New Looks at Old Masters: Now at JoAnne Artman, New York
A marker of a great work of art is its timelessness. JoAnne Artman Gallery proudly presents, Yes, Masters: A MANthology, an exhibition of recent works by Danny Galieote, Greg Miller, and Michael Callas which pays homage to the past by putting a present-day spin on age-old masterpieces. Playful and satirical, these contemporary adaptations of art history merge the classical with the commodification of art in pop culture and mass media, all while bringing Old Masters into a new world.
Drawn from the term, “Old Masters,” the title refers to such prolific artists as Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo, and Rembrandt. Derived and abstracted from Old Master paintings and ideologies, Galieote, Miller, and Callas deconstruct pictorial language and artistic agency through investigating the ways in which their masculinity, identity, and individualism are embedded in both the significance and composition of each work.
Seeped in the process of taking all aspects of culture, art, architecture, and images that surround him, Greg Miller combines his paintings with found elements to the surface of his canvases and panels. Addressing art history and the fleeting nature of cultural ephemera and collective memory, his selection of pieces are a foundation of our culture, and with the found collages added to the surface, each piece tells a story of past, present, and future.
“I’m a contemporary cave painter, an archaeologist of sorts,” says Miller. “Imagery comes from old art books, garbage cans, book stores (if any are left), junk piles, walls… My paintings that I am creating are contemporary appropriations of Andy Warhol, Leonardo Da Vinci, Manet, and Picasso — All inspirations that I draw from in my work, past, present, and future.”
Exploring the fundamental liberties to speech and worship and from want and from fear articulated by President Franklin D. Roosevelt, Danny Galieote's series of Norman Rockwell’s “Four Freedoms” reminds us that these freedoms are only enduring if we choose to make them so.
“I like to think of these paintings as being timeless in the sense that they relate to our needs as humans since the beginning of time,” explains Galieote. “FDR made his famous speech about the Four Freedoms in ‘43 in one of the most intense times during WWII and Rockwell painted them when people wanted and needed such encouragement.”
Intricately produced through a rigorous process of drafting, mapping, and hand-cutting templates before being transposed onto canvas with aerosol paints, Michael Callas creates a surface that is uniform and rich in color. Applying his distinct approach of working in aerosols to the traditional oil paintings of the Renaissance, Callas continues his exploration and reinvention of esteemed works by Europe’s Old Masters and reconstructing them in a modern context.
“I have been working on appropriations of Old Master’s paintings for some time. Workings with these pieces are among my favorite type of paintings to do,” says Callas.
Daring and bold, the culmination is a shared dialogue challenging conventional narrative, reminding viewers that all art was once contemporary.
Now on View at JoAnne Artman Gallery, New York
Open by Appointment!
JoAnne Artman Gallery 326 + 346 N Coast Highway, Laguna Beach, CA 92651 | 511A West 22nd St. New York, NY 10011 Telephone: 949-510-5481 | E-mail: [email protected] Website: www.joanneartmangallery.com
