When we think of Poland, our associations are not altogether positive. Sure, there was the recent Polish Pope (John Paul II) who traveled a lot and gave the Catholic Church a more human face. There was Lech Walesa, who bravely led the Solidarity shipworkers union during the final years of...

Here is a pitch for artists to write their own stories, their autobiographies, because there aren't many fine artists who have done so. A handful have -- including Thomas Hart Benton, Man Ray, James Rosenquist, Leroy Neiman, Larry Rivers, Margaret Bourke-White, Eric Fischl, Anne Truitt (if you count her published...

There was a semi-big win for appropriation art, not to mention appropriation artist Richard Prince and New York's Gagosian Gallery. The U.S. Court of Appeals overturned a lower court ruling that found Prince had violated the copyright of French photographer Patrick Cariou, when the artist produced his own collage paintings...

The process of applying and being accepted for a public or private art commission is long and involved but, once it is over, the artist can concentrate totally on his or her artwork, right? Unfortunately, the end of one stage simply means the beginning of another, perhaps not as long...

Artists are told regularly that they must take an active role in the development of their careers, that they must invest their time and energy in this endeavor, rather than waiting for someone else (dealer? patron? MacArthur Foundation?) to do it for them. Many of these opportunities involve artists spending...

Some people travel to see works of art, others to make them. And some travel to attend art workshops in locations rich in sites to paint or photograph.

Art workshops are a hybrid form of instruction somewhere between hands-on art schools and home-study video cassettes. They provide an intense art...

What's it worth to you to get a gallery exhibition of your artwork? Sure, galleries are in business to sell art, earning a commission of between 40 and 60 percent for every sale of work consigned to them contemporary artists, so their profit margin should cover the costs of promoting...

There are many points at which the lives and careers of visual and performing artists diverge, and one of them is how they are honored and what those honors mean. Top film actors are nominated for academy awards; their stage counterparts may receive Tony awards, while musicians are eligible for...

Poor guy. An automobile collector places his prized 1931 Duesenberg Model J and several other antique cars in storage in Manhattan but, suffering from dementia, neglects to pay the storage warehouse owner. That owner is empowered by the New York State law to sell the now abandoned cars (to cover...

Every artist has heard it. Masonville, Colorado sculptor Daniel B. Glanz certainly has heard it. Someone looks at one of his small bronze pieces of animals or human figures, sees the price and asks, "Why does this little sculpture cost so much?" He has an answer to this, but sometimes...

We don't think of artists as people who cut corners. As poor as he was, Vincent van Gogh didn't use 10 percent less paint on his canvases to save money, and Michelangelo didn't substitute quartz for marble. But the rising price of copper, the main component of bronze, has forced...

Photographer Cindy Sherman has a retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art, the Whitney Museum of American Art holds its biennial, scores of museums in California combine to stage a series of exhibitions called "Pacific Standard Time" -- all very nice -- but what really has riveted the attention of...

To prosper as an artist, career counselors to visual artists continually advise that one has to devote as much serious attention to the business aspects of this work as creating it. There is the matter of contacting prospective customers and art galleries, working out consignment agreements with dealers, photographing, crating,...

For Charley Friedman, a "typical day would be going to the studio and fixing something at a property." What he does at the studio -- sculptural pieces in a conceptual art vein -- would be easily understood by most artists, and perhaps so would be the "fixing something" at one...

You can blame the artist who creates it, or the collector who puts it on display, but the real culprit is the watercolor painting itself. Watercolors just don't have long life spans in comparisons with oil paintings or sculpture. The colors fade, the paper rots or gets eaten by insects.

Take away the 40-foot high concrete relief of an angular Christ on the cross above the doorway and you might think the boxy, white brick building is a hospital, movie theater, factory, anything. It isn't your vision of a Catholic church, nor your idea of what a church in the...

Standard & Poor's played its role in the financial crisis, but let's not drag Henry Varnum Poor into it. Not that Henry Varnum Poor (1812-1905), the financial analyst and founder of H.V. and H.W. Poor Co. which merged with the Standard Statistics Bureau in 1941 to become Standard & Poor's,...

Contrary to the beliefs of many art school applicants, a Bachelor of Fine Arts is not simply a certificate of training in art but a college degree, for which a student must complete and pass both studio and academic courses. At most art schools, liberal arts colleges and universities, academic...

Walking into a car dealership, one assumes that the automobiles in the showroom, as well as those in the lot, are for sale and that the only questions for the buyer and seller are options, price and financing. The price and financing are also part of the discussion when an...

As many people are aware, the world is not entirely fair to artists, and it is even less so to artists who are African-American. Relatively few art galleries and museums in the United States show the work of African-American artists, creating a problem of invisibility that suggests black artists and...