Posts for December, 2014

Visit the the Art Renewal Center on Pinterest! Stop by to see the "Painting of the Day" or pin your favorite old master paintings. Show us which artworks inspire you, make you think or just make you happy! No modern or contemporary art please. Please click here to visit us on Pinterest!

A Christmas Party by Anton Heinrich Dieffenbach

On January 5, the academy will begin full time courses in drawing & painting with places for 20 students. Intensive workshops begin in March. Academic Director, Jordan Sokol, and principal instructors, Amaya Gurpide and Richard Greathouse, are all painters trained in the philosophy, language of instruction, and methodology guiding the Florence studio. They are also all accomplished painters.
Lara - Charcoal on Toned Paper, 2014 Amaya Gurpide, Principal Instructor at The Florence Academy of Art New York branch	With its three locations in Florence, Sweden and the Jersey City, the Florence Academy will encourage its students and faculty to travel between branches to spend a trimester or year studying abroad. The methodology, curriculum and teaching style will be the same in each. However, students will have the important opportunity to study in Europe, live among architectural masterpieces, and visit the museums and galleries important to the classical tradition. At the same time, thanks to its university status, Florence Academy students will earn U.S. college credit for their coursework done at any of its three locations.
For more information about the U.S. program, please visit www.florenceacademyofart.com/en/faa-newyork/.

We are happy to announce that The Da Vinci Initiative's first online course, Introduction to Advanced Observational Drawing, has been officially released. All individuals who pre-ordered the course and all of our Kickstarter backers who get the course content in connection with their backer reward, will receive an e-mail with instructions on how to access the course within one business day. Please be sure to give us a positive review if you like the course!

If you have not ordered the course and would like to do so now, the course is available through the DVI website by clicking here.

ARC Chief Operating Officer Kara Lysandra Ross has written an article in the Epoch Times about the ARC International Salon. “The Art Renewal Center, a nonprofit educational foundation dedicated to the renewal of traditional training techniques in the visual arts is currently accepting entries for its 11th annual competition. Artists have a deadline of Jan. 15, 2015, to submit their entries. Winners will be announced in the spring.

Adrift by Jeremy Lipking

The first international ARC Salon occurred in 2004, and since then the number of entries and the quality of work submitted has increased dramatically; no doubt due to the growing interest and appreciation in contemporary paintings utilizing realism and traditional painting techniques.” To read the rest of the article, click here. To view the ARC Salon prospectus, please click here.

ARC Living Artist™ Sivananda Nyayapathi won the fourth place award in the 2014 Portrait Society of America members only competition for his painting "Cycle of Life". To view more of Sivananda's work, please click here.

Cycle of Life by Sivananda Nyayapathi

The Siesta by Jose Villegas Y Cordero

Thirty new artworks have been added to ARC’s steadily growing museum. Among the new works added is “The Siesta” by Jose Villegas Y Cordero. ARC considers this painting to be one of the finest orientalist paintings we’ve ever seen, rivaling the best of Gerome or Lewis. To read about this work, please click here. To view the new additions to ARC, click here.

This exhibit takes an innovative approach, organizing the extreme variety of Goya's output thematically. The exhibition employs the poles of order and disorder to structure Goya's creativity, moving from dignified portraits and daily rituals to the chaos of war and the pandemonium of the Bordeaux bull ring. This is the largest Goya exhibition in North America in a quarter century and is on view only at the Museum of Fine Art, Boston, MA. The exhibit ends on December 28, 2014. To view more about this and other exhibits, please click here.

The Sleep of Reason Produces Monsters by Francisco Goya

The International Guild of Realism (IGOR), an ARC Allied Organization™, has just concluded their 9th Annual Exhibition at Robert Lange Studios in Charleston, SC.
	IGOR has produced a short slide show video which includes several images from all of the special events including images taken during the opening of the show. To view the video, click here. To read more about the show and to see the list of winners, please click here.

Next spring, join painter, Jura Bedic, in the Florence Academy's week-long sessions of Figure Painting & the Figure in An Interior, May 25 - 29 and June 1 - 5, 2015. A step beyond the traditional seated portrait with its focus on the psychology of the sitter, the figure in this interior asks the student to explore the relationship of the individual to space and objects, and to the compositional and emotional dynamics they create. This concept will be taught in the week-long course. Jura Bedic will guide students through a translation of their subject in order to achieve a meaningful interpretation of the scene before them. For information about the Florence Academy, click here: www.florenceacademyofart.com.

Persephone by Robert Graves

Winter by Maureen Hyde

ARC Living Master™, Maureen Hyde, has been featured in an article in the Epoch Times. “Ever since childhood, I have had a curiosity about what I was seeing, and felt compelled to render it.” To read the rest of the article, please click here.

The California Art Club, an ARC Allied Organization™ , will exhibit more than 60 small works at the historic Old Mill, 1120 Old Mill Road, San Marino, CA.
The selected works include serene seascapes and small town scenery and panoramic landscapes. All of the paintings shown were created en plein air, utilizing some of the techniques that the organization's founders employed more than a century ago, when they inspired the artistic movement known as "California Impressionism". To learn more about this exhibit, please click here.	Marsh by Esther Engelman

The Bow by Ekaterina Vassilenko Searcy

ARC is pleased to welcome Ekaterina Vassilenko Searcy as our newest ARC Living Artist™. The emotional thrust of her drawings and oil paintings respect the style of the Italian, Flemish, French and Russian Renaissance and Baroque painters. To see her gallery, please click here.

Two major auctions are underway at Sotheby's and Christie's London.
The Sotheby's London December 10th British & Irish Art auction will feature works by Millais, Burne-Jones, Herbert Draper, Arthur Hughes, Rossetti, and Alma-Tadema and many other masters of the period. The Christie's London December 11th Victorian, Pre-Raphaelite & British Impressionist Art auction will showcase work by Edward Hughes, Waterhouse, Godward, Grimshaw, and Edward Matthew Ward. Viewing public auction presales is one of the best ways to see important works from a given period that are in private collections and are otherwise not on public view. Most if not all of these paintings are sold back into private collections and many are never put on public view again.	Juliet by John William Waterhouse
To learn more about these auctions, please click here.

ARC Living Master™, Max Ginsburg, will be opening his studio for visiting, viewing, and buying small works, studies, and illustrations. The studio will be open from December 12 -14, 2014 and is located at the Long Island City Arts Center, 44-02 23rd Street Studio 515, Long Island City, NY 11101. For more information about this event, please email: maxginsburgstudio@gmail.com

ARC Associate Living Master™ Vicki Sullivan has placed as a finalist in three categories in one of the largest competitions for realist art in Australia. The A.M.E. Bale Travelling Scholarship and Art Prize are awarded to Australian artists who have demonstrated talent and achievement in traditional styles. The Art Prize is intended to encourage, support and advance classical training of emerging artists (in their early to mid-career) at any stage of life, who are pursuing the study and practice of traditional art and who desire to study the works of old masters. To learn more, please click here.

The Bush Poet by Vicki Sullivan

ARC Approved Grand Central Atelier will be holding their Inaugural Group Show in their new gallery space at Eleventh Street Arts, 4606 11th Street, Long Island City, NY. It will consist of over 50 works including drawings, paintings and sculpture; showcasing the best of contemporary realism. Tour the new Long Island City location and view additional works for sale in their Resident Artist Studios. The Opening Reception will be held on December 5, 2014 from 6-10pm. It is open to the public and refreshments will be served. Please RSVP: info@grandcentralatelier.org.

The exhibition will continue from December 5 - January 23, 2015 but will be closed from December 20, 2014 - January 4, 2015 for the holidays. Viewing is by appointment only. Please email: eleventhstreetarts@gmail.com.

ARC Chief Operating Officer, Kara Lysandra Ross, has recently written and published an article in the Epoch Times about the upcoming exhibit “Bouguereau’s Fancies: Allegorical and Mythological Works by the French Master”. The Flagler Museum in Palm Beach, Fla. will be holding this Bouguereau exhibit which will be open from Jan. 27 – April 19, 2015. Bouguereau’s ‘Fancies’ will exhibit, among other works, three versions of the artist’s famous painting, “Jeune fille se defendant contre l’amour” (young girl defending herself against love): the original life size version, the reduction, and a fully worked out drawing. To read the full article, please click here.

Jeune fille se defendant contre l’amour by William Bouguereau

Barcelona’s Museu Europeau d’Art Modern (MEAM), an ARC Allied Organization, will be leading Sotheby’s London December 11, 2014 auction of pre-war European sculpture. Among the works for sale in this major auction are Affortunato Gori’s Oriental Dancer, a dazzling 19th-century version of Antonio Canova’s Hebe and Pietro Calvi’s Orientalist busts of Aleydah and Ben Ali-Ben Ladiar. The sale traces the history of sculpture from the exuberance of the 19th century through to the 20th century. Pre-sale viewing times for the auction are December 5 – 10, 2014. To view the auction catalogue, please click here.