Tanya Ragir Studio exploring the feminine

For all the Figurative Artists Out There…

I came upon an article in the New Yorker that is the most wonderful thing I've read in a LONG time!  Not that there is a need to justify what I do, but I must admit I have felt defensive in the climate of art critics and the movement of modern and contemporary art away from honoring craft and toward the 'less artisanal, but no less demanding--conceptual, historically conscious, made of mind and thought.'

So read this article Life Studies-What I learned when I learned to draw by New York art critic Adam Gopnik.  The change in his perspective and the way in which he reveals this year-long journey is refreshing, literate, funny, and personal.  Here's a taste--a favorite paragraph:

We stopped for coffee afterward and I asked Jacob why, given his skill at seeing and showing the world as it was, he never wanted to draw the particulars of this world as it is, the world that we found ourselves in, where people met at endless dinner parties.  He drew his kids beautifully but without their iPods and Gameboys and Vitamin Waters.  Why not draw as a novelist might write, with the appurtenances and accessories of this time?

He looked at me and seemed almost angry- 'No, that's--you've so absorbed the premises of modern realism into your head that you can't see past it. Why didn't Michelangelo draw people buying fish, instead of nudes and gods?  He was looking for some idea of beauty, rooted in this world...that didn't need an ipod to justify it.  He really had an idea of timeless beauty.  Why is beauty less interesting to you than journalism?'

Also, check out this website - figurativesculptors.com.It's a new site that sculptor, Denis Grace, has launched just for the love of figurative sculpture.  This site creates a network and community of figurative sculptors  and serves as a much appreciated resource for these artists, art lovers and collectors .   I know what it takes to build and maintain a website and he's doing this all for no charge.  I want to thank and salute him for his efforts!