Interview with Marlaina Teich of Marlaina Teich Designs (mtdny.com). Marlaina graduated with a degree from The Metropolitan Institute of Interior Design and is an Allied Member of the American Society of Interior Designers. Marlaina has been a featured designer in various designer showcases and her work has been published in regional as well as national publications. This is what she has to say about incorporating fine art into interior design projects:

Do you use fine art in your interior design projects (if so, what percentage)?
I use fine art in at least 50% of my projects.

Are you more likely to use original fine art pieces or reproductions?
It really depends on my client and his/her budget.  There is really nothing that can compare to an original piece of art, both in the provenance of the piece and also in the depth and dimension. That said, a giclee is the perfect substitute when my client’s budget restrains them, but their taste encourages the purchase of a beautiful piece.

What criteria goes into your selection of a fine art piece (ex: well known artist, subject matter, value, investment potential, medium, etc.)?
The art has to really speak to my client (or me) on some level. I don’t specify art just because it matches our color scheme. I want the art to evoke a feeling of happiness, contentment or excitement whenever they look upon it in their spaces.

When clients have original art do you try to incorporate it into your design?
If something is important to my clients, then I will always incorporate it into the design plan, whether it is artwork, an area rug or a favorite piece of furniture.

Marlaina Teich Designs, Corp., http://www.MTDNY.com

Do you prefer local artists or do you also search online for national or international artists?
Many of the fine art pieces that I specify are from local artists. It makes clients proud to support their community’s talented artists!

What was your favorite project using fine art?
One of my favorite projects using fine art was for a client that had really eclectic tastes. So we have mixed media, abstract art, line drawings and more traditional art to create a complex yet cohesive space.

Marlaina Teich Designs, Corp. http://www.MTDNY.com

Do artists approach you to work with you on future projects? Do they send you portfolios or set up appointments with you to review their portfolios? What is your preferred method of being approached by an artist?
I work with art consultants who will source specific styles of art for me and then bring the actual art to my office so I can approve the selections.  Then we bring the pieces into the clients homes or offices to get a real sense of the art in the actual spaces, an important step to making sure it’s just right.

Marlaina Teich Designs, Corp.
2290 Babylon Turnpike, Suite A  Merrick, NY  11566
ASID Allied Member
(p) 516-378-0228  (f) 516-941-0777
http://www.MTDNY.com

Jeremy Bortz

Jeremy states, “I’m definitely hoping through my paintings I’m creating hope—number one—and number two, that I’m giving people with serious illnesses some kind of inspiration to continue.”

His philanthropic efforts started in September of 2007, when Jeremy’s sister-in-law was diagnosed with breast cancer and spent a lot of time in Toronto’s Sunnybrook Hospital.

“I remember the halls of the hospital oncology ward were a light blue, almost grey color, and there were all these paintings on the walls of people who had lost loved ones or children… and I thought, ‘This is such a depressing place to be. Before I get put in a box, I’m going to change the way these hospitals in Toronto look.’ ”

He then approached Scotiabank—a leading Canadian bank—and set up the “Flowers of Hope” program, wherein he would donate one original painting to Sunnybrook for every $2,000 the bank raised toward research and beautification. Over half a million dollars was raised, and Jeremy donated 250 paintings to Sunnybrook’s oncology ward, which has since been rebuilt and repainted in “brighter, more uplifting colors”.

After this successful effort, Jeremy was approached by numerous other charities and has since raised millions of dollars for the Leukemia Research Fund of Canada, the Canadian Cystic Fibrosis Foundation, Toronto Sick Kids Hospital, Toronto Eastern Hospital and the Children’s Aid Foundation—just to name a few.

“I’m hoping that as time goes by, with every little effort that I try to make, I will be able to achieve my goal of making a difference in these people’s lives. When someone walks into a hospital, they always kind of dread the feeling, going to a place where they’ll hear a diagnosis and so on. My intention is to change the way people feel going into a hospital. If they can escape for just a brief moment, then I’ve achieved my goal.”

I have personally seen his artwork up close and the colors are so vibrant, the textures almost 3D and you can’t not smile when looking at his work.

Excerpts taken from the Art Expo blog

Jeremy Borst, Philanthropist

Jeremy Borst Artwork

by Peter Blake, 2007, Lieberman Gallery

Pop Art combined with the youth and pop music phenomenon of the 1950s and ’60s, and became part of the image of fashionable, ‘swinging’ London. Peter Blake, for example, designed album covers for Elvis Presley and the Beatles and placed film stars such as Brigitte Bardot in his pictures in the same way that Warhol was immortalizing Marilyn Monroe in the USA.

Pop art came in a number of waves, but many of its icons shared the same interests in the urban, consumer, modern experience.”  The term pop art is an abbreviation of the artistic movement ‘popular art,’ which was first used by Lawrence Alloway, an English Critic. Pop art emerged in the 1950’s in Britain and became one of the major artistic movements of the twentieth century. Pop art caught on in America in the early 1960’s and tended to be used in advertisements and comic books.

Pop art is widely interpreted as either a reversal or reaction to Abstract Expressionism or an expansion upon it. Pop Art was easy to understand, easy to recognize because it was iconic and accessible to the mass public.

Pop Art merged the divide between the fine arts with the media and advertising commercial arts, a divide that had been prominent for hundreds of years making pop art a major success. Pop art had the ability to look glamorous and polished even though it was massed produced and it had a relatively low cost but this added to the beauty of it. It captured the changes in society; the enormous economic growth and instant Hollywood success with celebrities.

Marilyn Monroe by Andy Warhol, 1967

Andy Warhol was an American artist and a central figure of the pop art movement. Not only was Warhol very successful as an artist but he was also talented at writing and producing records and films, however it was Warhol’s paintings that made him so famous worldwide. His painting of a Campbell’s soup tin which was used for a commercial has become extremely well known and praised along with his screen-print of Marilyn Monroe which reflects Warhol’s own insight on American fame and stardom.

Of equal importance to American pop art is Roy Lichtenstein. Lichtenstein’s work probably defines the basic premise of pop art better than any other through parody. Selecting the old-fashioned comic strip as subject matter, Roy Lichtenstein produces a hard-edged, precise composition that documents while it parodies in a soft manner. The paintings of Lichtenstein, like those of Andy Warhol, Tom Wesselmann and others, share a direct attachment to the commonplace image of American popular culture, but also treat the subject in an impersonal manner clearly illustrating the idealization of mass production.

by Roy Lichtensteing

Many artists today still enjoy painting in the style of pop art. Jeff Koons, Mel Ramos, Dennis Ropar and most recently Wanda Pepin has begun painting a series of pop art original paintings.

by Jeff Koons

by Dennis Ropar

Peace Pop Art by Wanda Pepin, 2010

Sources: www.artchive.com/artchive/pop_art.html and http://www.michaelarnoldart.com/Pop_Art.htm

Vanderbilt studied art at the Art Students League of New York. She became known for her artwork, giving one-woman shows of oil paintings, watercolors, and pastels. This artwork was adapted and licensed, starting about 1968, by Hallmark Cards (a manufacturer of paper products) and by Bloomcraft (a textile manufacturer), and Vanderbilt began designing specifically for linens, china, glassware and flatware.

In 2001, Gloria had her first exhibition in Vermont. Her exhibition of “Dream Boxes” at the Southern Vermont Arts Center, Manchester, Vermont was a critical success. Then on June 16, 2007, she returned to the Southern Vermont Arts Center with an exhibition of 35 paintings where 21 paintings were sold during the opening reception. In September 26, 2009 Gloria returned to the Arts Center to be one of four panelist at its Annual Fall Show Exhibition plus to sign her latest novel,”Obsession: An Erotic Tale”. Because of the demand for her artwork, she has created her own on-line website, Gloria Vanderbilt Fine Art. This site features her paintings, lithographs and dream boxes.

Heart Does Not Break, SOLD, oil on gesso framed dimensions: 15.25" x 12"

Here is an exerpt from her artist statement: “Often my images are channeled in dreams which find expression in my paintings often in a narrative quality which has  been shuffled around in the kaleidoscope of my imagination to find themselves in colors and patterns that sustain me. Memory is also a driving influence, memories I absorb and reinvent to changing effect because I have changed but do not want to let them go. Color too intoxicates, inspires, so does the beauty of a person, who has something I can’t quite catch. They become muses which I become obsessed to define, reveal something of their mystery.”

To learn more about her and her life, check out the other blog article I wrote: Gloria Vanderbilt: Heiress, Fashion Designer, Fine Artist and Author

Arshile and Agnes Gorky

Arshile and Agnes Gorky: Master and Muse written by Hayden Herrera and published in Vogue

Hayden Herrera, author

This is a wonderful story about a young woman’s relationship with the muse of Arshile Gorky, Mougouch, who later would become her stepmother. Her house in Boston was full of Gorky’s art books and, even better, his art. These books and art belonged to her stepmother, Agnes (nicknamed Mougouch). She reports that the paintings gave her hints not only about Gorky but about who Mougouch was and had been in the past.

"Mother and Son," by Arshile Gorky

Herrera states, “The painter Arshile Gorky’s relationship with his wife, “Mougouch,” was passionate, turbulent—and misunderstood.” She lays out the history of this relationship, the pain, conflict and difficulties Arshile knew as his life. They loved each other but life threw them many challenges.

Today, Gorky is seen as a bridge between the School of Paris and Abstract Expressionism, a movement that took off just at the moment when he died. As Herrera’s best friend put it all those years ago, Mougouch played a part in this artistic transformation. When the Gorky retrospective opened in Philadelphia in October 2009, Mougouch could not be there, but the coming together of so many magnificent Gorky paintings and drawings is testimony to her triumph as well. Check out her amazing story in Vogue

Among the standout fine art pieces is Dali’s “Playmate,” a 1966 watercolor of a reclining nude that until recently hung over a mantel in Hefner’s bedroom at the Playboy Mansion. It’s estimated to bring $100,000 to $150,000. It was one of 11 works chosen for “The Playmate as Fine Art” pictorial for the magazine’s January 1967 Playmate review issue that asked artists to create Playmate-inspired art.

“I’m a fan of Dali’s and happy to be sharing it,” Hefner said, smiling. “It’s a reclining nude, so that made it easy to personally identify with it.”

The star of the auction, ,” depicts the artist’s iconic theme of a woman’s open, lipsticked mouth. The 1966 work is estimated to bring $2 million to $3 million. “It’s a great example of his work from his best period,” Baker said.

This picture provided by Christie's shows a 1967 oil painting by Tom Wesselmann titled "Mouth #8." It is one of 125 items of original art from the Playboy Enterprises archive up for sale at a Dec. 8 auction at Christie's in New York dubbed "The Year of the Rabbit." Nearly all the items in the sale have appeared in Playboy magazine, a cultural icon that helped liberate American sexual mores.(AP Photo/CHRISTIE'S IMAGES LTD.)

The December sale marks the second time Christie’s has sold items from Playboy. On its 50th anniversary in 2003, Christie’s offered memorabilia and ephemera from Playboy’s collection.

“This one’s really more about the art,” said Elkies of the December sale.

Source: NPR.org

Bidders at the Sotheby’s auction went after the Modigliani with a passion: Modigliani’s portrait of a woman in the nude seated on a sofa and quizzically leering at the viewer with pursed lips. “Nu assis sur un divan (La belle Romaine)” was painted in 1917 and later appeared in several important art shows. These include the major Modigliani retrospectives put together at the Musée d’Art moderne de la Ville de Paris in 1981, and at the Düsseldorf Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen and the Zürich Kunsthaus in 1991. As a result, the price paid at Sotheby’s New York in 1999 by the European collector, who consigned it this year, had been a huge $16.77 million.

The $68.9 million paid at a Sotheby’s auction for Modigliani’s “Nude Sitting on a Divan (The Beautiful Roman Woman)” on Tuesday set a record for a work by the artist.

Taking into account the drying up of early-20th-century art supplies and the exponentially soaring demand, Sotheby’s quoted this week an estimate “in excess of $40 million.” Melanie Clore, deputy chairman of Sotheby’s Europe, told this writer that in view of the enormous interest aroused by the portrait, she privately thought, hours before the sale, that it might fetch around $50 million.

In the event, it took nearly 10 minutes of tense bidding, deftly steered by Tobias Meyer, for the prissy lady in the nude to climb to $69 million, setting a world record for Modigliani that is likely to hold for a while.

“It’s designer brands for new buyers,” said Rory Howard, a private art dealer from London, referring to the appeal of big names. “Art as fashion.” (Source of quote: NYTimes)

Violon et guitare,” by Juan Gris, rose to $28.64 million.

Buyers Feast on Turn-of-the-Century Art – NYTimes.com

Bullish art market surprises even the most seasoned art professionals. Christie’s succeeded in selling 67 Impressionist and Modern works of art for $231.4 million.

There were two world records for the price of art: A bronze conceived by Matisse around 1930, but cast in 1978, 24 years after his death, to become the artist’s most expensive work. “Nu de dos, 4 état (Back IV)” as Christie’s called it, largely exceeded its estimate as it climbed to a staggering $48.8 million. The other world recrod was “Violon et guitare” done by Juan Gris in September 1913 rose to $28.64 million. While this actually matches the upper end of the estimate quoted by Christie’s, Thomas Seydoux, the international head of the Impressionist and Modern art department, told this writer that he did not think the picture could reach such a level. Mr. Seydoux added that he considers the price to be justified. Gris himself regarded his Cubist still life as his ultimate masterpiece.

So what makes a piece of art timeless or a masterpiece? Webster‘s defines a masterpiece as a “supreme intellectual or artistic achievement.” Anne Richter, an artist and educator in New York City, has this to say: “You know when you’ve encountered a masterpiece because it stays with you the rest of your life. It’s like chewing gum on the inside of your brain and it sticks there, becoming part of a private reservoir of things that take you away from yourself and your environment. It’s just you and the masterpiece and the mystery. It grabs you. Often you don’t know why.”

A masterpiece should transcend its subject matter, expanding the viewer’s concept of art. We admire the masterpiece because it pretends to have been effortless, its seams invisible to our adoring, hungry eyes. Take Diego Velazquez’s Las Meninas (Maids of Honor), considered to be one of the greatest paintings in the world. As seen from the perspective of the king and queen being painted, we are given an intimate viewing of everyday royal life. The artist stares at the viewer from the canvas, leaving us to ponder who is watching who? It is painting as photograph, telling a story and inviting us to listen.

Here is a wonderful description of this painting from Michel Foucault, “Las Meninas,” The Order of Things: An Archaeology of the Human Sciences (New York: Vintage Books, 1970), 3-16.  ”Beginning with the painting itself, we can see that Las Meninasdepicts a behind-the-scenes look at Velazquez the royal painter at work. The painter has just stepped out from behind the great canvas to study his model. The dwarf at the right of the painting, her hand on her breast, gazes respectfully at this same model. Likewise, the courtier behind her, hands clasped, with the same look of respect, gazes at the same point. While the two meninasrespectfully look at the Infanta, the center of the gathering, the Infanta looks out of the surface of the painting. The court painter, the dwarf, and the courtiers also seem to be looking out of the painting. Who are they all looking at? Which “model” are they looking upon? The answer slips in on the back wall. Among the paintings in the studio is a mirror. We know it to be a mirror because its bright edges and colors contrast the dark and unlighted works surrounding it. In the mirror are two figures: the father and mother of the Infanta, King Philip IV and Queen Mariana.”

Although the criteria on the exact elements involved in selecting a masterpiece is subjective, there are common qualities that every masterpiece shares. Some sort of feeling must be evoked, whether it’s curiosity, awe, or disgust. There should be style, technique, balance, and harmony. Also don’t forget motive; one cannot deny the impact religion held for Fra Angelico, the insatiable curiosity of Leonardo, the rebelliousness of bad boy Caravaggio, or the insanity and passion of van Gogh.

A masterpiece will instill in us a sense of the infinite or timelessness, the feeling that anything is possible. Sometimes, as in the case of Michelangelo’s statue of the Virgin Mary holding her dying son (Pieta[ag]) a masterpiece is a work that is simply perfect in the same way a rose is perfect. We can add nothing nor do anything to improve it.

Source: Penguin.com

The Hills are Alive with Color, Wanda Pepin, 24x30 gallery wrap canvas

If you love autumn landscapes, now is the time to find original paintings to add to your collection.

Aspen Leaves by Elaine Frenett, 14x21 Limited Edition Lithograph

Jewel in the Crown by Christina Madden, 22x28 Oil