Director's Pick: Gregg Chadwick

The Other Art Fair

presents

Travels With
Gregg Chadwick

I am honored to have been chosen this week by The Other Art Fair Los Angeles director Nicole Garton as her Director’s Pick. 

Deep thanks to Nicole Garton, The Other Art Fair and Saatchi Art. Please take a journey with me in the paintings below.

Arrivals and Departures

On June 26, 2015 Marriage Equality became the law of the land and with hundreds of others we celebrated on the Supreme Court steps. Later on that glorious day, I chatted with President Obama’s photographer Pete Souza in front of the White House which was lit up in rainbow colors in celebration of the LGBTQ community.
While we watched, the Presidential Marine Corps air unit returned with President Obama from his moving speech at the memorial service for the church folks who were gunned down by a young white supremacist in South Carolina. President Obama sang “Amazing Grace” that day.
In her current Netflix film Becoming, Michelle Obama reflects upon that day as well. Michelle Obama describes how she and her daughter Malia sneaked outside that night, needing to share in the crowd’s joy after all the terrible grief in Charleston. They let the jubilation soften their anguish. Arrivals and departures. The struggle for equality for all continues.

Gregg Chadwick, Arrivals and Departures, 48"36 oil on linen 2015

Steps of Time

In the morning light, a young monk walks along a path that has been traveled by other monks for centuries. This moment is an accumulation of all the moments that have come before and will occur again.
For 20 years, I have painted artworks inspired by the aspirational nature of Buddhism. “Gregg Chadwick paints scenes from the life of Asia that reminds us of the monastic life of pilgrimage which has been all but lost in the West.”
-Ratnagarbha and Thomas Jones
from “Urthona: Journal of Buddhism and the Arts” Issue 20

Gregg Chadwick, Steps of Time, 30"x24" oil on linen 2020

Bookseller’s Night

I was inspired by a sojourn in Paris near Montmartre. That summer the light hung on late into the evening until the sky rolled into the blue hour. While walking the Parisian streets under those deep blue skies, I would often stop to glance at books spread out like magical treatises on art and life. We lived that summer in the shadow of Monet, Manet, and Caillebotte. Two of Manet’s last studios were on our street and nearby on the Place de Dublin, Caillebotte set his magical painting Paris Street; Rainy Day (Rue de Paris, temps de pluie). Nearby was the Gare Saint-Lazare which inspired Monet to create Turneresque images of trains and steam. I carried those memories with me as I painted Bookseller’s Night along with time traveling thoughts of San Francisco and New York.

Gregg Chadwick, Bookseller’s Night 66"x48" oil on linen 2018

Spring Reader (Botanical Garden)

I am honored to have my painting The Reader (Botanical Garden) up for auction in this year’s Venice Family Clinic Art Walk and Auction. I’ve donated a painting to the cause for 15 years now and am excited to have this sensitive artwork in this year’s auction. To pick up a book and be transported to another world is one of life’s great pleasures. In my oil on panel painting, a woman sits with quiet dignity and reads on a spring day. One can almost smell honeysuckle in the air and feel a cool breeze on a warm day.

Gregg Chadwick, Spring Reader (Botanical Garden), 14"x11" oil on panel 2018

Learn More About Gregg Chadwick

Gregg Chadwick’s Website

The Other Art Fair Online Studios can be found at the link https://www.saatchiart.com/studios/theotherartfair/los-angeles

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Yoshitoshi & Comics

Defending the Muse: Michael Stein and Paul Georges

Paul Georges
The Studio
120”x79 1/2” oil on canvas 1965
The Whitney Museum Collection, New York
Courtesy Paul Georges Estate

Michael Stein's new novel "The Rape of the Muse" ponders the worth of art and the place of beauty in our contemporary society. Stein's re-imagining of painter Paul Georges' trial for libel in 1980 updates the events to the 21st century and fleshes out the characters with a post September 11th ennui. When Georges' trial took place in 1980, the Neo-Expressionist boom in art was just beginning. Emotional, brightly colored paintings using the figure as a theme filled galleries in New York and Europe. In that time Paul Georges’ artwork was included in exhibitions at the Whitney Museum in New York, the Rose Art Museum at Brandeis, and the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts. But still, Georges was an outsider looking in on an art world that often considered narrative painting to be atavistic at best - reactionary at worst.

Paul Georges
The Mugging of the Muse
80”x103” oil on canvas 1972-1974
Courtesy Paul Georges Estate

Michael Stein adeptly weaves elements of Paul Georges' life into the story of his fictive painter - Harris Montrose. Montrose cares deeply about the gift and responsibility of art. This humble esteem for the muse that stokes his creative fire leads to a showdown with an artistic colleague over a limned image. Are we all fair game for artistic interpretation? Is anything really private anymore? Is the language of painting relevant to our time?

Stein brings in a young artist, already marked by the reigning critics as one to watch, who is psychologically blocked from the creative process. This young artist, Rand Taber, becomes Montrose's studio assistant. As if in a scene from Martin Scorsese's segment in the film "New York Stories", Taber learns life lessons from his mentor Montrose. In this sense, Michael Stein seems to hold up the elder painter as a pugnacious model of validity. Harris Montrose paints like his life depends on it. The muse needs to be honored. And if anyone gets in the way they should heed the warnings. The muse shall be avenged.

It is refreshing to read a work in which art is considered deeply as much more than a commodity or a means to privilege. Michael Stein’s “The Rape of the Muse” is gutsy – almost an aesthetic bar fight of a novel. It is heartening to feel Paul Georges’ passion seep into Stein’s writing. Art is not just style. At its best, art considers life and then makes something new. Michael Stein’s “The Rape of the Muse” digs into the life and work of the forceful painter Paul Georges and conjures up a story for our moment.

Highly recommended.

Michael Stein

More at:
Life and Art of Paul Georges
Michael Stein's Website