Learn the story behind the little known printmaker being credited for influencing urban crime drama popularized by 1930s film noir, with his sobering etchings. Read More +
Drama unfolds in Martin Lewis etchings
Author Archives: Mary Manion
Art Markets: Alexander Calder contrives art in motion
Innovative sculpture Alexander Calder fuses engineering and art to devise history-making sculptures and inspire the 20th century avant-garde art movement. Read More +
Business booming for the Warhol brand
For Andy Warhol, art and business were separated only by a hyphen. In his 1975 book, “The Philosophy of Andy Warhol: From A to B & Back Again,” the artist speculated that art was a business, and that business was art. He later added, “Good business was the best art.” Read More +
Art Markets: Nagel beauties define 1980s popular culture
Think about the 1980s and among the first images that will come to mind for many of us are the illustrations of Patrick Nagel. The hard-edged geometry of his female subjects practically shout “Duran Duran!” Read More +
Painter Fernand Leger and the logic of Modernism
Painter Fernand Leger made his mark alongside the first cubists – Picasso, Braque and Gris – in canvases that more or less banished nature from the scene. However, few Cubists pursued the logic of Modernism more aggressively than Leger. See why his works now sell for more than $13 million to art investors worldwide. Read More +
Vintage San Francisco rock concert posters remain a unique American art form
San Francisco in the ’60s brings thoughts of hippies and psychedelic rock, but the counterculture manifested itself in all the arts. Some of the rare 45 R.P.M. recordings from San Francisco bands have become valuable, but for collectors of the era’s artifacts, the greatest prizes are often original copies of the posters that promoted concerts in the Bay Area’s ballrooms and clubs. The best of those posters are magnificent examples of 20th century art and design and collectors are paying premium prices to own a slice of this era of American pop culture. Read More +
Art Markets: Alfred Cheney Johnston photographs defined stardom and the Ziegfeld Follies
Before movies and Hollywood, there was the theater and Broadway. Alfred Cheney Johnston (1884-1971), a young artist with an interest in the beauty of the female form, found his calling in the excitement of the enormously successful Ziegfeld Follies. Read More +
Hannes Bok: The fantasy artist who inspired Ray Bradbury
The covers of popular science fiction and horror pulps of the 1930s and ’40s were meant to leap at the eye from their perches in dime store magazine racks; few of the artists working in this field have hung on to the attention of aficionados as much as Hannes Bok. Read More +
Today’s artists are still being inspired by Hugo Brehme photography
Mexican artists may have been introduced to modernity through photography, and one of the foremost Mexican photographers of the early 20th century, Hugo Brehme (1882-1954), has been cited as an influence on the country’s best known artist from the period, Diego Rivera. Brehme was a German immigrant imbued with the European Romantic tradition, which sought the sublime essence of nature and reveled in the beauty of ancient ruins. Read More +
The paintings of Red Arrow, Wisconsin’s Clarence Boyd Monegar, growing in popularity
Artist Clarence Boyce Monegar is one of Wisconsin’s most beloved painters, executing landscape commissions for professionals and institutions. Monegar’s watercolors could often be found in doctor’s offices and bank lobbies. Since his death in 1968, his work has only increased in value and interest in his paintings has surfaced as far away as California. Read More +