TheGreatNude Invitational opens May 14,15 and 16 at The Roger Smith Hotel. Featuring 25 international artists working with the nude. Online Ticketing now available!

MAY 14,15,16 – DAILY ADMISSION: 12pm-6pm, $10.

MAY 14,15 – EVENING ADMISSION: 6pm-11pm, $25.
Includes our SKETCH PARTY featuring Nude Models.

MAY 13 – OPENING NIGHT RECEPTION: 6pm-9pm, $20.

Look for our us in Time Out New York, artdaily.org, and the New York Observer later this week.

(Image: Adam Miller, Scott Goodwillie, Sherry Cahmy, Bob Clyatt, Marc Vinciguerra, Daniel Maidman, Meredith Bergman, and Mary Larsen)

Response from individual artists for TheGreatNude Invitational has been huge! We’re now looking for “artist representatives” to manage several groups of artists. Curate a room at the event from our pool of applicants, handle sales at the event May 13-16, and provide art management in exchange for commissions paid directly by the artists to you. Contact us!

Friday, February 12, 2010 marked the opening for Chelsea Gallery, Rogue Space‘s show, Valentine’s Nude Workshop. The gallery featured a wide range of mediums with the figure as theme, with some artists from Barebrush.com. During the show, behind a private curtain, live drawing sessions were taking place. Inside the low-lit room were two models, striking a series a three different poses per session. In addition, TGN was able to judge the artists works from after the event.

TGN publisher Jeffrey Wiener talking with some Barebrush artists.

The following day TheGreatNude.tv publisher, Jeffrey Wiener gave a speech at the gallery on empowering artists through technology, digital marketing and social media. Make sure to check out the TGN site for more info on upcoming events, including our Great Nude Invitationals, and to see are our four favorite artist’s sketches posted online from the event.

http://www.thegreatnude.tv/rogue-space/

TGN publisher Jeffrey Wiener judging works from the contest.

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Now showing at the Metropolitan Museum of Art until April 18, 2010 is the first ever show dedicated solely to Agnolo Bronzino, the Italian Mannerist. With almost sixty drawings from the artist, , some never before seen, the exhibition helps to shed light on an artist whose name is familiar to many, but whose depictions of the form may still be unfamiliar to viewers.

The show is put together with the help of the Gabinetto Disegni e Stampe degli Uffizi and the Polo Museale Fiorentino, Florence and encompasses a refreshing take on the figure.  Although the drawings are done largely from a scholastic standpoint, making excellent reference of the figures musculature and positioning, the works read as soft, delicate and emotional. Bronzino’s take on the figure is not only refreshing, but raises the question of how a figurative artist of his caliber escaped the public eye for so long.

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Seated Nude Youth Playing Panpipes, red chalk, 1530-32

Seated Male Nude Youth, black chalk on gray-blue prepared paper, 1540-41

Throughout his career, Rembrandt took on a select group of students and taught them the techniques that he had spent his life perfecting. Because of the numerous works born in the academic environment that he created, many of the works are today disputed over whether the works came from Rembrandt or from one of the students, influenced by his style.

That is exactly what the show titled Rembrandt and his Pupils showing at the Getty Center until February 28th set out to show. Using a series of comparative techniques, the exhibit helps to explain the difference between a work of Rembrandt and of the fifteen pupils shown in the exhibit. Showing just over one hundred works on paper the collection highlights the brilliant simplicity in the work created between Rembrandt and his pupils.

1200 Getty Center Drive
Los Angeles, California 90049
310.440.7300

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Seated Female Nude, Rembrandt, 1661

When most people are asked to describe an artistic genius, Picasso is often cited as an example. In addition to his undeniable creative talents and the large body of excellent work produced in his lifetime, his whole career appears to have been a successful strategy of exploration and risk-taking at just the right moment in history.

Picasso moved through many periods during his career; some of them depending heavily on the use of the figure, and others where the human form is broken down into nearly unrecognizable shapes. The widely varying phases of Picasso, if positioned anonymously next to each other, could easily be seen as the works of completely different artists; not only aesthetically, but in tone and subject matter as well. His life’s work reflects the desire to understand the essence of humanity and to relay it back to us.

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Blue Nude. Oil on canvas, 1902

Les Demoiselles d'Avignon. Oil on canvas, 1907

Crouching Nude. Oil on canvas, 1954

Having been a contributor to the New York art world for over 130 years The Art Students League offers a rich history since its creation in 1875. Although the ASL is probably best known for producing celebrated artists in figurative drawing, it retains an informal environment where anyone of any skill level is welcome to attend. Its creation came out of necessity when a National academy instructor was unable to continue teaching due to lack of funds and joined The Art Students League. Within a decade of their opening the facility saw enrollments grow and boasted instructors such as William Merritt Chase and TGN favorite Kenyon Cox.

Over time the school amassed an impressive body of work and offered classes in many new styles of drawing. That’s exactly what their show, Drawing Lessons is all about. The show was initially held in October in New York but is now showing in Houston. Showing their collection of early academic drawings the collection includes the work of students of prominent ASL artists. Whether thoroughly versed in the figure, hoping to observe the techniques of early masters, or curious to figurative techniques used over the last one hundred years, the wide collection of artists and approaches to the figure proves to not only be an impressive collection, but shows the path that figurative art inside the Art Students League has taken.

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Johnson, Academic drawing, undated, vine and compressed charcoal on Michallet paper, 24 ½ x 18 ½ in. Student of George B. Bridgman. PERMANENT COLLECTION, THE ART STUDENTS LEAGUE OF NEW YORK.

Walter Marshall Clute (1870-1915), Academic drawing, February 7, 1894, vine and compressed charcoal on Michallet paper, 24 ¼ x 18 ½ in. Student of H. Siddons Mowbray. PERMANENT COLLECTION, THE ART STUDENTS LEAGUE OF NEW YORK

Best known for work that nearly defined the “Pin-up”, Alberto Vargas is recognized for depicting and perfecting the image of female sexuality in the first half of the 20th century. Having worked with Esquire and more famously Playboy magazines, some would be quick to write Vargas off as a soft pornographer, and he’s never expressed any shame in that. However, from the perspective of TheGreatNude, Vargas was an artist dedicated to the figure, and produced a body of work that embodied the meaning of female sexuality and in effect became standards of feminine desire for a generation of American men.

In the early 1920′s, Vargas solidified his career as a successful artist working with the Ziegfeld Follies, and later working as a regular illustrator for Esquire magazine, where he created the infamous “Varga Girl”, a stylistic. While restricted in his ability to paint fully nude figures for these publications, Vargas was able to convey a comparable essence, stylistically depicting his women as playful, coy, and full of energy, further solidifying and advancing the concept of the Pin-Up as an icon of sexual freedom.

In the 1950’s Playboy was the master of men’s literature, delivering well researched articles simultaneously with artistic and sexual content. For decades, Vargas’ art works had a premier spot following the magazine’s premier feature: The Centerfold. It was this venue that gave Vargas the freedom to paint his strongest nudes at the peak of his career, and he produced many of his most iconographic works during this time.

Click here to subscribe to TheGreatNude.tv and to see more of Vargas’ “Legacy Nudes”.

Vargas' iconic image of Diana, shown below with Esquire's clothed and edited rendition

Legacy Nude 4, Exuberance

Legacy Nude 5, Red Fire

The Bernarducci Meisel Gallery is one of New York’s premier galleries for representational approaches to the figure. They’re always a great gallery to pop into any time of the year. Its been four years since we’ve seen a large exhibition of Bernardo Torrens paintings at this gallery, but on October 1st, New Paintings opens and will remain on exhibit until October 31st, featuring works created by Torrens between 2002-2009.

A master of realist technique with a tendency towards a monochrome palate, Torrens focuses crisply on the surface of his subjects, their anatomical details rendered in an absolutely convincing fashion. Some of his works are introspective compositions, portraits of people we feel we may know, others are more compositional, the model’s pose as the topic. In all of Torrens’ paintings, the technical mastery of the works themselves is an enjoyable thing to witness. Check out Bernardo Torrens this October when you’re passing through Midtown, NYC!

The Bernarducci Meisel Gallery is located at 37 West 57th St, New York, NY.

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"Laura I" 2009 acrylic on wood 25.5 x 20"

"Laura II" 2009 acrylic on wood 25.5 x 51.2"

"Katey I" 2009 acrylic on wood 19.75 x 18.125"

Last week TheGreatNude.tv was able to preview some of mixed-media artist Ronald Ventura‘s work at the Tyler Rollins Gallery in Chelsea. A Singapore native and established artist in Southeast Asia; this is Rollins first U.S. exhibition. In his upcoming show Metaphysics of Skin running September 17 – October 31, Ventura plays on the interaction between physicality and imagination, perception and creativity. His works seem to bend the concept of portraiture into something that feels personal and quite alien at the same time. The works are worthy of detailed analysis as they are very well painted and worthy of lengthy study.

The Tyler Rollins Gallery is located at 529 West 20th St, 10W New York, NY

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Echo, 2009 oil on canvas, 48 X 36 in.

Second Skin, 2009 oil on canvas 84 X 60 in.

Rainbow for Nothing, 2009 oil on canvas 48 X 36 in.

Mother's Mark, 2009 oil on canvas 48 X 36 in.