As The Great Nude prepares for our venture down to Miami next week, here is some video taken last year in Miami at the RAM Miami and an interview with renowned Portraitist Dan Thompson as he paints Miami City Ballerina Deanna Seay.
As promised we’ve added a brand new video player to our main site. Now you can view all of our videos in on central location through an easy to use side bar.
Things are busy here at The Great Nude Studio as we plan for our event in Miami. If you are an artist coming down to Miami for Art Basel, be sure to check out our invitational for a private Sketch Sessions event. Attendance by R.S.V.P. only and seating is limited. Drop us a line if you’d like to come.
In other news a pleasant surprise – we were recently blogged by the Figurative Sculpting Blog iSculpt. Check out the site for various musings about Figure Scultping.
South Beach, Florida
Friday December 5 and Saturday December 6 from 7 – 11 p.m.
FIGURATIVE ARTISTS!
Join us for an evening of drawing and painting from live nude models during the Art Basel Miami festivities. Professional models will be posing in a tropical set accompanied by music, drinks and a hot Miami vibe. Guests can sketch or paint with art supplies provided by The Great Nude.
For more information and to RSVP please contact [email protected] or subscribe.
This morning The Great Nude was inundated with a whole bunch of traffic from Google’s image search. They were all searches for René Magritte’s painting La Magie Noire. I followed the trail back to Google’s main page:
Today is René Magritte’s birthday, he was born November 21 1898 in Belgium. Plenty of blogs are doing biographical retrospectives on his life, so I thought it would be better just to let his work speak for itself.
La Magie Noire
Not to be Reproduced
The Human Condition
On the Threshold of Liberty
Things have been busy over at The Great Nude Studio and we’d like to share with you what’s coming down the pipe in the coming months.
Cheers,
The Great Nude
This past summer The Great Nude attended several exciting live drawing events in New York City. One such event was “Adult Drawing” hosted by promoter Alex Zoppa.
Unique to the “Adult Drawing” event is an atmosphere that merges elements of a social gathering, eroticism and the traditional study of the live nude. The result is a novel cross-section of artists, models, and onlookers in an electric environment.
You can read more about the “Adult Drawing” events at Time Out where The Great Nude.tv host Jeffery Wiener is pictured working on a sketches of one of our frequent models, Amy. Even Playboy Magazine (yes, that Playboy) has a take on the “Adult Drawing” events.
Some of you may recall The Great Nude’s 4 part blog series “The Girls of Summer.” In one post, we took a cheeky look at some of Mel Ramos’ Pop Pinup Art.
Ramos’ current exhibition, aptly named “Very Recent Work“, is running from November 1st to December 20th here in New York City at the Louis K. Meisel Gallery (where Ramos has been represented since the early seventies.)
For the uninitiated, Ramos’ breadth of work juxtaposes an element of consumerism or popular culture starkly with a nude pin-up model. His new works include the particularly punchy “Reese’s Rose”
Mel Ramos - "Reese's Rose" (oil on canvas - 2008)
With the Asian Contemporary Art Fair in full swing this weekend, it is perhaps fitting that The New York Times has run an article on one of Southern Asia’s most celebrated and demonized painters; India’s M.F. Husain.
M.F. Husain has been referred to as the “Picasso of India” – and is certainly India’s most famous if not controversial artist. The level of interest and enmity around his work has caused the 93 year-old artist to into a self-imposed exile in Dubai. His work is internationally known, and in the art marketplace commands a hefty price tag. In early 2008, amid protest, the diptych Battle of Ganga and Jamuna: Mahabharata 12 fetched 1.6 million dollars at auction.
Protester at Christies in NY. Photo: Snaps India
So why is this accomplished painter, who has a body of work estimated at 20,000 pieces the center of so much animus? It stems from a series of nudes, most notably “Bharat Mata” (Mother India), that depicts India on a map as a nude female, with her breast pointing out to the Arabian sea. While not shocking to Western eyes, this piece unleashed religious and cultural tidal waves as Mother India is the personification of the country, and is seen as sacred.
"Bharamata" (Mother India) M.F. Husain
According to The New York Times article “Mr. Husain insists that nudity symbolizes purity. He has repeatedly said that he had not meant to offend any faith.” However, in 1996 in 8 criminal complaints were filed against Husain in India for his nude portraits of Hindu Gods and Goddesses. The charges claimed his works promoted “enmity between different groups.” Though the 8 counts were ultimately dismissed, it did not abate the continual criticism and scrutiny of Husain’s work.
Today, M.F. Husain still remains in self-imposed exile despite the May 2008 dissmisal of three obscentiy cases against him. The court says he “deserves to be at home, painting his canvases.” Meanwhile, the bemused Husain is making the best of his time in Dubai, while thinking of India – “If things get all right, I’ll go. If they don’t, so be it. What can I do?”
For nearly 140 years the Salmagundi Art Club has served as the center for the fine arts and artists. Founded in 1871, the club was originally called the “New York Sketch Class” and later the “New York Sketch Club.” It has existed as an enduring artists’ institution that, to this day, continues to promulgate well known and respected traditional arts.
Many years ago I frequented the Salmagundi Club often to enjoy the artistic environment and that olde world feel. Here is an example of one such sketch that I made during my many visits to Salmagundi.
Seated Nude - Drawn at the Salmagundi Club
In our newly posted Sketch Sessions video artists Scott Goodwille and Mikel Glass and host Jeff Wiener sketch the lovely Mia, a lithe model who has worked for several of New York City’s finest art schools and drawing ateliers.
In this video, all three artists comment about the drawing process, and in particular, the use of “triangulation” to compose an accurate rendering of a complex pose. Each has their own take on the process.