Robert Francis James

  Crime, money, power, drugs—are all linked. — Matthew Vaughn Community activists in Los Angeles, peeved with the proliferation of art galleries in the once-poor Boyle Heights neighborhood, charged local developers four years ago with a sleight-of-hand they named artwashing , the first known use of the word. Disingenuous businessmen, they said, were guilty of a PR stunt: championing edgy art, not for art’s sake, but to camouflage gentrification . More recently, another group of business moguls—a family of them—has been artwashing, this time to scrub the stench of criminality from the family name. WhatsApp chats among Sackler family members reveal the family has consistently strong-armed art museums—recipients of its hefty donations—to praise the confessed drug peddlers . The museums, which include the Guggenheim, the Met and the Tate, insist they’re immune to the donors’ pressure and are suddenly refusing the Sacklers’ gifts. Some have also erased the Sackler name from pu...

An interest in things is and always was at the root of art. — John Sloan From as early as he can remember, self-taught Tennessee artist H.R. Lovell has loved things—the more ordinary, the better. “I might see things different as a painter that somebody else may have overlooked,” he told video producer Steve Hall in 2011. The painter’s quiet realism rivals that of the famed Brandywine School artist Andrew Wyeth , whom Lovell had never heard of until a collector once pointed out the raw resemblance. Light and Shadows. H.R. Lovell Lovell uses watercolor and egg tempera to create countryfied compositions that emphasize sunlight, shadow, and texture. He strives with every painting—which usually take over a year to complete—to perfect his minute brushstrokes. “My biggest competition is with myself,” he told Hall. “My biggest thing has always been to get better.” Although he owns his own gallery, unlike Andrew Wyeth Lovell shuns commercial success, instead mentoring students, f...

I’m rereading Somerset Maugham’s The Moon and Sixpence and am struck by the scene in which the narrator begs Charles Strickland to explain himself. Why has the stockbroker abandoned his wife and children for la vie de bohème ? “Do you mean to say you didn’t leave your wife for another woman?” “Of course not.” “On your word of honor?” “On my word of honor.” “Then, what in God’s name have you left her for?” “I want to paint.” Nonplussed, the narrator suggests Strickland might starve as an artist. “What makes you think you have any talent?” “I’ve got to paint.” “Aren’t you taking an awful chance?” “I’ve got to paint,” he repeated. “Supposing you’re never anything more than third-rate, do you think it will have been worth while to give up everything?” “I tell you I’ve got to paint. I can’t help myself.” Red Box Cupcakes by Maggie Siner At a recent demo by Maggie Siner , the painter was asked why she put such large gobs of paint on her palette. “Never chintz on paint,” s...

Though a living cannot be made from art, art makes life worth living. — John Sloan John Sloan was starving when he said what he said, so you have to forgive him. It is possible to make a living from art—and a decent one, at that. I know several artists who do. But the majority of artists—myself included—depend for survival on OPM . Openhanded Patrons’ Money. Worth describes artists’ patrons as “people with resources who can do more to nurture great talent than just purchasing their work.” An artist’s patron is a buddy, a booster and an undemanding sugar daddy who powers the artist’s “professional trajectory” (in my case, the patron is my darling wife Ann). An artist’s patron is never simply “in it for the money,” Worth insists (although I’m not sure about Ann). “Although getting in on the ground floor of an emerging artist’s career can be a lucrative financial investment, it is universally accepted that the raison d’etre for patronization has to be passion, not profits.” ...

No second-act artist more captivates me than the late still-life painter Robert M. Kulicke. His is a Horatio Alger story… with a poignant twist. Kulicke became rich and famous in the late 1950s, not as a painter, but a frame-maker . He designed all three of the 20th century’s most-used picture frames—the sectional metal frame, the “floater,” and the “plexibox”—and built nearly all of the frames you see today in art museums worldwide. His name in museum circles was legion. But colossal success as a frame-maker was a consolation prize. Kulicke wanted to be a painter. As a teenager, he had studied painting at two prestigious art schools, his courses interrupted only by World War II, when he served in the South Pacific. Like all serious painters at mid-century, Kulicke moved to Paris the war, tapping the GI Bill to pay for a master class being taught by the renowned Cubist painter Fernand Léger . During an especially harsh critique, Léger told Kulicke he should quit painting. Hi...

Realist painter Robert Henri called the communion of connoisseurs “The Brotherhood.” The Thought Police would insist we re-label that “mystical bond,” but let’s allow Henri to slide. What he had to say is too important to get hung up over one Victorian-era word. According to Henri , The Brotherhood comprises “mysterious bonds of understanding and of knowledge” that link its members “for all time”—no matter their age, weight, race, gender, class, religion, ability, nationality, or party preference. Members of The Brotherhood, moreover, “know each other, and time and space cannot separate them.” All are pathfinders , and leavers of breadcrumbs for others to follow. “All any man can hope to do is to add his fragment to the whole,” he wrote. “No man can be final, but he can record his progress, and whatever he records is so much done in the thrashing out of the whole thing. What he leaves is so much for others to use as stones for step on or stones to avoid.” All hobbies—be they bi...

Hollywood loves artists because they’re observant, flawed, eccentric and vulnerable— qualities a main character must have  to win over the audience. Artists also allow directors to smuggle scores of “ beauty shots ” into their films. Always a plus. Here’s my list of the dozen top films depicting artists (in chronological order). Take advantage of the lockdown to watch them. Rembrandt (1936). Suddenly widowed, the Dutch painter’s life—and work—take a dark turn. The Moon and Sixpence  (1942). A British stockbroker rejects middle-class comfort for  la vie de bohème . Paul Gaugin as seen through the eyes of Somerset Maugham. Lust for Life  (1956). A day doesn’t go by when painter Vincent Van Gogh doesn’t struggle with self-expression. We get an earful. (And eyeful.) The Agony and the Ecstasy  (1965). The Pope relentlessly insists that sculptor Michelangelo completes a mural. The surly sculptor hits the ceiling. Savage Messiah  (1972). Sculpto...