Evan Puschak of Nerdwriter brings us another dose of art history as he explains a profound shift in Western painting traditions. The insightful “Bruegel: Birth Of A New Genre” video explains how many works made prior to the 16th century dealt with religious and mythic themes or were portraits of the elite, all commissioned by the church or wealthy patrons. Protestant reforms in the church, political revolution, and a rise in the merchant class shifted the economic makeup, culture, and values, and as generally happens, art reflected this change. Painters like Pieter Bruegel The Edler began to render scenes and people that better captured this reality, focusing on the daily lives of regular people.
You also might enjoy Pushack’s lesson on realistic impressionism. (via Kottke)
Do stories and artists like this matter to you? Become a Colossal Member today and support independent arts publishing for as little as $5 per month. The article A Brief Lesson Explains the Art Historical Shift to Painting Everyday People appeared first on Colossal.
High sales figures for artworks are driving solid investment returns for UHNWs, according to new data from Knight Frank.
The property consultancy’s Luxury Investment Index, which tracked a weighted basket of 10 luxury goods over the 12 months running up to the end of June 2023, was driven by growth in the art market. The art portion of the basket saw growth of 30 per cent.
Other luxury goods saw more modest increases, with watches and jewellery each growing by 10 per cent in value, and investments in cars and wine both rising by five per cent. Only rare whisky investments fell in the index, by 4 per cent, while investments in furniture remained flat, neither increasing or decreasing in value.
Overall, the luxury goods basket grew by seven per cent, providing ‘credible’ returns for UHNWs, the firm said.
Gains were higher than the FTSE 100 equities index, which rose by five per cent, and house prices in prime central London, which grew by only one per cent.
According to the property group, the Luxury Investments Index ‘is arguably the most comprehensive guide to the performance of luxury investments available’.
Art market activity was measured by consultancy Art Market Research (AMR)‘s All Art index, which records auction prices each month. While strong for the 12-month period, auction results from this spring suggest that growth in the market may have peaked, according to AMR’s Sebastian Duthy.
‘The auction season’s spring sales are the first measure of market confidence and recent results suggest growth is already starting to slow,’ Duthy said.
While growth in the art market topped the luxury leaderboard, the findings reflected the wider post-pandemic recovery in the art market – rather than just robust sales, according to Duthy.
According to the property consultancy’s Luxury Investments report, there is a strong association between interest in luxury collectibles, the art market and the world of property, with UHNWs eager to style their homes with vibrant art collections.
‘We love to curate art for our clients. Many will see interior design as an opportunity to start afresh and reimagine the way they emotionally connect to their surroundings,’ Richard Angel, of design firm Angel O’Donnell, said. ‘Art plays an inspiring role in that transformation.’
‘Art enlivens a space, whether it’s adding colour, texture, movement, drama, humour or all the above.’
[See also: Global art market sales reach $67.8 billion, new study shows]
Other evidence from the investment index also points to falling interest in luxury investments. While the car market grew by five per cent over the year measured, it has fallen by seven per cent so far this year – reflecting a high degree of variability over the period.
‘The performance of classic cars has been mixed,’ said Dietrich Hatlapa of Historic Automobile Group International (HAGI), which measures the performance of 50 investment-grade cars to put together its HAGI Top Index.
‘After a strong performance in 2022, when the value of the most investable classic cars rose by 25%, this year has seen the market slip into reverse gear due to macro-economic factors,’ he added.
Purchases of rare whisky bottles, which have been the strongest performer over the past 10 years in the Knight Frank index, were the only luxury asset class to see a fall, of four per cent. The results were compiled for Knight Frank by Rare Whisky 101, an intelligence and insight firm which tracks interest in fine whiskies.
‘Bottles of rare whisky have had a far more sedate time from a performance perspective over the past three years,’ said Rare Whisky 101’s Andy Simpson of industry consultant Simpson Reserved.
‘Higher value (over £5,000) bottles have re-traced recently due to a myriad of geo-political, social and economic reasons. Certain brands have still performed well, while the market leader (from a sheer volume of market perspective), Macallan, has seen particularly punishing losses with its index re-tracing almost 12% over the past twelve months,’ he concluded.
Editor’s Note: Call to Earth is a CNN editorial series committed to reporting on the environmental challenges facing our planet, together with the solutions. Rolex’s Perpetual Planet initiative has partnered with CNN to drive awareness and education around key sustainability issues and to inspire positive action.
A peckish tiger lunching on a softshell turtle, an ant snacking on honeydew, and a pair of glittery slug moth larva are just a handful of scenes depicted in the winning images from the Nature inFocus Photography Awards 2023.
The prize, based in India, recognizes both local and international photographers capturing critical moments in the natural world.
Nature and wildlife storytelling platform Nature inFocus runs the competition. “Every year, we see images that reveal new facets of our natural world while shining a light on pertinent global conservation issues,” said Rohit Varma, one of the group’s founders, in a press release.
A six-member jury composed of wildlife and environmental specialists across film, photography and business selected the winning photographs for each category from 24,000 images that were submitted by 1,500 photographers, according to Nature inFocus.
The winners were presented with their awards during a ceremony on July 29 in Bangalore.
Among the winning images is a photostory focusing on the devastation facing the intricate mangrove forests of the Godavari River in Andhra Pradesh, India.
Using a drone to capture a birds-eye view of the mangrove destruction, Srikanth Mannepuri highlighted the many risks forests face, including plastic waste, deforestation, and aquaculture – despite being a carbon sink and integral buffer against coastal erosion. Mannepuri, a wildlife conservationist, filmmaker and photographer, earned the “Photographer of the Year – Portfolio” title.
Other winning images include rarer wildlife sightings, such as a pair of agitated mountain goats locking horns in a cinematic rocky landscape. In the “Wildscape & Animals in Their Habitat” category, photographer Amit Eshel traveled to Israel’s Zin Desert to capture the two male Nubian ibexes in a heated face-off during rutting season.
According to the IUCN, the Nubian ibex is a vulnerable species – facing threats from agriculture to extreme weather.
In the “Conservation Focus” category, Jo-Anne McArthur was recognized for a haunting image depicting the scorched remains of a eucalyptus plantation following Australia’s bushfires in 2020. McArthur photographed a veterinarian searching for survivors whilst surrounded by charred trees.
Varma takes pride in the Award’s global scope.
“We are thrilled to see the growth in the number of participants and the geographical locations. It truly has become an international platform for wildlife photographers.”
It takes a lot of hard work to become a professional photographer. There are untold hours of toil to perfect the craft and lots of money spent to reach a pro level. So when you get there, how much should you be paid for a day’s work?
This is the issue raised by Roxy Facer this week who called out Vogue Polska for paying her $300 for a full day’s shoot and edit — a fee she deemed to be low.
@roxyfacer Replying to @Jesus Martinez underwhelming to say the least #editorialphotography #voguephotoshoot #fashionshoot #fashioncinematography #fashionvideography ♬ Prada Casso Edit On Soundcloud – cassö
Even for established professionals, photography can be a difficult career in which to make a living. There are few jobs and freelancing can be very insecure.
Facer, who is primarily a videographer specializing in 8mm and 16mm film, may well feel entitled to mock the $300 fee, as a job like that surely should be closer to $1,000. However, many photographers wouldn’t think twice about accepting that rate.
Sure, it’s not great, but it’s not exactly terrible either. Anyone working in editorial knows that rates have been tumbling for years. Inflation has been rising and prices are going up, but photographers are getting paid less.
This is in part due to the shifting landscape of media. Magazines and newspapers have more readers than ever before but the majority of those come in digital form and publications simply don’t receive anything like the money per reader they used to get in print.
The owners and board members of these huge companies avoid bearing the brunt of these seismic changes. Instead, the cuts are passed down onto the men and women who work tirelessly to put these publications together, e.g. photographers.
Perhaps Facer is not used to the relatively low fees offered to editorial photographers and is more accustomed to commercial fees.
I would wager that most editorial photographers would accept $300 as a day rate. As mentioned, it is definitely on the lower end, but it is not catastrophic. If, and that’s a big if, a photographer was paid that every weekday of the year, that is a respectable $78,000 salary before taxes. Depending on where you live in the country, and how big your overhead is (photographers do tend to have larger than normal overhead), it’s a livable wage.
But the fact is photographers don’t get hired every day. And even if they do, there is no guarantee of timely payment or even payment at all — just look at how long some have been waiting to get paid from Outdoor Photographer magazine.
It’s the big companies that are usually worse at this. Smaller companies tend to pay promptly but many, myself included, have had horrific experiences chasing major media companies for payments that should have come weeks, months, and even years ago.
Many have questioned whether what Facer did is a wise move for her future prospects, but she has nearly 40,000 TikTok followers and this particular episode has propelled her even further up the social media/influencer ladder.
Good for her.
There is no handbook on how to make it as a photographer, every creative takes a different path. Success comes in all forms and you have to take what comes your way.
Rather than burning her bridges, Facer may have opened up new career pathways by exposing the industry’s low rates — something that most photographers wouldn’t dare do for fear of losing clients.
This story is part of PetaPixel’s weekly newsletter Clipped Highlights.
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Goil Amornvivat hadn’t worked as an interior designer until he landed on Bravo’s Top Design in 2007 – and the first room he approached as an interior designer on the show was his first room he approached as an interior designer, anywhere. (He wasn’t without qualifications, of course: He was a Yale-trained architect – and he’s still a practicing interior designer today.) He says that experience, all those years ago, exemplifies the most valuable lesson he took from his appearance on the show: “My first lesson [from the show] is to try and try to surprise yourself,” he says. “You never know what kind of skills you have if you haven’t tried.” The second lesson focused on the value of representation: “There’s a difference between diversity and representation,” Amornvivat says. “This is really dear to my heart because after the show, I received a lot of emails from fans [who said that] because they’d seen an Asian designer on TV, they were more likely to follow their passion. That was really meaningful for me.”
[embedded content]These days, Amornvivat, who runs AMMOR Architecture with partner, Thomas Morbitzer, is working across all of these disciplines: interior design and architecture projects in Connecticut, San Diego, Palm Springs, and Long Island, as well as spearheading equal, inclusion, and diversity initiatives at Carnegie Mellon’s College of Fine Arts, his alma mater. His favorite projects, he says, are those that allow him to work both as an architect and an interior designer.
In this week’s Milkshake, we asked Amornivivat about what it’s like sharing a home with a fellow architect: “For us, it’s been 23 years [together], and we could be fighting that whole time – I think that’s what you’re trying to ask,” he says with a laugh. “But we don’t fight about it because we’re both professionals. We know how to listen and we know how to have a dialogue about everything that we do – especially within the high stakes of creating a livable home.”
The Abbey Duplex Photo: Garrett Rowland
We also asked him, in terms of creating a livable home, which trends in interior design are here to stay. The question, he said, is flawed in its premise: He doesn’t operate in trends. For him, interior design is instead about solving problems – for example, how to bring light into typically sun-starved New York City apartments. And it remains a holistic experience: “My big thing about interior design is the whole picture,” he says. “So the mentality of à la carte is really difficult for me to kind of understand and fix. When you’re looking at interior design, I think you should step back and take a look at how things relate to each other in a larger picture.” For more, tune in!
Williamsburg Apartment Photo: Garrett Rowland
UWS Penthouse Duplex Photo: Garrett Rowland
SOHO Loft Photo: Matt Dutile
Diana Ostrom, who has written for Wallpaper, Interior Design, ID, The Wall Street Journal, and other outlets, is also the author of Faraway Places, a newsletter about travel.
Milkshake, DMTV (Design Milk TV)’s first regular series, shakes up the traditional interview format by asking designers, creatives, educators and industry professionals to select interview questions at random from their favorite bowl or vessel. During their candid discussions, you’ll not only gain a peek into their personal homeware collections, but also valuable insights into their work, life and passions.
All images © Diana Parkhouse, shared with permission
Nuzzling against each other, moseying along, or convening with a group of forest friends, Diana Parkhouse’s papier-mâché personalities capture her passion for nature and love for animals. Based in Nottingham, the Australian artist is especially connected to the U.K. region, depicting its common woodland wildlife, such as foxes, hares, and badgers.
Swathed in words, each charming creature is formed using upcycled book pages and papier-mâché techniques. Increasingly aware of her impact on the environment, Parkhouse turned to found materials in an effort to render all of her sculptures biodegradable and repurpose as much as she could.
The artist has always enjoyed crafting miniature creations, and though small in stature, each figure presents a compelling and endearing nature. “Small things have always brought me great joy, I don’t know why,” she tells Colossal.
My father took me to an estate auction once when I was about 8 years old…There was a box with a miniature tea set in it which I’d admired as we looked about the lots before the auction started. He of course bid on it and won it for me…I remember spending an entire summer making tiny plasticine pies!
Make sure to visit Parkhouse’s website and Instagram for more forest friends and news about updates to her shop.
Do stories and artists like this matter to you? Become a Colossal Member today and support independent arts publishing for as little as $5 per month. The article Papier-Mâché Critters Traipse and Trot in Delighful Sculptures by Diana Parkhouse appeared first on Colossal.
The new exhibition “Spark of the Eagle Dancer: The Collecting Legacy of Lambert Wilson” will be showcased through Dec. 8 in the Fine Art Museum at Western Carolina University in Cullowhee.
The exhibit features over 140 works of contemporary Native American art from the collection of one of Western North Carolina’s most notable art enthusiasts, Lambert Wilson.
He devoted his life to supporting and encouraging Native artists, amassed an extensive collection of over 6,000 objects during his lifetime, focusing primarily on artists of the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians, Cherokee Nation and sovereign nations of the Southwest.
This exhibition brings together a selection of baskets, pottery, carving, painting, photography, and more that tell the story of the relationships Wilson built and the impact that he made by dedicating himself to this remarkable collection.
Those who live in Western North Carolina know Wilson as a respected educator and supporter of the arts. He started his collection of contemporary Native American art in the 1970s, when he was studying middle grade education as an undergraduate student at WCU.
As part of an introductory art history course taught by Janie Leftwich, Wilson completed an extra credit assignment to visit the John Julius Wilnoty Eagle Dancer sculpture at Medicine Man Crafts in Cherokee. This encounter motivated him to acquire his own collection of Cherokee artwork.
From that first moment of inspiration, Wilson saw artwork as a vehicle for culture, learning and friendship. He spent decades forging relationships with Native artists and being curious about their process of making. With each object acquired, he learned more about the histories and traditions of each artist’s culture and took an interest in their lives.
Ultimately his impulse to collect went far beyond the material and was an expression of his love for people and community. In 2006, Wilson met his partner Jenny Holland, who shared his passion for Native art. Together they expanded the scope of the collection to include work by Native artists of the Southwest.
“Spark of the Eagle Dancer” gives visitors a glimpse into this vast collection built over 47 years and features work by 83 artists of various tribal affiliations.
The reception for “Spark of the Eagle Dancer” will take place from 5-7 p.m. Wednesday, Aug. 30, at the Fine Art Museum. This event will include a gallery talk, along with complimentary hors d’oeuvres and drinks. Free parking is available.
To learn more about the exhibition and reception, please go to arts.wcu.edu/spark. The Fine Art Museum is open from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Tuesday through Friday and 10 a.m. to 7 p.m. Thursday.
