It is important that you never turn down an opportunity to visit a new exhibition. Curators work hard to present even the most well-known and widely studied material in new ways and by shunning exhibitions you are likely to miss out. Most exhibitions at smaller galleries take less than an hour to look at closely [...]
One of the most useful exercises in producing your own art is to try and recreate styles that you see and like or find interesting. This is the perfect way to add strings to your artistic bow because it expands the mediums and the techniques you have in your repertoire. Great artists learn by reproduction [...]
Whenever you visit an art exhibition it is important that you are inquisitive and observant. You should not limit yourself to just looking at the art on display, although this is obviously a great place to start in terms of forming your own opinions of any given show. You must also assess the curatorial aspects [...]
Art is something that ordinary people are perfectly capable of investing in. A recent trip to the Buy Art Fair 2011 made me realise that you don’t need to be a millionaire to start thinking about art investment as the way forward. If you want to put your savings into an investment and you don’t [...]
It’s fairly common to hear artists complain that their field isn’t the most vocational in the world, but it is possible to pursue opportunities that will earn you money alongside the time you devote to your chosen disciplines. People will pay good money for tuition in the form of art classes or groups, so it [...]
Being a 26-year-old in Paris is a pretty demoralising experience (or as demoralising as it can be in such a wonderful and varied city). The chief cause of distress for people of this unfortunate age is that there’s suddenly a lot you can’t do for free anymore. Art is one of them. Young people under [...]
Finding work by your favourite artists can be something of a tricky prospect purely because it is usually distributed around the world rather thinly. Of course, if you are a fan of Impressionism then you can gorge yourself on the work of Van Gogh, Monet, Renoir and Manet at the Musee d’Orsay in Paris. Equally, [...]
Only a few artists from the past three or four decades actually enjoy a wide following – often because the world of modern art has become so abstract and unfriendly as to inspire a general attitude of indifference and even anger. Ordinarily, I am keen to defend modern art because of its focus on the [...]
A great many artists throughout history have been afflicted by serious psychological issues, which have sometimes informed their art. However, it is not surprising that for some, the mental issues were just too much to bear. Consequently, a number of artists cut their careers short by committing suicide. Among the more famous suicidal artists are [...]
I’ve just started watching Simon Schama’s documentary series The Power of Art on DVD and the first episode was pretty impressive. The series focuses on a different influential artist every episode, beginning with Caravaggio. I already had a little idea about Caravaggio’s story, but Schama’s narration and the vivid reconstructions gave it added weight and [...]
