The timeless art of still lifes (bodegones), By Margaret Failoni, Aug 4, 2006, The magic world of Annemarie and Gary Slipper, By Margaret Failoni, Micro Cosmo: small, important works, By Margaret Failoni, Return of the gods, Paintings by Goode-DeBlanc at

Saturday, August 5, 5pm, Generator Gallery

Fábrica Aurora, Calzada de la Aurora

Still life art has been around for millennia and, with marble statuary, was considered the optimum art form. It played a dominant role in Roman wall decorations and took as its subject matter a specific cult of the object or the characteristic way of life of the Roman patricians. The walls of Roman villas of affluent families, such as those found at Pompeii, had walls decorated with garlands of flowers, bowls of fruit, braces of venison on blown-glass servers. Many of the artists of antiquity were capable of achieving extraordinary trompe l'oeil effects. Since the function of this art was largely to highlight the opulence of a householder's property, such painting appeared in private houses rather than public buildings, in the decoration of the oecus or reception room, or the triclinium, or dining room, on walls and sometimes in exquisitely executed floor mosaics. Thus, a mosaic or wall painting that included spring vegetation probably represented the season when it was harvested. Flower paintings could refer to the floral décor common to banquets. Still lifes of food and flowers, either alone or together or as a secondary motif, appeared in the 16th century. These paintings symbolized the seasons or celebrated the senses.

Without a doubt, the largest numbers of created and collected still life masterpieces were executed between the latter parts of the 16th century and the 18th century. This production and collection occurred mostly in continental Europe, in Holland, Belgium and Germany in the 16th century and France, Italy and Spain during the 17th and 18th centuries.

However, true masterworks can be traced back to Roman times, such as the superb mosaic "Emblema with Dates" of the late Hadrianic period in the Vatican Museum, or the fresco painting "Doves Perched on the Edge of a Basin," from the second century CE, found in Hadrian's villa in Tivoli and now in Rome's Musei Capitolini. Magnificent works continued to be created throughout the Middle Ages and throughout Europe. But the apex of this genre as a highly respected and collectable art form was reached in the Renaissance. Such masterpieces as Leonardo DaVinci's "Pea Pods, Cherries and Wild Strawberries," Albrecht Dürer's 1503 "Large Clump of Grass," and Arcimboldo's 1591 "Portrait of Emperor Rudolf II Vertumnus," depicting a riot of fruit, vegetables and flowers, are but a drop in the bucket of superb still life art. The Spanish school with Juan Sanchez Cotán, Juan Espinosa, Francisco de Zurbaran and, later, Francisco de Goya-who painted a series of bodegones for his own home-rivaled the Italians with their Maginis, Ceruttis and Caravaggios. France had its own masters who were commissioned to paint costly, large works for palaces and castles: Georges de la Tour, Sebastien Stoskopf, Simon Renard de Saint-André and Lubin Baugin were all the rage throughout the 17th century. But, if the French excelled in finely detailed items in their tableaux, such as porcelain and lots of glass, the Spanish and the Italians leaned more toward game and fruit, bowls and wine decanters. The masters of highly decorative floral arrangements with occasional insects such as bees or butterflies swarming over the arrangements were to be the Belgians, the Dutch and the Germans.
Masters such as Balthasar van der Ast, Georg Flegel, Roelandt Savery, Ambrosius Bosschaert the Elder and Jan Brueghel the Elder were the superstars during that golden period of the 17th century.

Approaching more modern times, in the second half of the 19th and during the 20th century, critics -a very new profession-started considering still life painting as a "marginal genre."

Yet, whenever there has been a crisis of ideas, and therefore "tendencies," in the art world, artists and collectors have returned to the still life. Even such modern-day masters as those of the Pop Art movement and the European Transavantgarde, soon after, had felt the necessity to try their hand. The first half of the 20th century gave us a wealth of artists working in the still life genre.

It was to be the triumph of the "how" over the "what." It wasn't so much what was painted as how it was painted, from the Impressionists to the Expressionists to the Cubists and the Futurists. Liebermann in Germany and Monet in France were breaking with tradition, close on the heels of Fantin-Latour. Boldini in Italy and Petrov-Vodkin in Russia, along with Matisse, Kirchner and Nolde, all followed through. Not until Braque and Picasso did the true revolution take place. Now the "how" became all important. It wasn't so much what one saw, but more how to render what one felt. Picasso's "Bowl of Fruit
and Bread on Table" was a forceful beginning. Giorgio de Chirico stunned the art world with his 1919 "Sacred Fish."

However, the revolution did not last long. Highly exaggerated color and distorted shapes became rare as a wave of revisionism swept across Europe. This call to order was motivated by a distrust of the irrational emotionalism that had surfaced in the catastrophe of World War I. The 1920s was dominated by a general return to representation and classicism. The first evidence of a reorientation made its appearance with Duchamp's "ready-made" that spawned provocation and iconoclasm. In response to this, many artists were again moved to focus on the still life. Immediately after World War II, Italian artists once again timidly side-stepped from the classic rendition. Such painters as Guttuso, Morandi and Casorati were experimenting. Toward the end of the 1950s, American Pop Art broke through the restrictions of classic figuratism. Jasper Johns gave us his "American Flag," Joseph Cornell his boxes, Andy Warhol his Campbell's Soup cans, Wayne Thiebaud his "Lunch Table" and Roy Lichtenstein his "Still Life with Gold Fish."

All of Latin America's 20th-century greats cemented their careers with fantastically rendered still life paintings, from Tamayo's "Watermelons" to Kahlo's "Fruits of The Earth with Watermelons" and, later, Botero's "Oranges" and "Still Life with Watermelon." It seemed as if the Latinos had invented this succulent fruit.

True to the theory that classic still life painting pops up every time there is a crisis in the art world, Generator Gallery presents the exhibition "Still Lifes/Bodegones" with works by 12 different contemporary artists bringing to the viewer a wealth of different styles and tendencies but all in the mode of classic figurative painting.

The artists are Latin and North American. All create their work here in Mexico. One is at his first major exhibition. Others are represented by renowned galleries in Mexico City, Miami and New York, such as GAM-Galería de Arte Mexicano in Mexico City, and the Calder-Snyder Gallery and The Mary Ann Martin Fine Arts Gallery in New York. Most are dedicated still life artists, but some have accepted the invitation and the challenge to create in a genre far from their specialty. Their commonality is their skill and dedication to their craft.

Elena Climent is a dedicated still life genre artist and divides her time between Mexico City and Chicago. She is represented in New York by the most important gallery representing Mexican masters.

Santiago Corral lives and works in San Miguel and is renowned for his exquisite still life paintings.

Miguel Angel Garrido starts what will be a brilliant career as a painter not yet entrenched in a particular genre.

Lynne Gleason is an American living in San Miguel and is an artist's artist. Whatever she sets her eye to, she paints with great skill and artistry.

Nava Grunfeld is from Mexico City and specializes in bodegones painted in transparent watercolors.

Lupe Langensheid is originally from Mexico City and lives and works in San Miguel. She learned her craft studying art and restoration in Florence, Italy. She prefers the art of the bodegón.

Peter Leventhal is an ex-pat New Yorker who lost his heart to Mexico. A great promoter of young artists, Peter is a master painter and sculptor who layers his paints with Fauvist color techniques.

Eugenia Marcos lives and works in Mexico City and creates flower samplers and charming bodegones.

Keith Miller is a Canadian who lives and works in San Miguel and is a master painter of still lifes. He brings to his art a technique reminiscent of the Dutch masters.

Angel Ricardo Rios was born and trained in Cuba. A naturalized Mexican, this artist brings humor and whimsy to beautifully painted work.

Alejandro Rivera-Leal is a brilliant painter and has forged a marvelous career thanks to his research and skillful métier. Wonderful creations leave his San Miguel studio to enter international collections.

Edgar Soberón was born in Cuba, trained in New York and lives and works in San Miguel. His work is the utmost example of good taste and superb trompe l'oeil painting. Although contemporary academics tend to dismiss it as a marginal genre, respect and admiration for craftsmanly precision helps to explain why the trompe l'oeil genre is so popular among collectors.

Works by Annemarie and Gary Slipper

Saturday, August 5, 5:30-8pm

Generator Gallery, Fábrica La Aurora, Calzada de la Aurora

Annemarie Slipper is one of San Miguel's most talented and collected sculptors. Although she has recently delved into the world of the flat picture plane with large, dramatic, acid-bitten works on a metal ground reminiscent of volcanic eruptions, her bronzes demonstrate the métier that her romantic and whimsical creations are made of. She purposely chooses the acid-green patina to present her work of fairy godmothers, winged angels and metaphysical animals.

Annemarie started sculpting in clay, beautifully adapting to the raku technique before succumbing to the heady temptation of bronzes. Her work invites the touch and gives way to flights of fantasy. From elegant torsos to small, very collectable paperweights, this artist creates temptation.

Gary Slipper joins Annemarie in presenting a selection of some new works very much indebted to the dream world. Whereas Annemarie's fantasy world has roots well imbedded in the ground, Gary Slipper's paintings are the stuff dreams are made of. Gently and sophisticatedly erotic, his beauties, painted in candy colors, transcend earthly boundaries. Something about the masterful technique in depicting Gary Slipper's timeless figures is reminiscent of Brueghel but without the condemnation and explicit connection with sin. On the contrary! I would very much like to be invisible and sneak a peek at how this couple spends its evenings.

As San Miguel expands, so does its offering of finer goods to meet the pressing demands of an international presence. More art galleries join the crowded field, but they offer more sophisticated, quality work. Such is the case of the LeNoir Gallery, located on Jesus right in the heart of San Miguel. Thomas LeNoir and his assistant, Erica Corral, have scouted the territory over the past year or so, and have presented the San Miguel public with an extraordinary selection of fine art, including superb photography and some of the best figurative art around.

The Micro Cosmo exhibition brings together a small group of artists working in small format work.

Like so many jewels in his crown, LeNoir, along with Corral, has carefully hand-picked the work, presenting to the watchful eyes of an ever-more-knowledgeable public a small selection of jewels, from the expressionist abstraction of Arky Robbins and the semi-abstract forms of Janet Dowda, to the romantic autumnal landscapes of Adrián Gutiérrez. Gutiérrez's work is the closest to the Wyatt family genius that I've encountered. Exquisitely delicate brush strokes weave their magic. Dede Schumacher presents small, golden, magic little horses on a dark ground, seemingly floating in time. Master painter Peter Leventhal brings his Fauvist coloration to create a carnival-like dream world. Santiago Corral, the master of the tromp l'oeil genre, puts together a group of table settings, lovingly and perfectly executed. The surprise addition to this crown of jewels is the extraordinary work of conceptual art
ist Masako Takahashi. Takahashi has created a small grouping of hieroglyphic-like embroidery on small circles and squares of silk. The artist embroiders with her own, long, silken hair, and it's not important to be able to actually read the message; the long and tedious technique is part of the message itself: a woman's plight, a woman's longing, a woman's patience.

This group of quality work is representational of the art of our times, very well priced, and a good beginning for a possible new collection as well as a valid addition to an existing one.

Paintings by Jan Searle, Saturday, August 5, 6-8pm

Galería/atelier, Fábrica la Aurora, Calzada de la Aurora

Beneath her silver hair, Jan Searle is a confessed observer of life. There were days when she was an energetic participant, and now she accepts her role as an energetic observer who looks to people of different cultures to find balance. How have their motivations shaped their lives? What has life handed them, and what have they chosen to take with them in their journey? It's a continuing education, an insight through observation. As an artist, the ultimate observer, it is her obligation to interpret and visually inspire the world to take the same interest.

An obsessed sculptor for 17 years, Searle focused on folk art of the American West. Her world was the buffalo and portraits of the faces that would soon pass into history. Much like Frederic Remington, she refined her craft to perfection and received numerous awards and public commissions in Colorado and Texas. Seeking new challenges, Searle decided to leave behind the rigid restraints of her previous career and chose to pursue painting as her new form of artistic expression. For a sculptor accustomed to working in three dimensions, in monochrome, venturing into a one-dimensional medium and using color is a challenging path indeed. One must rewire the synapses and refine the eye and powers of observation. It is her new path into color, particularly the color of human life, both physical and spiritual, that Searle currently is obsessed with. Painting is a much more mobile form of expression that she has been able to take with her while traveling the world. One of Searle's particular interests are the indigenou
s cultures of Mexico and Guatemala. For Searle, it is a powerful moment to be able to paint a person in the life they are living, whether they chose it or it has chosen them. It's a spiritual journey of the most contemplative kind that for her is best observed in the untainted life of an indigenous campesino.

Perhaps Searle has discovered the final frontier-a frontier that scholars have been recently so willing to declare extinct or vaporized into the intangible world of the internet. Yet here in Mexico and in Guatemala, there still exist lands where cable television and the internet have not globalized one's views on life and that still offer fleeting vignettes of the timeless existence of how life was meant to be lived, not how it has been sold to us through propaganda. The perfect home, the perfect family, the perfect day is the one you live. It is this fundamental beauty that Searle still feels should be admired and glorified in art. The love of life is disappearing. The frontier is disappearing. Innocence is disappearing. Faith is disappearing. The gods that gave us hope around the campfire are disappearing-or are they?

Paintings by Isabel Goode-DeBlanc

Tuesday, August 8, 6-8pm,Sala de Arte RaLuz, Posada de San Francisco

Plaza Principal 2

Born in Tampico, México, Isabel Goode-DeBlanc was raised on the Texas Gulf Coast. She graduated from the University of Texas and received her master's degree at California State University at Long Beach.

She has drawn since the age of four, and her artistic gift is demonstrated by her wide range of subjects and the various media she uses: pastel, oils and watercolors. She is a plein air painter, painting landscapes on-site, and is also known for her nudes and realistic portraits. Self-taught, Goode-DeBlanc prefers painting from life, using natural light.

She has exhibited in Texas, New Mexico and California and has presented several one-person shows. Chosen as one of 10 top artists in Austin by the Austin Visual Artists Association, she has also won many awards through the Austin Pastel Society and other group exhibitions in Texas. Currently, her work is shown at the Wally Workman Gallery in Austin, Texas, and at Brieger Pottery Shop-Gallery in Blanco, Texas.

She has recently moved to Ajijic, Jalisco, with her husband and continues to be an avid painter.

Photographs by William Ropp, Saturday, August 5, 7pm

Galería Indigo, Mesones 76

Internationally renowned French photographer William Ropp exhibits his work this week at Galería Indigo. Born in Versailles, France, he now lives and works in Nancy, France. Ropp photographs his subjects in a cocoon of darkness. This protective cover of darkness permits his subjects to plunge deeply within themselves. The results reflect the dichotomies between the feelings of his subjects, himself and, finally, the viewer.

Beautiful-and at times disturbing-his work will undeniably evoke an indelible impression.