art world

On Your Radar: Highlights From the Art World

Sandra Bertrand

Recognition for some is like being in the center of a floodlight, instantaneous and often too bright to withstand for long. For others, fame can feel like a lucky penny, found in the sidewalk crack after a long rest. For artist Faith Ringgold, there was no rest. If she was under the radar for many, she kept creating, drawing from personal autobiography and collective histories to both document her life and to illustrate the struggles for social justice and equity. 

Meet Annika Connor, the Art World’s ‘Socialite Realist’

Kristin Sancken

A studio visit with Connor is an experience in itself. In lieu of a stuffy warehouse studio in Bushwick, the artist chose to work from her bright and cheery Dumbo loft. The walls are covered salon style with her whimsical portraits of ballet dancers, ruminating women, kissing couples, decadent interiors and stylized landscapes. Upon entering, you are greeted with a warm hug, cup of spiced coffee and invited to relax as you take in the sheer complexity of Connor’s diverse body of work. 

The Brash New World of Trenton Doyle Hancock

Sandra Bertrand

If you think paying a visit to your local museum exhibit is a relatively safe endeavor, then beware.  It’s likely you have not visited the The Studio Museum of Harlem’s current exhibit,  Trenton Doyle Hancock: Skin and Bones, 20 Years of Drawing.  Chronicling the evolution of his comical, often nightmarish universe, it’s a show that may alternately delight and repel but guaranteed, one you will not soon forget.   

The Flux Art Fair –Harlem’s Second Renaissance

Sandra Bertrand

Fair founder Leanne Stella sees the Fair’s mission as “a way to showcase artists that underscore the cultural zeitgeist that is Harlem.”  Launched in May to coincide with the internationally recognized Frieze art fair, it embraces a unique criteria—the 21st century artist as a nomad, a creator whose nationality, ethnicity, gender or religion is combined with a global consciousness.

The Cool and Capricious World of Artist Josh Agle, a.k.a. Shag

Nancy Lackey Shaffer

Judy Jetson grew up and became a swinger: That’s the impression one might get the first time viewing a Shag painting. The artist Josh Agle—his nom de brosse comes from the SH in “Josh” and the “AG” in Agle—is known for his martini-clutching mod characters in swanky spaces rendered in saturated colors with a distinctive mid-century style. Lithe ladies in bobs and beehives and their cool-cat men lounge on boxy sofas and egg chairs, or sip tropical drinks in bars next to zombies and skeletons while bongo drummers and guitarists play on. 

Young Prodigy Autumn De Forest Sells Six-Figure Paintings to Major Collectors

Autumn De Forest

At the young age of 12, the child prodigy has commissioned six-figure works of art and has garnered national and international acclaim for her colorful tributes to Marilyn Monroe.  Her artistic style has been compared to iconic abstract painters including Andy Warhol, Jackson Pollock and the Picasso. Her exhibitions have defined her as one of the most accomplished and recognized prodigies of our time.  Her original masterpieces have sold for tens of thousands of dollars, and have been acquired by several major art collectors.

Subscribe to RSS - art world