Guest Instructor Kamille Corry

It is with a great sense of anticipation that Mims Studios welcomes painter and guest instructor Kamille Corry from Salt Lake City, Utah, to its Visiting Artists Program this Fall Quarter. Recognized for her mastery of the human figure, Ms. Corry will be conducting several special courses for students in the Cast Studio and demonstrating her extraordinary approach to classical training through selected projects at the Weymouth Studio. Plans for a public lecture are being arranged and will be announced later this summer.

North Carolina Museum of Art

On a recent tour of the North Carolina Museum of Art, students from Mims Studios were introduced to the permanent collections of European and American paintings on display. Highlights included masterworks by Botticelli, Veronese, Van Dyck, Rubens and Vien. American painting from the 18th and 19th centuries were represented by Copley, Homer, Eakins and Chase. The museum also displays several major works by Andrew Wyeth.

Regretfully, the museum has begun expanding its architectural insult to tradition with a new 127,000 square foot building that almost makes the previous structure appear an object of beauty by comparison.

Study of Ornament

A significant focus of an artist’s education in the early academies was the study of ornament, with it’s basis of geometry and design.  The ablilty to understand and create ornamental design was believed to strengthen the intellect and imagination behind figurative work (the study of  nature).  In turn, it was believed that to master drawing from the figure would, among other things, enhance form and subtlety in the modeling of ornament and confirm the ability to conceptualize geometric solids in space.

The history of Art has been a shifting of emphasis between the two concepts, design and nature.

The images below are taken from a recent class project using examples from the lecture series on the history of Ornament and introduce a project which will be the subject of a future post.

  

Sin and Salvation

Holman Hunt - Lady of Shallot

Sin and Salvation: William Holman Hunt and the Pre-Raphaelite Vision

Sunday, June 14, 2009—Sunday, September 6, 2009
Target Gallery, Minneapolis, Minnesota

Featuring many works never before shown in the United States, this fascinating international exhibition brings to life an important period in English art history and lends fresh insights into the life and work of William Holman Hunt, a founder of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood.

Newsletter: Volume III, Issue I

Andrew Newell Wyeth

Andrew Wyeth - Winter 1946. Collection of the North Carolina Museum of Art.

 

Andrew Wyeth (July 12, 1917 – January 16, 2009) 

Andrew Wyeth, master of mood and melancholic beauty, died in Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania on January 16, 2009.

In 1977, Wyeth became the first American artist since John Singer Sargent to be elected to the French Academie des Beaux-Arts.  He was also an honorary member of the Soviet Academy of the Arts, and the first living American artist to be elected to Britain’s Royal Academy.

 

Wyeth was the most renowned US painter of the twentieth century, and remained true to his vision in an era lost to abstract experiments and confusion.  His unique realism elevated the particular nature of his subjects into a realm of mystery that was imitated by many and remains entirely his own.

 

Museo Annigoni Opens in Florence

Annigoni Museum Opens in Florence

 This November, the Annigoni Museum opened in Florence, Italy at the historic Villa Bardini.  This newly restored landmark, situated in a striking panoramic location is now home to a nucleus of over 6000 works, including drawings, paintings lithographs and sculptures by this incomparable twentieth century master. 

Maestros Exhibition

Underpainting for Self Portrait, D. Jeffrey Mims

Maestros opens on Friday November 7th with a reception from 5:30 to 8:30 pm at Ann Long Fine Art Gallery in Charleston, SC. The show’s title honors four master painters who have been teaching classical painting techniques for over thirty years. Charles Cecil (Charles H. Cecil Studios, Florence), Daniel Graves (The Florence Academy of Art, Florence), Ben Long (The Fine Art’s League of Asheville), and Jeffrey Mims (Mims Studios, Southern Pines) have been passing on their painting craft in the atelier tradition to generations of young classical painters.  While these four Maestros have similar training and their careers have crossed over the years, never before have they exhibited together as a group.  Don’t miss this unprecedented event!  Exhibition closes December 1, 2008.

Lord Leighton Addresses to the Royal Academy Republished

Self Portrait by Frederic Leighton

Addresses Delivered to the Students of the Royal Academy by Frederic Leighton, first published in 1897, has just been reprinted by Kessinger Publishing, LLC.  Mims Studios recommends this as one of the best books ever published on art education, and it can now be purchased through amazon.com, or read online at Google books.

What you see and what you know

Anatomy of Boucher Arm

The lecture series for this fall quarter will return to the study of artistic anatomy.  Plates from the classic Richer / Hale text will be translated into schematic systems and applied to a broad selection of master drawings from the history of art.  This unique approach is meant to encourage  similar translations with the life work being done at Mims Studios.

Ackland Art Museum Visit

Mims Studios visit to the Ackland Art Museum

On a recent visit to the Ackland Art Museum at The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, master paintings from the European collection were studied to demonstrate the versatility of the limited palette with it’s use of warm and cool edges to create the illusion of form.

Weekly Lectures – The Venetians

Venice

This summer’s lecture series takes a look at the artistic heritage that was born in Venice during the Italian Renaissance.  From this singular location, where East meets West, came a new emphasis on atmospheric effect, bringing in its wake an innovative language of color and opulence never before imagined.  Beginning with the Bellini family, these weekly lectures trace the work and life stories of Giorgione, Titian, and Veronese, among others, culminating with that other famous family of painters led by Giovanni Battista Tiepolo, the last of Europe’s great fresco decorators.

Bacchus and Ariadne by Titian

April Newsletter Online

Click here for the Mims Studios Spring Newsletter

Winter Lecture Series: Mannerist Artists

 

The focus of this winter’s lecture series is on the generation of Mannerist artists working in Italy during the time of Michelangelo.   In these weekly, illustrated talks, director Jeffrey Mims presents a group of majestically creative painters – famous in their own time, but less well known today.   Beginning with artists such as Andrea del Sarto, Daniele da Volterra, and Francesco Salviati,  each lecture includes drawings and paintings of  the individual artist,  with biographical anecdotes and historical comparisons to better appreciate this distinctive period of art.

An offshoot to this study of Mannerist artists was a look at one of the distinguishing characteristics used by many of these Italian artists, “cangiantismo”.   Used primarily in the painting of drapery,  the “cangiante” effect is a system of changing color  tones in the shift from dark to light, imitating the effect of iridescence, or shot silk and often used during this period in fresco decoration.

Exhibition: The Nude

 

From January 25th – February 16th, Ann Long Fine Art in Charleston presents the recent work of Kamille Corry in a long awaited exhibition titled The Nude: The Most Enduring Subject in Art History.  The work of other artists including Jeffrey Mims, with whom Corry studied, will also be represented in this exhibition.

For more information visit annlongfineart.com

British Museum Online Collection

The British Museum has recently launched a comprehensive website of its vast collection of two dimensional objects (prints, drawings, and paintings).  New images are being added weekly, and when completed, every object in the collection will be online.

For more information about the database or to search the collection online visit the British Museum Research website. 

Second Edition of the Charles Bargue Course

The Dahesh Museum of Art has recently announced a reprinting of the Charles Bargue Drawing Course compiled and annotated by Gerald Ackerman.  To pre-order a copy contact the museum bookshop.   

Another Monstrous Museum Addition

Despite strong opposition, Florence, Italy’s Uffizi museum will go ahead with what has been called an “indecent and unheard of” expansion.  As opera and film director, Franco Zefferelli has so clearly stated, “This is a sign of profound incivility, of lack of respect for Florence, the monumental integrity of which is a value in itself… it is a wound and an abdication of care for the city.”  

See the article: Uffizi expansion goes ahead despite Florentine OppositionImage © Florencephotos.com, [info@florencephotos.com], [http://www.florencephotos.com], Firenze, Italy 1999-2006.

In England however, a modernist addition to the Holburne Museum was rejected.  Located in Bath, one of the most classical cities in the world, a proposed glass and steel addition to the 1796 Georgian building brought enormous protest from residents and architects alike.  The opposition rightly argued that such an addition would not only damage the area, but also set a “dangerous precedent.”

James Beck, founder of ArtWatch International, has died

Below is an excerpt from the NY Times Article ‘James Beck, 77, Art Scholar and Critic of Conservation is Dead‘ by Holland Cotter

NEW YORK – James Beck, a Columbia University art historian who became well known as a critic of what he viewed as the ruinous conservation of world masterpieces, including Michelangelo’s Sistine Chapel ceiling, died Saturday in Manhattan. He was 77…

…It was the extensive restoration of the Sistine Chapel frescos, begun in 1980, that initiated his vigorous critique of conservation in the art historical field.

He argued that the Michelangelo frescos were being drastically overcleaned – a process that not only erased some of the subtle volumetric painting, he contended, but also exposed the entire surface to modern pollution…

…In 1992 he and the British journalist and artist Michael Daley founded ArtWatch International, a nonprofit advocacy organization to monitor the restoration, attribution and international shipment of works of art.

Click here to read The Times obituary by Michael Daley, director of ArtWatch, UK.

Flaming June to go on Display at Tate Britain

 

Flaming June, by Frederic, Lord Leighton will be on display at the Tate Britain beginning in March 2008, on loan from the Museo de Arte de Ponce in Puerto Rico. 

For the full article, visit The Art Newspaper online.