature acutely, exercise their
imaginations, and fine-tune their visual perceptions. They represent
their way of understanding our chaotic world in the most beautiful and
sincere way they can—with a level of skill that we have not seen in
decades.
Justin Wood paints a still life in his studio space at Grand Central Atelier, on March 7, 2016. (Samira Bouaou/Epoch Times)
You know you are looking at one of their pieces when you can’t take
your eyes away from it. You are left feeling uplifted and awestruck.
You are relieved and delighted because this feeling is what you expect
to gain from art.
This art is not a distraction, but deepens our appreciation for simply being alive.
These artists are not only impressive because of their technical
skill but because they are infused with a vitality that defies words.
It’s the kind of art that does not need words to justify it.
“Penelope,” 2012, by Jacob Collins. Oil on canvas, 28 inches by 44 inches. (Courtesy of Jacob Collins)
“Light Streams,” 2016, by Joseph McGurl. Oil on canvas, 30 inches by 40 inches. (Courtesy of Joseph McGurl)
“Jug and Lemon,” 2015, by Justin Wood. Oil on canvas on board, 14 inches by 11 inches. (Courtesy of Justin Wood)
“St. Jerome Study,” 2014, by Colleen Barry. Brown pencil on toned paper, 22 inches by 30 inches. (Courtesy of Colleen Barry)
“A Study of Peonies,” 2016, by Katie G. Whipple. Oil on prepared paper, 11 inches by 20 inches. (Courtesy of Katie G. Whipple)
“Rinthy’s Pitcher,” by Edmond Rochat. Oil on canvas, 17 inches by 17
inches. displayed at the Consecrated Reality art exhibit at The Florence
Academy of Art–U.S., in Jersey City, NJ, on May 1, 2016. (Courtesy of
Edmond Rochat)
“Homework,” 2015, by Gregory Mortenson. Oil on linen, 36 inches by 28 inches. (Courtesy of Gregory Mortenson)
“Mary Jane Ward,” 2015, by Colleen Barry. Oil on wood, 9 inches by 12
inches. Displayed at the Consecrated Reality art exhibit at The Florence
Academy of Art–U.S., in Jersey City, NJ, on May 1, 2016. (Courtesy of
Colleen Barry)
Persistence, by Sabin Howard. Cast bronze. (Courtesy of Sabin Howard)
“Ideally, if the artist invented a world and inhabited it, then the
person looking at the painting might be able to go into that world and
feel something. If there was a reverie in its invention, then
conceivably there would be a reverie in your appreciation of it,”
Collins said.
This is a radical approach to art today, expressing a yearning for
beauty at a time when apparently anything—including extremely ugly
things—can pass for contemporary art, once it is propped up and marketed
as such.
“It would be problematic for a very high-level curator of
contemporary art to try to exhibit me,” said Collins, at the opening of a
recent exhibition at Eleventh Street Arts
gallery. “I think they would be essentially repudiating a hundred years
of ideology. … They would have to be some kind of genius to be able to
engage all of the flack that they would get. They would have to have
brass balls.”
Artists Dale Zinkowski (L), Patrick Byrnes (R), and founder of Grand
Central Atelier Jacob Collins (C) look at artwork at the opening of the
Wrap Me Up: Winter Small Works show at Eleventh Street Arts gallery in
Long Island City, New York, on Nov. 17, 2016. (Samira Bouaou/Epoch
Times)
“There’s a stigma associated with the art that we do. Many people see
what we are doing as not culturally significant,” said Sokol. He then
pointed out that it is impossible for any artist to create outside of
their time period, just as it would be impossible for anybody to jump
out of their skin.
“Eddie,” 2016 by Jordan Sokol. Oil on panel, 13 inches by 12 inches. (Courtesy of Jordan Sokol)
He was referring to the current exhibition, “Drawn to Life” at The Florence Academy of Art–U.S.
gallery, showing 14 academic figure drawings from the 19th and
20th centuries (through May 5). The academy students have the
opportunity to copy the works as part of their education.
“When I look back in time, I can tell the difference between a
drawing that’s done in the 1950s, in the 1920s, in the 1890s, in the
1860s, and I don’t think that was necessarily intended by the artists,”
Sokol said. “They weren’t saying to themselves, ‘We need to draw our
time.’ There is a technical language among good representational
painters now; you can tell right away that it’s contemporary.”
A student, Mary Ross, copies a drawing displayed in the Drawn to Life
exhibit at the Florence Academy of Art-U.S. in Jersey City, N. J., on
Feb. 28, 2017. (Samira Bouaou/Epoch Times)
Just by the sheer fact that these artists are creating such highly
skilled paintings with such rigor, infusing it with a sanctity and
respect for life, says something about our time. No matter how
marginalized they may be, what they choose to paint and how they paint
it says something about our time. The increasing number of ateliers
around the country and abroad, and the increasing number of technical
books on drawing, painting, and studio practice being published in
recent years (for example, by Juliette Aristides, Jon de Martin, and Robert Zeller), says something about our time.
21st-Century Ateliers
Certain people have always felt the need to visually represent what
they see realistically. This has remained true, since even before the
Lascaux cave paintings were made 17,000 years ago. Despite the
deskilling in art education and the contemporary art trends exalted by
the art establishment in recent decades, some artists have longed to
find someone who could teach them how to draw, paint, and sculpt as
rigorously as the old masters did. Apart from some illustration schools,
many fine art schools in colleges barely teach the fundamentals of
drawing and painting—neglecting composition, perspective, rendering of
lights and darks, and so forth.
“When I was 18, as far as I knew there wasn’t anywhere I could go
where anyone could teach me what I really wanted to learn. So I had
accepted a pretty widespread myth, which was that anyone who knew how to
do this had evaporated at the same moment right after 1913, and that
anyone who wanted to learn how to do it again was going to have to teach
themselves. I had heard that a lot,” Collins said.
Collins did spend a long time teaching himself, copying drawings by
the greats, like Leonardo Da Vinci, Michelangelo, and Rembrandt.
Eventually, he found two of his main teachers, Tony Ryder and Ted Seth Jacobs, who taught at The Art Students League of New York.
“There was a specific something that Ted and Tony were talking about
in drawing and painting in a certain way. More than a method, it really
became a lifeline in the sense of connecting with other people who were
sharing those values,” Collins said. He had connected with a lineage,
like a DNA chain.
Jacobs’s teacher was Frank Reilly, whose teacher was George Bridgman,
who was taught by Jean-Léon Gérôme, who can be traced back to J.A.D.
Ingres and Jacques-Louis David, whose lineage could be roughly traced
back to Andrea del Sarto, a contemporary of Michelangelo.
Collins taught classes at The New York Academy of Art, the National Academy, and later in his own atelier, housed first in his brownstone studio, later on Water Street, and is now at Grand Central Atelier in Queens.
Students at the Grand Central Atelier in Queens, New York, on March 6, 2017. (Samira Bouaou/Epoch Times)
“I started to find a couple of people and then even more people. Then
in one way and another it led to the world that I’m in now, where I’m
surrounded by a lot of different friends and fellow artists and peers
and students who are in the process of constituting an alternative art
scene. It’s very small. It doesn’t have a lot of patronage, and it
doesn’t have a lot of press, but it is something,” Collins said.
In parallel, in a somewhat similar fashion but on a larger scale, the
founder of The Florence Academy of Art, Daniel Graves, went for many
years searching for teachers, making many sacrifices, and scratching a
living out of selling his etchings and paintings in Florence. Along with
like-minded artists, he worked hard uncovering and piecing together a
neglected tradition. They also created an ever-evolving curriculum
rooted in the academic Beaux Arts Academy, but with a flexibility that
gives students the freedom to find their own stylistic path.
His training has a direct path back to the French Academy from
Richard F. Lack, who was taught by R. H. Ives Gammell, who was taught by
William McGregor Paxton, who studied with Jean-Léon Gérôme, the leader
of the Ecole des Baux-Arts in Paris in the late 1800s.
Founder of The Florence Academy of Art Daniel Graves (R) talks about a
painting with artist Edward Minoff at the opening of the Consecrated
Reality art exhibit, in the gallery of The Florence Academy of Art-U.S.
branch, on May 1, 2016. (Milene Fernandez/Epoch Times)
Founder of The Florence Academy of Art Daniel Graves (R) talks about a
painting with artist Edward Minoff at the opening of the Consecrated
Reality exhibit at The Florence Academy of Art-U.S. branch, on May 1,
2016. (Milene Fernandez/Epoch Times)
Graves started teaching a handful of students in the gardens of the
Corsini family estate in 1991 in Florence. Now The Florence Academy of
Art has three campuses (in Florence, Sweden, and the United States) with
about 200 students from 40 countries.
Before ateliers like The Florence Academy, Grand Central Atelier, The Angel Academy, Atelier Canova,
and all of the others that mushroomed mostly in the United States and
Europe, places like the National Academy of Design and The Art Students
League had always provided an avenue for representational artists,
including highly skilled artists, to teach a wide variety of styles in
an atelier-type setting.
“I went to a pretty good school, they taught some drawing. It wasn’t
completely lacking, but it certainly wasn’t to the degree that The
Florence Academy teaches,” said Judith Kudlow, an artist who runs the NYK Academy
at Willow Avenue Atelier in the Bronx. She had a career in government
and politics in Washington before finally pursuing her passion to become
an artist when she moved to New York in 1988. She studied with
prominent teachers at most of the major art schools in the city,
including The Art Students League of New York, the National Academy of
Design, and the New York Academy of Art.
Artists Brendan Johnson (L) and Jacob Collins, founder of Grand Central
Atelier in Queens, New York, on March 7, 2016. (Samira Bouaou/Epoch
Times)
“Jacob Collins was the first teacher who taught me a step by step
procedure. It was mind-blowing. I thought: ‘Why didn’t we have this
before? Every other discipline has a procedure,'” Kudlow said. “Jacob
Collins and Daniel Graves are like the founding fathers [of the atelier
resurgence]. More than anyone else I can think about, I would give those
two most of the credit because they did the work.”
Kudlow explained the simplicity of how the ateliers worked so effectively,
which started as far back as the Middle Ages. A student would either
select or be selected by a teacher, a maestro. It is like an
apprenticeship in which the student would assist the teacher, for
example, mixing paint, cleaning the studio, or running errands, and so
on.
Judith Kudlow, artist and director of NYK Academy at Willow Avenue
Atelier in the Bronx, N.Y., on Feb. 23, 2017. (Samira Bouaou/Epoch
Times)
Judith Kudlow, artist and founder of Willow Avenue Atelier, teaches a
student in the Bronx, N.Y., on Feb. 23, 2017. (Samira Bouaou/Epoch
Times)
Kudlow set up the common work area at Willow Avenue Atelier right in
the center of the studio space. “When I am here, everybody sees what I
am doing,” she said. For example, her students witness her preparing her
work for a show, talking to gallery owners, talking about pricing,
packing her paintings for shipment, among other things. Besides learning
from her lessons, they learn the business of art and how to deal with
common trials and tribulations artists usually face during their
creative process.
“At my atelier, I take them from the very beginning, sharpening their
pencils, all the way through painting, making up their own
compositions,” she said. She also gives students the option to continue
in what she calls her master’s program, providing students with a studio
space and helping them transition into becoming independent artists.
Academic Director Jordan Sokol (L) of The Florence Academy of Art-U.S.
in Jersey City, New Jersey, on July 14, 2016. (Samira Bouaou/Epoch
Times)
“When I was studying in Florence, teachers had their studios inside
the school too. That’s one of the most inspiring things to see: to have
teachers who are in their 60s and 70s who still show up in the morning,
earlier than the students do, and they are in their studios every day,
painting,” Sokol said.
Staying True
Ateliers also commonly train their students not only to become
artists but also to teach—not only to supplement income, but also to
ensure the tradition will continue.
Two artists who studied with Collins, Tony Curanaj and Edward Minoff, ask all their guest artists a standard question in their podcast “Suggested Donation”
that goes something like: How did you find a teacher with whom you
could really connect, and who could really teach you skills? The story
repeats itself, with variations to a similar theme. Generally, the older
the artist, the harder it was for them to find a teacher. For example, Burton Silverman,
88, said he essentially had to teach himself by studying old master
paintings in museums. Younger artists today have a relatively easier
journey to finding an atelier.
“Lyudmer Seascape,” 2015 by Edward Minoff. Oil on linen on panel, 24 inches by 60 inches. (Courtesy of Edward Minoff)
The Art Renewal Center (ARC),
an umbrella nonprofit organization dedicated to promoting standards of
excellence in the visual arts, has also been a great resource for
representational artists seeking atelier training. When it was founded
in 2000, ARC had approved 14 ateliers, which has risen to 70 today, with 40 more waiting approval.
There’s a general concern that while there are more highly skilled
artists around now than, say, about 10 years ago, there are fewer
galleries representing them and not much press writing about them.
Another concern is that the public is unaware of this art or lacks the
sense of fine connoisseurship needed to demand high-quality work.
Collins places responsibility mostly on artists themselves. “I don’t
think there are enough artists doing this art really well, including
myself; I’m not doing it well enough. I will do what I think is my best.
“Everybody will keep on trying, but there has to be a nexus between
artists who want to do something real and a large culture that wants
something real,” he said, “and until that patronage makes that bridge,
it’s artists kind of just entertaining themselves selling a picture here
and there. We are not going to get something marvelous until there is
an expression of demand, and that’s what patronage does.”
“Oblivion” by Tony Curanaj, 2015. Oil on linen, 90 inches by 65 inches. (Courtesy of Joshua Liner Gallery)
Several galleries that showed realist art shut down after the
economic downturn in 2008. In Chelsea, in the epicenter of art galleries
in New York City, there is only one gallery that shows realist artwork
exclusively, Gallery Henoch. The owner, George Henoch Shechtman, said he
sells paintings in the range of $2,000 to $250,000. In contrast, a top
selling gallery like Gagosian that represents abstract artists sells
works for $3 million to $10 million, he added. The difference is
astounding.
“I have no resentment for any of those big galleries. They are works
of art themselves, with their PR and show exhibitions and their
collector base that they have. I admire them,” said Shechtman, who has
been running Gallery Henoch for over 5o years.
Kudlow said she finds that difference in pricing between abstract and
realist art in general hard to explain. “The answer is that somebody
marketed the hell out of it,” she said, adding that she doesn’t see
aggressive marketing as the solution for atelier-trained artists.
“We wouldn’t buy into it, we wouldn’t. We talk about it and ask
ourselves how far would we go, how close to that edge, and none of us
comes up with any real answers. But if you just listen to the
conversation, you hear a group of people who are making sacrifices to do
something beautiful, and they don’t want to turn it into something
ugly,” said Kudlow, speaking for a group of artists who exalt the beauty
in this seemingly chaotic world.
“Reverie,” 2016 by Amaya Gurpide. Graphite, white chalk, black conte,
gauche on hand toned paper, 17 inches by 17 inches. (Courtesy of Amaya
Gurpide)
Beauty holds the substance that allows us access to the nourishment we enjoy in the experience of art.
— Daniel Graves, Founder of The Florence Academy of Art
Students at the Grand Central Atelier in Queens, New York, on March 6, 2017. (Samira Bouaou/Epoch Times)Correction: In a previous version of this article, the price
range of works sold at Gallery Henoch quoted the most common sales and
not the full range. Gallery Henoch sells works up to $250,000. Epoch
Times regrets the error.
