Alfred Morang’s life ended with a fire. It was a frigid January evening in 1958, and Morang was up late at Claude’s Tavern. The saloon was on Canyon Road’s 600 block. Its owner Claude was a burly woman known for ejecting unruly patrons by slinging them over her shoulder. She presided over a wild scene: legend has it someone once rode a horse straight through the bar.

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Rebecca Salsbury James, Born in London in 1891, was the daughter of American parents who were performers touring with the Buffalo Bill Wild West Show. In 1902, she returned to New York, and later became involved with the avant-garde art scene upon meeting her first husband, the photographer Paul Strand. James was a self-taught painter, but was surrounded by artists in the Stieglitz circle. She was close friends with Marsden Hartley and Georgia O’Keeffe, both of whom were influences on her work and supportive of her career.

She had a strong connection to Taos, New Mexico. Rebecca Salsbury James first traveled to Taos with Strand in 1926, and returned in 1929 alongside O’Keeffe, staying with Mabel Dodge Luhan. While in Luhan’s company, James befriended Dorothy Brett and Frieda Lawrence. Mabel Dodge Luhan, was a wealthy patron of the arts,  and was instrumental in building the artistic community in Taos. Continue reading “Rebecca Salsbury James”

Welcome to Issue 2 of “A Portrait of the Artist”, a series of interviews and photographic portraits inspired by the paintings of Agnolo Bronzino, (1503-1572) an Italian Mannerist painter in the court of the Medici.

This is a project that started in NYC, sprung from my work shooting portraits in the arts and design world.

Willy Bo Richardson paints large scale canvases in vertical fluid strokes, using a non-linear approach. He experiments with this approach by working with multiple canvases at one time. Working in large groups allows Richardson to explore new compositional ideas while continually being spontaneous.

Willy Bo Richardson

Willy Richardson’s luminous body of work is a stellar example of setting parameters, which, instead of being a confine, allows him to discover the freedom and spontaneity that can occur within a constant. He applies paint vertically only. It’s like a language that way, and what we read is the entire painting as a finished work. Is it a word, a short story or an entire novel?

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The sensual and autobiographical qualities of the house Mexican architect Luis Barragán built for himself are rarely found in today’s buildings, says Aaron Betsky.

If you are going to make real architecture today it better be damn real. In a world of instant images whose truth you can never ascertain, delicate structures just won’t do. You need something that will convince and persuade, stand and deliver.

While you can make such forms by engaging in all kinds of acrobatics (cantilevers and off-kilter, stacked boxes), or by making super clean and empty boxes for super thin and the empty-brained, you can also achieve a sense of here- and now-ness by heightening the effect of every element, every detail, and every surface to the point that the building stands as refutation of the evanescence of our society.

But how? A recent visit to see Luis Barragán’s House and Studio in Mexico City, Casa Barragán, reminded me of the power of pieces over whole, effect over means, and the beauty of what Robert Venturi called “the difficult whole”. It also made me realise that I can think of no single architect working today who is capable of such architecture. Does that mean it cannot be done? I certainly hope not. Continue reading “No Architect Today is Capable of Buildings Like Luis Barragán’s”

New Mexico’s own self described amateur art historian interviews Eric Fishl – wonderful personal conversation.

https://soundcloud.com/user-62333923-503687634/eric-fischl

Eric Fischl is an internationally acclaimed American painter and sculptor. His artwork is represented in many distinguished museums throughout the world and has been featured in over one thousand publications. His extraordinary achievements throughout his career have made him one of the most influential figurative painters of the late 20th and early 21st centuries.