Bronze: The History and Development of a Medium →

Rosetta "The Lion" Bronze 7" x 11.5" x 5.5" Edition of 100

Tin-based bronze came into existence late in the third millennium B.C. Bronze is a metal alloy that consists mainly of copper though other elements such as tin are added along with aluminium, phosphorus, and manganese. It is characterized by its hardness, but was known to be brittle. Its use became so widespread that the period of antiquity known as the Bronze Age was named for this metal alloy, a period of time particularly known for its skilled metalwork. Before bronze copper was the metal of choice, but the addition of tin gave way to the much stronger new metal. 

Bronze was used to make weapons, tools, and armor, but it was also used extensively in the creation of art; and indeed, even functional bronze items were often treated to artistically rendered decoration. The earliest tin-bronzes (an earlier bronze was composed with arsenic) originated in Susa and other nearby cities of Mesopotamia. Trade helped nurture the production of bronze since copper and tin ores were seldom found in the same areas.  

As an artistic medium, bronze was extensively used by artists and artisans. Bronze was famously employed in sculpture. An early example of bronze statuary comes from India’s Chola Empire in Tamil Nadu. Africa’s Kingdom of Benin famously produced bronze heads. The Greeks, Egyptians, and Chinese of antiquity are also revered for their sculptures as well as other bronze art works. The use of bronze became widespread and the Bronze Age chiefly lasted until 1200 B.C. Many cultures influenced bronze casting with advancements during this period which also increased bronze usage for artistic purposes. 

Ancient bronze art is known for its great beauty. Many bronze artifacts were once used ceremonially especially in places like China. One early example of a Chinese bronze is a vessel that may have been created as early as 722 B.C. and depicts a pattern of interconnecting dragons. Other beautiful and intricately carved bronze vessels are some of antiquity’s best known works of art. As a medium, bronze allowed for great detail and sophisticated artistry. 

Although iron eventually supplanted bronze in many industries, bronze remained an important art medium. In fact, some of the most famous bronze art works date to the artist Rodin who lived from 1840 to 1917. While the ancients knew of a wax process used to mold bronze, it has been lost to time, but the production of bronze art works has continued into the present making the most of new technologies. Contemporary artists continue to produce bronze objects of art in all manner of artistic styles. 
 

Studio Visit: Deborah Hill

Laughing Crow Interior

August at studio and boxer adoption

Molly and Moose at the studio 

The artist is from the Appalachian foothills of Alabama, she has been in Texas since 1992 and currently maintains a studio in Cypress, Texas. 

To see more of her work visit the gallery or check her website here

Introduction to the Artistic Style of Conceptual Art →

Image via Google

Beginning in the 1960s, conceptual art was described as anti-establishment. First, picture the commercial images of Marilyn Monroe popularized by Andy Warhol. Realize that some artists were opposed to the concept of getting rich through commercial art sales. Conceptual artists wanted to make the masses think instead of giving them plastic art to consume. 

As a movement, conceptual art creates disharmony in society, jarring people out of their traditional understanding of art. According to the “Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy,” “Conceptual art, it seems, is something that we either love or hate.” A piece of conceptual art challenges the viewer to defend the work as a true piece of art instead of something masquerading as art. Thinking about the artist’s deeper meaning in a conceptual art piece helps the viewer understand an important statement about society.  

George Brecht (1926-2008) was the son of a flutist for the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra. In 1961, Brecht performed his conceptual art piece entitled “Incidental Music.” This performance art can only be described as Brecht stacking up toy blocks inside a grand piano. In his obituary, George Brecht was described as a “provocateur” by the “New York Times.” He belonged to an international collection of artists called the Fluxus, mainly conceptual artists like him. Brecht died at the age of 82. 

A different consideration is the artist Joseph Kosuth (b. 1945). His composition, “One and Three Chairs” (1965) consisted of a plain, beige wood chair sitting next to a life-sized photograph (black and white) of a wood chair. Taken out of historical context, “One and Three Chairs” does not appear to be art at all. However, taking something as plain as a chair captured on photo paper and positioning it next to a real chair suggests simplicity or absurdity depending on your point-of-view.  

The peak of conceptual art occurred from 1966 to 1972. Artists reacted to the art critic, Clement Greenberg’s narrow definition of Formalism. According to Honour and Fleming (2005), Greenberg “saw the art object as being essentially self-contained and self-sufficient, with its own rules, its own order, its own materials; independent of its maker, of its audience; and of the world in general.” 

Even the artist, Marcel Duchamp, a young friend of Dadaism and Surrealism decades earlier, created a piece of conceptual art in the final twenty years of his life – “Given: 1. The Waterfall 2. The Illuminating Gas.” This piece included part of a nude woman made of leather and other pieces of found art. The viewer had to look through a peephole to see this shockingly erotic composition. In “Given” (1968), Duchamp bridged the thirty-year chasm between Surrealism and conceptual art. While conceptual art occurred in the U.S. in the context of civil rights, the same movement abroad bucked all of the traditional notions of the art establishment.

Is Having Your Art Appraised a Good Idea? →

ArtBusiness.com is a consumer resource website for people who own art, people who create art (aka artists), fine arts professionals, and anyone else with a love of or interest in art. The site receives thousands of requests for art price information annually and provides all manner of appraisal services so people can intelligently buy, sell, trade, insure, donate, value for legal purposes, or otherwise transact in original works of art. The following art price information is for each and every one of you who wonders whether you can effectively and accurately evaluate art prices with little or no knowledge of the inner workings of the art market... or whether under certain circumstances, art appraisers, consultants or advisors are actually worth paying for.

To begin with, the art business is totally unregulated. Anyone can call themselves an art dealer, anyone can call themselves an artist, anyone can open an art gallery, anyone can sell whatever they feel like selling and call it art, and anyone can price whatever they call art however they please. As long as they don't engage in fraud or misrepresentation and operate within the law, they can arbitrarily price a work of art at $1000, $10000 or even $100,000-- whatever they feel like-- and regardless of whether the art would appraise for anywhere near those amounts. Believe it; it's true. On the upside, the overwhelming majority of art dealers, galleries and artists price their art fairly-- but not always. And that's why we have art appraisers and advisors-- professionals skilled at accurately evaluating art, determining fair market values, and making sure you have the most up-to-date understandable price information possible.

Let's say you either inherit or have owned art for years and decide to sell. Without current appraisals, you make an easy target for unscrupulous buyers. You have no idea what your art is worth; they do. You can sell way too cheaply without any idea you're doing so, and the bad news is you have little or no recourse for recouping your losses. Appraisers and consultants protect you from that happening.

Think you can appraise art yourself? Think again. Figuring out how much art is worth and, based on those values, whether to buy, sell, trade, insure or donate-- those are by no means easy tasks for people who are unfamiliar with how the art business works, including buyers, bidders, donors, collectors or inheritors... and even artists. The job of qualified appraisers and advisors is to protect anyone who has questions about art values by providing the prices they need according to the situations they're in, in order for them to make informed intelligent decisions. 

Art appraisers evaluate art prices in much the same way that stock brokers evaluate stock prices or real estate brokers evaluate home prices. A qualified art appraiser studies a variety of characteristics of a work of art and the market for that art before valuing it. A typical evaluation includes assessing the artist's exhibition history and career accomplishments, studying and analyzing the artist's recent auction and gallery sales histories, and examining particulars related to the work of art itself including it's size, subject matter, detail, quality of craftsmanship, ownership history, age, condition, and so on. We're talking technical here.

If you're not experienced at pricing art, contact an appraiser or advisor anytime you have questions about value. This is no different than consulting a doctor when you have a medical question or an attorney when you have a legal question. Paying a few dollars for accurate art price information up front can easily save you hundreds and often thousands of dollars later. Believe me-- it's true. Here are some additional pointers on when and how to use appraisers in "art and money" situations.

** If you own original art and you've never had it appraised or you lack current price information, have an appraiser value it.

** Avoid getting appraisals from the people who sold you the art. A gallery that sells you a work of art, for example, has an obvious conflict of interest, and a tendency to appraise high in order to make that art, its artist, and their gallery look good.

** Avoid free appraisals. Free appraisals are rarely free. Please-- for your own good-- avoid free art appraisals. 

** Use a qualified art appraiser to value your art. Don't use your friend who's an artist or your aunt who has a booth at the local antique mall. 

** Update appraisals every three to five years, or before changing the disposition or ownership of any work of art that you own. Art prices fluctuate over time.

** Use art price guides, auction records, online art prices or art price databases and other art price references for entertainment purposes only. Unless you know how to analyze and extrapolate their data, leave those jobs to the pros. 

** Never accept spontaneous or unsolicited cash offers from anyone to buy art that you own. These kinds of offers are usually low. Get appraisals first. 

** If you're not an experienced collector, get an appraiser's or consultant's opinion before buying works of art from dealers or galleries that you don't know or have never done business with. 

** If you're not an experienced collector, get an appraiser's or consultant's opinion before buying art by artists whose names, artwork, or market histories you're either unclear on or not familiar with.

** Get an appraiser's or consultant's opinion no matter what kinds of art bargains sellers tell you that you're about to get.

** Unless you're an experienced auction bidder and buyer, ask an appraiser or consultant to inspect art that you're thinking about buying before you bid on it. This is especially true when buying at online auctions. Online auctions are extremely risky places to buy art.

** No matter what kind of art buying situation you find yourself in, if you're not totally 100% sure what you're doing, ask an appraiser or advisor any questions that you have about the art, artist, or circumstances surrounding the purchase beforeyou buy, not after. You'd be amazed at how many people don't ask questions until after they've spent hundreds, thousands, and even tens of thousands of dollars.

** Never give away, throw out or otherwise get divest yourself of any art that you own, no matter how bad you think it is, what you think of the person who gave it to you, what condition it's in or how unimportant you think the artist is. Always have a qualified appraiser or consultant inspect it first. 

Quote of the Day

“Life imitates art far more than art imitates life.”

— Oscar Wilde

How Small Steady Actions Move Us Forward to Our Artistic Goals →

“Do not be afraid of moving slowly.  Be only afraid of standing still.”  - Chinese Proverb

Have you ever thought about the importance of the small, steady actions you take every day toward your artistic goals?

You can’t imagine how important these really are.

Most of us have a very distorted notion of how things actually get done in this world.  We think that great accomplishment only comes from great deeds in artistic goals. 

We imagine our heroes striding toward their goal in seven-league boots–writing best-selling novels in three months, building business empires overnight, soaring to stardom out of nowhere–and this gives rise to painfully unrealistic expectations of ourselves.  And yet nothing could be further from the truth.

Great deeds are made of small, steady actions, and it is these that you must learn to value and sustain in your artistic goals.

Often you feel you’ve done nothing when you’ve actually done a lot.  That’s because what you did do seemed beneath notice–it was so small that you thought it didn’t “count.”  But it did–just as each stitch counts toward a finished dress, each brick toward a house you can live in, each mistake toward knowing how to do things right.

Directed action, no matter how small, moves toward its point.   When you change your perspective, you will start to see how small steps add up.

Jean Arp: 1886 – 1966 →

plastron et fourchette shirtfront and fork

Born on September 16, 1886 in Strasbourg (then part of Germany), Jean (Hans) Arp was a pioneer of abstract art and a founding member of the Dada movement.  After studying at the Kunstschule, Weimar from 1905 to 1907, Arp attended the Académie Julian in Paris.

In 1909, Arp moved to Switzerland where in 1911 he was a founder of and exhibited with the Moderne Bund group. One year later, he began creating collages using paper and fabric and influenced by Cubist and Futurist art. Arp then traveled to Paris and Munich where he became aquainted with Robert and Sonia Delaunay Vasily Kandinsky, Amadeo Modigliani, Pablo Picasso, and others.

In 1915, with the onset of World War I, Arp moved to Zurich, feigning mental instability to avoid military service. It is here where he met and collaborated with Sophie Taeuber, creating tapestries and collages, and whom he married in 1922.

In 1916, Arp became part of the founding group of the Zurich Dada artists. Their aim was to encourage spontaneous and chaotic creation, free from prejudice and the academic conventions that many believed were the root causes of war. For Arp, Dada represented the “reconciliation of man with nature and the integration of art into life.” At the end of the war, Arp continued his involvement with Dada promoting it in Cologne, Berlin, Hannover, and Paris.

Although Arp was committed to Dada, he also aligned himself somewhat with the Surrealists, exhibiting with the group in Paris exhibitions in the mid 1920′s. He shared their notion of unfettered creativity, spontaneity, and anti-rational position.

Arp and his wife also had close ties to Constructivist groups such as De Stijl, Cercle et carré, Art Concret and Abstraction–Création, all of which aimed to create a counterbalance to Surrealism as well as to change society for a better future.

In the early 1930′s, Arp developed the principle of the “constellation,” and used it in both his writings and artworks. While creating his reliefs, Arp would identify a theme, such as five white shapes and two smaller black ones on a white ground, and then reassemble these shapes into different configurations.

In the 1930′s, Arp began creating free-standing sculpture. Just as his reliefs were unframed, Arp’s sculptures were not mounted on a base, enabling them to simply take their place in nature. Instead of the term abstract art, he and other artists, referred to their work as Concrete Art, stating that their aim was not to reproduce, but simply to produce more directly. Arp’s goal was to concentrate on form to increase the sculpture’s domination of space and its impact on the viewer.

From the 1930′s onward, Arp also wrote and published poetry and essays. As well, he was a pioneer of  automatic writing and drawing that were important to the Surrealist movement.

With the fall of Paris in 1942, Arp fled the war for Zurich where he remained, returning to Paris in 1946. In 1949, he traveled to New York where he had a solo show at Curt Valentin’s Buchholz Gallery. In 1950, Harvard University in Cambridge, MA invited him to create a relief for their Graduate Center. In 1954, Arp was awarded the Grand Prize for Sculpture at the Venice Biennale. Retrospectives of his work were held at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, in 1958 and at the Musée National d’Art Moderne, Paris, in 1962.

Jean Arp died June 7, 1966, in Basel, Switzerland at the age of 80. His works are in major museums around the world including a large collection at the Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art of Strasbourg.

Record-breaking year for contemporary art

US artist Jeff Koons poses next to his sculpture 'Balloon Dog' during an exhibition preview at the Fondation Beyeler

Paris (AFP) - The contemporary art market, buoyed by high demand and massive growth in China, smashed through the $2-billion mark for the first time in a record-breaking 2013/14, according to new figures released on Tuesday.

In the year from July 2013, sales of contemporary art at public auctions reached $2.046 billion dollars, up 40 percent on the previous year, according to Artprice, a Paris-based organisation which keeps the world's biggest database on the contemporary art market.

This growth, despite a gloomy global economic climate, came as China pushed past America to top the world market by raking in 40 percent of auction earnings.

"As many pieces are being sold in China as in the United States, United Kingdom and France together," said Artprice in its annual report.

China now boasts sales worth $811 million compared to $752 million for the US.

Both nations held 33.7 percent of the market last year.

"Demand has increased significantly," said Artprice president and founder Thierry Ehrmann, adding that five times more works were being sold today than a decade ago.

"We have passed from 500,000 large-scale collectors after the war to 70 million art consumers, amateurs and collectors."

Thirteen pieces alone fetched more than 10 million euros ($12.8 million) each, compared with four in the previous year.

US artists Jean-Michel Basquiat, who died in 1988, Jeff Koons and Christopher Wool remain the market's biggest stars accounting for auction sales of 339 million euros.

Pop artist Koons, the subject of a major retrospective due to be held at Paris's Pompidou Centre at the end of November, currently holds the record for the most expensive work of art by a living artist ever sold at auction.

His "Balloon Dog" went under the hammer in November 2013 at Christie's in New York, for a record $58.4 million.

The rest of Artprice's top ten is made up -- in order -- of Zeng Fanzhi (China), Peter Doig (Britain), Richard Prince (US), Martin Kippenberger (Germany) who died in 1997, and three more Chinese artists -- Luo Zhongli, Chen Yifei and Zhang Xiaogang.

Zeng Fanzhi's 2001 painting "The Last Supper" was sold at auction in Hong Kong last year for $23 million.

Despite the presence of Basquiat and Kippenberger in Artprice's top rankings, the body's president and founder Thierry Ehrmann told AFP "the old adage that 'a good artist is a dead artist' was changing".

"For the first time, young artists voluntarily want to start on the second market," he said referring to auctions, as opposed to galleries, which are known in the art world as the first market.

"It's a real revolution. The two markets are in the process of merging."

Of the three top-selling contemporary artists, defined as artists born after 1945, Basquiat maintained his lead in 2013/14 with sales worth around 162 million euros while Koons and Wool clocked up 115 million euros and 61 million euros ($78 million) respectively.

Why People Buy Art

Artwork doesn’t sell itself. That is a common misperception, usually resulting in low sales volume. So, what is the magic that will cause buyers to commit?

I recently had a conversation with Ashwin Muthiah, CEO and co-founder of art website Easely about motivating buyers to make a purchase of your work.

“Quite often, making an art purchase makes people feel ‘cultured.’ They love the idea of acquiring art, and even becoming an art collector,” he says, “But intrinsic to the sale is understanding the story behind the artist and the work. Customers are not just buying something that looks good (although that’s naturally still important.) They are buying an experience, and that experience involves feeling that they understand and connect to the artist.”

“Furthermore, many times people don’t truly know what they want, and they appreciate receiving recommendations,” he adds. “We have found this to be key in driving sales. Our team of five artist/curators ensures that art on Easely is of high quality, and our artists know that their work is shown in an elegant context, unlike unfiltered sites that sell art. It’s much easier to be directed to a particular work or section on a page rather than just having to browse everything. Our curating team reviews collectors’ preferences and makes suggestions tailored to their interests.”

Being consultative is also a powerful way for artists who are selling directly to customers. After all, you are the expert on your work, and customers will appreciate your input on their selection. That conversation also indicates your interest in them, and your concern for the buyer’s wants and needs.

Is price the deciding factor when buying art? Actually, no. People who only care about price can simply buy wall décor at a discount store. However, it’s a good idea to spread your price points to appeal to a wider audience. This allows prospective customers to “buy in” and start acquiring your work at a more reasonable cost if they simply don’t have the budget to start purchasing your higher-priced art.

Then, keep those customers and build your art business by encouraging repeat sales. Those important names should stay on your list, and receive news about your new work and your events frequently.

Make the whole process of acquiring your artwork a very special event for your new purchaser by including extras that add value to the experience.

“Making buyers feel valued turns them into repeat customers,” says Muthiah. “If the experience of opening the package and seeing the artwork seems special, they are much more likely to make other purchases because they feel good about collecting your works. A letter to your new ‘collector’ with a Certificate of Authenticity, along with your artist statement, goes a long way towards making an acquisition of your art a memorable experience.”