SLUSSER GALLERY

2012-01-26T20:27:00.000-08:00

SLUSSER GALLERY IS PLEASED TO PRESENT...

CARL PURCELL: SOLO EXHIBITION

February 17 to March 9, 2012

Opening Reception for the Artist

Friday, February 17, 2012

6-9 PM

Live Music & Refreshments

CURRENTLY ON DISPLAY AT SLUSSER GALLERY...

2011-11-19T17:13:00.000-08:00

"Mothra Descending on New York"
18" x 24", acrylic on plexiglass. Amelia Slusser.

"Which One... Tom, Dick, or Harry?"

5 ft x 4 ft, acrylic on canvas. Laura Slusser.

PHOTOS FROM SLUSSER GALLERY'S OPENING RECEPTION FOR THE JONATHAN FAIRBANKS EXHIBITION

2011-11-19T17:04:00.000-08:00

2011-03-26T12:23:00.001-07:00

SLUSSER GALLERY HOURS:
Monday Thru Friday
9:00-12:00 pm & 1:30-5:00 pm
(weekends by appointment)

JONATHAN FAIRBANKS: THE WASATCH PAINTED EN PLEIN AIR

Opening Reception

Friday, November 18, 2011

6-9 PM

Live Music and Refreshments
Exhibition Ongoing Through January 14, 2012

Slusser Gallery is proud to present Jonathan Fairbanks: The Wasatch Painted En Plein Air, an exhibition of forty oil paintings by the renowned Massachusetts landscape painter. Fairbanks’ artwork is owned by institutions such as the National Portrait Gallery, the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, The Boston Public Library, the Wye House and Myrtle Grove on the Eastern Shore of Maryland, and the Alhambra in southern Spain.

Jonathan Leo Fairbanks is a renowned artist and expert of American arts and antiques. He is the son of the great American sculptor and Utah native, Avard T. Fairbanks. Fairbanks earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts from the University of Utah and his Masters in Fine Arts from the University of Pennsylvania through a joint program with the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts.

He earned a second Masters degree in American Culture, from the University of Delaware in the Winterthur Museum Fellowship Program. He served at the museum as an Associate Curator in charge of conservation for nine years. Fairbanks created the American decorative arts and sculpture department at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston and served as the department's Curator from 1970-1999.

Crossing at Tanner's Flats Stream, in the Little Cottonwood Canyon

oil on panel, 18" x 24" by Jonathan Fairbanks.

Jonathan Paints McPolin Farm near Park City, Utah July, 2011.

2011-03-26T12:11:00.000-07:00

MARK SLUSSER:
CONTEMPORARY REALIST
LANDSCAPES & STILL LIFES

EXHIBITION ONGOING THRU 11/11/2011

OPENING RECEPTION FOR THE ARTIST
FRIDAY, OCTOBER 21, 2011
6-9 PM
(During SLC Gallery Stroll)

LIVE MUSIC & REFRESHMENTS
Slusser Gallery

447 East 100 South

Salt Lake City, UT 84111

The Comedian, 16" x 14.25", oil

Mark Slusser

PHOTOS FROM SLUSSER GALLERY'S

10/21/2011 OPENING RECEPTION

2011-03-25T15:48:00.000-07:00

Memento Mori, 24" x 36", oil

Mark Slusser

2011-03-08T19:47:00.000-08:00

Torrey Pines Above the Salt Marsh, 11" x 14", oil

Mark Slusser

2010-08-09T04:17:00.000-07:00

La Jolla Cove, 18" x 24", oil

Mark Slusser

2010-07-12T21:24:00.000-07:00

Galvanized Orchids, 40" x 30", oil

Mark Slusser

ON CONTEMPORARY REALISM

2010-07-04T14:19:00.000-07:00

We’ve thought about it a lot. What makes art worth making, buying, or even hanging on a wall? Because we like it? Absolutely. But how can we know what constitutes great art? Art that we’ll continue to like, or better yet love, years from now? In other words, how should we evaluate art? Over the years we’ve settled on Contemporary Realism. What’s that? Here’s a definition for you: Contemporary Realism advocates a simple realistic painting style. The artists of the genre come from various backgrounds but are united in their choice to depict their subjects accurately, rather than conform to the more abstract movements popular in Modern art. Contemporary Realists choose subjects from daily life or that will have meaning to modern audiences.

Mark considers himself a contemporary realist painter, and realism is the kind of art that we admire and try to collect ourselves. Once in a while, we run into an abstract painting that we like, but how can we know that it’s good? We like the way John Pence said it, "Abstraction to me is willy-nilly; I can’t explain it and in many cases it doesn’t require great skill. Realism isn’t the same. It requires skills, like those of Michelangelo or John Singer Sargent. These artists go to school and meet standards. They have to draw and they have to understand color. We all know what it is that they’re depicting, so we know whether they’re good or bad." (John Pence is a champion of Contemporary Realism with his impeccable John Pence Gallery in San Francisco.) We think seeing is believing, and not believing is seeing.

Green Sauce, 12" x 12", oil, Mark Slusser

2010-06-27T12:11:00.000-07:00

WHO IS ODD NERDRUM AND WHY DOES HE CALL HIS ART KITSCH?

2010-06-11T17:55:00.000-07:00

We love Odd Nerdrum. He is a Norwegian artist of great acclaim. We first noticed him in the ’90’s. His paintings are nothing short of magnificent. He does figures in a stunningly provocative way, and he paints them in timeless, often surreal backgrounds. His work is what we imagine David Lynch would have painted if he’d gone on to be a fine artist rather than a film maker. We were intrigued to learn that David Bowie owns an Odd Nerdrum painting.

Nerdrum is a master, but what we thought was odd about him was that he calls his own art kitsch. We always thought kitsch was a derogatory term, especially in the context of fine art. You know... things like pink flamingos and kewpie dolls... cheap and mass-produced after World War II in a shoddy and tasteless fashion. Sometimes kitsch rises to the level of cool or camp. But we found it bizarre to think of Odd Nerdrum’s work as kitsch. So why does Odd Nerdrum use the word kitsch to describe his own work? It’s an interesting story that is important because it illustrates something that has been going on in the art world for decades... a bias, even trashing of representational art by art critics, such as Clement Greenberg, who went so far as to equate kitsch with all academic art.

The story of Odd begins when he studied art as a young man in Oslo and his father, an accomplished artist himself, told him that if he wanted to be a successful artist, he’d better forget about representational painting. He was getting the same advice from the Art Academy of Oslo, where he was studying, which was moving in the direction of abstract art. “I saw that I was in the process of making a choice that would end in defeat. By choosing those qualities that were so alien to my own time, I had to give up at the same time the art on which the art of our time rests. I had to paint in defiance of my own era without the protection of the era's superstructure. Briefly put I would paint myself into isolation.” Critics were panning representational art, some even calling it kitsch. So Odd Nerdrum did a brave and wonderful thing. He declared that if representational art is kitsch, then his work is kitsch! A manifesto. We adhere to it, and it has become a big part of the way we think about art. Long live Odd Nerdrum... and long live kitsch.

La Jolla Cove at Dusk, 12" x 16", oil on canvas, Mark Slusser

2010-06-11T10:47:00.001-07:00

How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Boho Dance

2010-06-09T21:29:00.000-07:00

This title might be too long, but I think it describes what we want our book to be about. The boho dance is a term that is central to the business of art. The making of art is the most important thing, but for us everything that accompanies that makes up the boho dance. We think a lot about the struggle between making art and selling it, which is what Tom Wolfe was talking about in his book The Painted Word, where he first coined the term boho dance. He was the first, and Joni Mitchell was merely alluding to his book when she wrote the song of the same name. (Because both book and song came out the same year, 1975, we’re not completely positive about which came first.)

Back in the eighties, we started with the simple premise that Mark likes to paint. One thing led to another and, before you know it, he’s facing the boho dance. As Tom Wolfe puts it, “The Boho Dance, in which the artist shows his stuff within the circles, coteries, movements, isms, as if he doesn’t care about anything else; as if, in fact, he has a knife in his teeth against the fashionable world uptown.” For us, every aspect of art somehow relates to this struggle or tension between the love for art and the validation the artist looks for by selling his or her art, or even by just having people appreciate it. Who makes art purely for himself?How others respond to your work is central to the process, like it or not. For us, what to paint, where to paint, how to paint, what to do with it after you’ve painted it, is all part of that process we like to call the boho dance.