Free Republic

NEW YORK (AP) -- The morning after Michelle Obama's big speech at the Democratic National Convention in 2012, in which she argued passionately for a second term for her husband, designer Tracy Reese's phone was ringing. And ringing. Mrs. Obama's powerfully delivered speech had attracted much attention - but these phone calls were about her dress. A shimmering sleeveless sheath in rose and silvery gray, it was pretty universally considered a fashion slam dunk. And customers wanted it.

Time to deal with Cubism and its development. For those who are really intense about all this, there is an excellent book from which many of today’s ideas come from. It’s edited by William Rubin (former curator of the Museum of Modern Art) and is called Cezanne: The Late Work. It’s the essay on Cezannism and the beginnings of Cubism that opened my eyes to how it was not Picasso, but his buddy Georges Braque, who really did the first cubist paintings. Surprised? I think most of the art world was surprised at that and most of them probably still...

"...The art of painting, one of the greatest traditions in all of human history has been under a merciless and relentless assault for the last one hundred years. I'm referring to the accumulated knowledge of over 2500 hundred years, spanning from Ancient Greece to the early Renaissance and through to the extraordinary pinnacles of artistic achievement seen in the High Renaissance, 17th century Dutch, and the great 19th century Academies of Europe and America. These traditions, just when they were at their absolute zenith, at a peak of achievement, seemingly unbeatable and unstoppable, hit the twentieth century at full stride,...

ARC Chairman speaks at the Met Good Art / Bad Art - Pulling Back the Curtain, by Fred Ross June 7, 2001 -- Fred Ross, Chairman of the Art Renewal Center, addressed a crowd of over 700 portrait artists, gallery owners and members of the press today at America's premier institution of art, the Metropolitan Museum in New York, at the American Society of Portrait Artists (ASOPA) Conference. Mr Ross was interrupted at least 10 times to thunderous applause or peals of laughter as he blasted Modernism and its chief icons, Picasso, Mattisse and DeKooning, with some of the most...