Speed of Life

In London, the Piano Nobile Gallery presents the exhibition -  R.B. Kitaj: London to Los Angeles. This short film features interviews with Marco Livingstone, a leading specialist on Kitaj’s work; Simon Martin, Director of Pallant House Gallery; and the artist’s daughter Dominie Kitaj. R.B. Kitaj: London to Los Angeles is the first retrospective of the artist’s work in a decade. It provides a chronological overview of Kitaj's career, exploring the relationship between his art and the places he lived.  The Piano Nobile Gallery explains that "Although he travelled widely, spending seasons and sometimes whole years in California, Catalonia, Paris and New York, Kitaj made London his home from 1959 – the year he entered the Royal College of Art – until 1997. For the last decade of his life, from 1997 to 2007, he lived in Los Angeles. The exhibition includes little-known early work of the fifties, the groundbreaking ‘collagist’ work of the sixties that established his reputation, a...

From the Van Gogh Museum: "Vincent van Gogh lived in Auvers-sur-Oise from 20 May 1890 until his death on 29 July of the same year. He was tremendously productive in these months and made several of his most renowned masterpieces, including 'Wheatfield with Crows' and 'Tree Roots'. In the anniversary year of 2023, the Van Gogh Museum and Musée d’Orsay are organizing a major exhibition about the final months of Vincent van Gogh’s life, which he spent in the French village of Auvers-sur-Oise. The exhibition 'Van Gogh in Auvers. His Final Months' is on view from 12 May until 3 September 2023." Find out more: https://www.vangoghmuseum.com/vangogh...   ✨ A "Starry Night" ending to our 50th-anniversary celebration on the Museumplein. @StudioDrift brought Vincent's works to life against the evening sky. Watch the full drone performance here: https://t.co/EkHwol0P80 pic.twitter.com/SqQGJMUW0u — Van Gogh Museum (@vangoghmuseum) June 3, 2023

Gregg Chadwick Jordaan Window (Coffee in Amsterdam) 25cm x 25cm oil on wood 2010 Late Light  by Philip Levine (January 10, 1928 - 2015) Rain filled the streets once a year, rising almost to door and window sills, battering walls and roofs until it cleaned away the mess we'd made. My father told me this, he told me it ran downtown and spilled into the river, which in turn emptied finally into the sea. He said this only once while I sat on the arm of his chair and stared out at the banks of gray snow melting as the March rain streaked past. All the rest of that day passed on into childhood, into nothing, or perhaps some portion hung on in a tiny corner of thought. Perhaps a clot of cinders that peppered the front yard clung to a spar of old weed or the concrete lip of the curb and worked its way back under the new growth spring brought and is a part of that yard still. Perhaps light falling on distant houses becomes those houses, hunching them down at dusk like sheep browsing on a fa...

  by Gregg Chadwick Gregg Chadwick A Walk With Obama 30"x22"gouache on monotype on paper 2022 When in high school, I would often visit the Phillips Collection in Washington DC. I felt at home in DC. We were in NOVA because my dad was stationed at Headquarters Marine Corps in Arlington, Virginia.  During World War II, artist Richard Diebenkorn also served in the Marine Corps. From 1943 until 1945, he was stationed at Marine Corps Base Quantico in Virginia. During that time, Diebenkorn often visited the Phillips Collection in Washington DC.  I went to art school at UCLA as an undergraduate, searching for the spirit of Diebenkorn who had taught there in the 1960s. I didn’t meet Diebenkorn at UCLA, but I did eventually move to San Francisco after graduate school at NYU — perhaps in an artistic search for clues left by the Bay Area Figurative movement that Diebenkorn helped engender. As his health failed, Diebenkorn painted less but continued to create etchings at Crown Point ...

Long time readers know that I am inspired by the life and work of David Hockney. My thoughts on Hockney's 2005 exhibition at LA Louver can be found here .   I wrote then and still feel that Hockney, throughout his career, has been as interested in how we see as in what we see. Light, color and questions on space and time have come to the forefront in both physics (light has become the cornerstone of reality and space and time have become observer-dependent) and the art of David Hockney. This new retrospective of David Hockney's art at the Kunstmuseum Luzern looks like a must see.  From Vernissage TV: "The Kunstmuseum Luzern is currently showing the first comprehensive exhibition of David Hockney's works in Switzerland. The retrospective presents works from 1954 to 2018. Titled Moving Focus , the show includes his experimental early works, his famous pool paintings and double portraits, photographic works, and his more recent landscapes both in acrylic and as digital an...

Gregg Chadwick The Painter of the World (   Seol-min)   12"x9"oil on panel 2021 At the Asian Art Museum in San Francisco a few years ago, I watched the Korean Buddhist Nun artist Seol-min paint a gorgeous artwork of the Water Moon Avalokiteshvara, also known as Guanyin. Her canvas was laid flat on the floor and she painted on top of it as if she was bodysurfing a gentle wave with brushes in hand. The large hall where Seol-min painted was quiet. The gentle sound of her brushes created a kind of music that echoed off the marble walls. My oil on panel painting "The Painter of the World" is my latest artwork inspired by this experience with the artist Seol-min. The Asian Art Museum has created a video of Seol-min at the museum. I am in the background, off camera, watching the events. Video Below. Link at: https://education.asianart.org/resources/korean-buddhist-art/ Featured at Saatchi Art's The Other Art Fair Los Angeles at Barker Hangar from September 23-26, 2021....

Gregg Chadwick Still I Rise 40"x30" oil on linen 2017 "From all this, my friends, there arises an insight which the poet must learn through other people. There is no insurmountable solitude. All paths lead to the same goal: to convey to others what we are. And we must pass through solitude and difficulty, isolation and silence in order to reach forth to the enchanted place where we can dance our clumsy dance and sing our sorrowful song - but in this dance or in this song there are fulfilled the most ancient rites of our conscience in the awareness of being human and of believing in a common destiny." --Pablo Neruda

by Gregg Chadwick Intimately viewing the drawings of Michelangelo helps pull the veil of fame off of this towering figure. In spite of the title of the exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, to give humanity back to artistic gods is no easy feat. The Met has done it twice in fourteen years. First was the 2003 exhibition of  Leonardo da Vinci's  drawings and now those of Michelangelo in 2017. Both exhibits have given a sense of hope and human possibility back to viewers in times of struggle and uncertainty. In its exhibition,  Michelangelo: Divine Draftsman and Designer  the Metropolitan Museum has created a temporary museum dedicated to the life, times, and art of Michelangelo. It includes 133 drawings and poems created by Michelangelo that link the artworks to ongoing projects by the artist and his workshop. One of Michelangelo's earliest paintings is included and a small group of his sculptures in marble fill out the show. Also included are dr...

I enjoyed this chat with Stephanie Case. Recorded in my studio, it provides a hint of the theme of compassion that runs through my artwork.  - Thanks for listening.

by Gregg Chadwick Richard Diebenkorn   July  58.5" x 53.75" oil on canvas 1957 Private Collection  "So distinctive are the pentimenti in Diebenkorn's art that each painting carries within itself the visible history of the artist's search." - Arthur C. Danto Outside my window, fireworks are streaking across the evening sky. A group of young adults are gathered down below. Lightly boisterous after a day in the sun, checking their phones for the next event. "Don't get too close", they say as they light a small firework in the park across the street. The group runs. The miniature explosive was a dud. Smiles and backslaps as they walk down the street. Further in the distance a dull thump echoes down the way as a firework lifts off - exploding at its apogee. In the rolling Santa Monica fog, the explosion is now a muted glow on the horizon. When I was a kid, my family would drive to the local July 4th events. I remember when ...