An increasing rejection by major galleries of assistant produced artwork is calling the definition of “Original Art” into question. During the Renaissance this wasn’t a real problem, but the Impressionists (often called the forefathers of the contemporary movement) would be appalled.

Master artists, such as Michaelangelo and DaVinci, often employed assistants to add onto large production works so that deadlines would be met. If you were a rich artist, the assistants were a sort of unspoken requirement to show how much of a master artist you were. Think of all the work put into the production of the Sistine Chapel. That is what the process was–production. By the 1800s, a renegade group of artists known as the Impressionists went against the status quo, constructing group shows of their own outside of the Salon and taking on apprentices but never laborers to mass produce their artwork.

Mary Cassatt is known for praising Edgar Degas, and the other Impressionists, for giving her guidance in a time when her work was shunned because she was simply a woman. Degas invited Cassatt to show with the Impressionists in 1879. Cassatt said this about Degas’ influence, “It changed my life. I saw art then as I wanted to see it.” Degas extended his passion for dance as subject matter with Renoir, among others.

Pierre-Auguste Renoir practiced plein air painting with Claude Monet, learning about light and its effects on elements of nature. After working with Monet in 1868, Renoir’s palette moved from a heavy impasto, dark color to lighter rendering of color and fluid motion. La Grenouillere was painted by Monet and Renoir in 1869.

For an impressionist to paint from nature is not to paint the subject, but to realize sensations, -Paul Cezanne

Cezanne may have also captured an essential component of what most of us identify with as “Art.” The capturing of sensation is the elusive dance between the concept in the painter’s mind, the paintbrush and canvas, and the viewer. Subtracting the mystery of this dance from the equation is like saying everything equals zero. Problem solved. A piece of art made by the master artist’s very own “apprentice!”

Indeed, with reality television getting in on the mix (Work of Art and Art Star, airing on Bravo), we see true artists race to be America’s Next Top Artist. Behind the scenes tells a different story.  In an interview with “Life After Reality TV” Gigi Chen and Jaclyn Santos shared their experiences of being apprentices to famous, unnamed contemporary artists before their TV debut. Of course both art stars were cautionary to say only “highly complementary things” about their experiences, but reviewer David Pierce shares his perception of repressed anxiety from the young artists. Though Chen seems to be encouraged to pursue an undergraduate degree in the subject, Santos seems to have served more of a production artists role, never having any real contact with the artist behind the false signature.

Pierce addresses the issue thusly, “Many of today’s high profile artists employ teams of assistants who would otherwise be looking for work elsewhere or perhaps working in food service and other professions that do not resemble their ambitions. It is also important to note that an individual or a smaller team could never execute their impressive and ambitious works. However, you get the sense when speaking with artists who work for larger, high profile studios that the experience is closer to that of a production artist. Their {There} seems to be a purveying sense of anonymity in their labor and it seems that their employers do little to advance or foster the careers of the artists who give them their talents.”

An assistant to Damien Hirst said that she “can’t think of anything worse” than having an assistant herself. She added that “I only paint for my own needs, not to fulfill anyone else’s,” in a Wall Street Journal interview.

And so we move from art collective to art conveyer belt. An “apprenticeship” in fine art production may be preferable to years in food service. Contemporary master artist Koons, who employs over 150 assistants, provides his artists with health insurance. Art assistants who may or may not meet these contemporary master artists report payroll at $20-25 an hour. Practice does make perfect, right?

“What’s in a name? That which we call a rose, by any other name would smell as sweet,” quotes Juliet to Romeo in Shakespeare’s classic. Yet, in art, sometimes the name is the only indicator to the art enthusiast about the painter’s intention.

Salvador Dali was a strange man, is quite the understatement, and so we have much to meditate on in his “Meditative Rose,” rendered in 1958. I can safely say that artists are strange people with sweet and not so sweet symbolism.

An imaginative youth, like many artists I fell in love with Surrealism for its ambiguous and oddly direct treatment of reality and existentialism. I remember my conservative grandparents being fascinated and appalled by the man as much as his artwork. This perspective lives on among most individuals today, as the artist’s work ever evokes paradox, and in turn duality.

I found a beautiful truth in Dali’s “Meditative Rose.” Daily experience is subject to five sensory filters–smell, sound, touch, taste, and feeling, a delirium of interpretation. Dali turns that on the head. The rose defies gravity, fully bloomed over the desert landscape, so common to the artist’s work. It even has its own subtle white aura, as the it floats over the ground and the couple contemplating the horizon. A single dew drop rests on the lower petal. Even over the dreary landscape, the rose is suspended sun-like. While the rose projects light like the sun, it also seems reflective, with a touch of cloud white on a top right petal. The top half of the painting is made of primary colors: red, yellow, and blue, reflected over the landscape. Modern artists, who also dabbled in the science of color, called blue the most spiritual color.

The rose is reminiscent of a a perfectly visually balanced mandala, used for meditative, ritual, and artistic practices. Psychologist Carl Jung attempted his hand at painting a Golden Flower mandala. The two works are striking when compared.

While we could certainly attempt to meditate to this painting, many theorize that the rose isn’t just a spiritual symbol. In fact is is a celebration of love, perhaps of Dali and his wife Gala. The use of figures in pairs on desert landscapes isn’t anything new in Dali’s works. Reference “Archaeological Reminiscence of Millet’s Angelus,” painted in 1935. The use of figures in space in such a way is characteristic of the painter.  In his 1937 “Untitled,” or Woman with Head of Flowers, a strange male figure with a Daliesque, twisty mustache bows before the woman.

I don’t have a twisty, villainous mustache, but I did let out a rather sinister laugh when I discovered how deeply entrenched the artist’s influence was in my own work. I first saw this piece as a poster when I was a little girl, and it was my true introduction to Dali. The truth I discovered in the “Meditative Rose” is another form of timelessness and a beauty. The bright red of the hue makes it hard to stare away. A nice summary of the piece may be the the cliché saying, “Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.” In my own work, I find that I explore a widely-defined type of universal symbolism, emotion, and philosophy, juxtaposed against landscape. This is true especially in relation of the body to nature. In returning to look at this piece again since my childhood, I discover striking similarities between our use of symbolism as pictoral elements.

The following piece is part of my first solo show. This artwork, entitled “Amongst the Lilies” has an abstract torso (which is almost a landscape) and a series of floating lilies over the horizon. The piece is a exploration of the Dark Night of the Soul, where the individual follows a journey to becoming closer to spiritual wholeness or a god. The poet Yeats compares the journey to becoming one with a lover after a series of doubts. I also approach the painting as this metaphor. Eventually, the draped individual is supposed to reach that “wholeness,” which in a later painting is simply the fading white lilies on black like wisps of smoke.

Regardless of choice of symbolism or use of pictoral images, I resonate with Dali and his famous floating rose. At the most primal level, it represents an outlived sense of beauty and joy that is omnipresent. Is there a particular artist that you admire?

Surrealist Leonora Carrington, 94, passed away last Wednesday in her home in Mexico City. The cause of her death was pneumonia. Carrington was known for dreamscape images inspired by folklore, religious ritual and occult symbolism.

Leonora Carrington is perhaps one of the lesser recognized Surrealists in popular culture, when juxtaposed to her male counterparts. She was the one-time partner of Max Ernst. She was acquainted with the likes of André Breton, Man Ray, Pablo Picasso and Salvador Dali. Articles regarding her death mention her as “one of the last living links” to these men.

The artist did credit Ernst with her art education, after they ran off of as paramours to Paris. “From Max I had my education. I learned about art and literature. He taught me everything,” she told The Guardian in London in 2007. Though the artist credited Ernst and several contemporary art critics mention Carrington as a “link,” she is truly a leading figure in Surrealist art, and one of the last great Modern Mexican artists.

Born in Lancashire, Britain, her Irish nanny told her tales from Celtic folklore. Her father was against his daughter becoming an artist, but her mother was supportive, even gifting the budding artist with a volume of Hubert Read’s book on Surrealism. She eventually attended the Chelsea School of Art, then joined the London academy of the Cubist Amedee Ozenfant.

Ernst left his wife in 1938, and the outbreak of World War II saw him imprisoned and his wife institutionalized after a minor breakdown. Carrington eventually recovered and left for New York, showing at the Pierre Matisse Gallery, and making a general success for herself. She relocated to Mexico, where her knowledge and the execution of folklore and occult symbolism inside her work deepened. Her most common symbols are animal in nature–deer, hyenas, a white horse, among others.

In Mexico she wed a Hungarian photographer, Emeric Weisz. Together they had two sons, Gabriel Weisz-Carrington and Pablo Weisz-Carrington. She is survived by her two sons and five grandchildren.

Does Carrington’s story seem dreary? She was a talented and multimedia artist that painted cloaked figures, deer with trees sprouting from her back, and elusive dreamscapes. She sculpted. She wrote stories and screenplays. She was a mother and a wife. Her most famous written piece, a 1974 fantastical novel titled The Hearing Trumpet, is an account of a feminist uprising in a women’s retirement home. In 2005, Christie’s auctioned Carrington’s “Juggler” (1954). The final price was $713,000, which set a new record for the highest price paid at auction for a living surrealist painter.

In regards to being anyone’s muse, the artist once said this, “I didn’t have time to be anybody’s muse; I was too busy rebelling against my parents and learning to be an artist.” Leonora Carrington, a legendary Surrealist, leaves a legacy for the contemporaries attempting to trace her steps.

Move over chocolate! Art is the new aphrodisiac, as discovered in a recent study at the University College London. Professor Semir Zeki, a neurobiologist at the university, scanned volunteers’ brains as they looked at a series of 28 paintings. The study found that viewing art releases dopamine into the orbito-frontal cortex of the brain. Dopamine is that chemical associated with feelings of love, contentment, and happiness.

Of the artists surveyed, Botticelli and Claude Monet elicited the most blood flow to areas of the brain usually associated with romantic love and the release of dopamine. According to the Telegraph,

The research suggests that art could be used to increase the welfare and mental health of the general public and should be protected from budget cutbacks.

Bathers at La Grenouillere by Claude Monet and The Birth of Venus by Botticelli are two of the artworks used by researchers to study the effect of art on the brain. Simonetta Vespucci, the model for The Birth of Venus, was said to be the most beautiful woman of the 15th century! She was often a subject of Botticelli’s works. Bathers at La Grenouillere is but one of a series of paintings Claude Monet (and his fellow Impressionists, such as Renoir) rendered of the famous “frog pond,” next in line perhaps to his water lily series.

A trip to a local art museum or hanging a rendition of one of these famous works is a wonderful surprise for your beloved. Science proves it!

For the first time ever at the Brooklyn Museum, mothers are honored in a brunch and tour — “Extraordinary Women: Celebrating Mothers and Motherhood in Art through the Ages,” to be given on Mother’s Day on May 8. The tour features some of its most famous artworks, from ancient to modern periods.

Mary Cassatt is among one of the more well known women artists to be shown in the first time tour. The museum carries 19 paintings in its collection of the artist, but among the most famous to show is Woman in a Red Bodice and Her Child. The same model featured in this work is also present in Cassatt’s Breakfast in Bed. Known for her prominence with the French Impressionists, Cassatt was at first consistently rejected from the Salon as she choose not to take a male patron or protector.

Lilly Martin Spencer is one of the extraordinary women artists showcased in the tour. Spencer was the mother of thirteen children, of whom only seven lived, and the sole breadwinner for the family. Though they lived an unconventional and financially troubled lifestyle, the family was happy and Spencer is and was then a well-known artist. Among Spencer’s famous works to be shown will be her 1856 Kiss Me and You’ll Kiss the ‘Lasses.

More information about the event can be found at the website of the Brooklyn Museum. Tickets are sold out for the tour, but there’s always next year, which is certain to be even more spectacular! The Elizabeth A. Sackler Center For Feminist Art at the museum will also feature two series about empowering women and art. “Academic Symposium: From Portraits to Pin-ups: Representations of Women in Art and Popular Culture” will take place on May 14th starting at 11:30 A.M. Art historian Dr. Gail Levin will discuss her most recent book, Lee Krasner: A Biography, on May 15th at 2 P.M. If you are still looking for a Mother’s Day present, check out the most popular oil paintings for the occasion!

Last March the revered Nude, Green Leaves and Bustwas viewed by the British public for the first time available at the Tate Modern in the new Pablo Picasso room.  In May the painting had sold for a record $106.5 million (£65.5 million) at Christie’s in New York. The work features Marie-Therese Walter, the model and lover of the artist, whom Picasso first met in 1927. It is only one of a series of his muse, but the most favored.

Painted on March 8, 1932, Nude, Green Leaves and Bust is the most intensely hued and energetic of the nude pieces Picasso rendered at what is considered by some scholars as the highest point of his creative output. The piece is currently showing next to other Picasso works in the museum’s collection.

Before its auction and public debut, the piece had been with LA based collectors Sidney and Frances Brody for nearly six decades. According to a Tate press release, “They had acquired the work in 1951 from Paul Rosenberg & Co., Paris and New York whom in turn had acquired it from the artist in 1936. During that period it had been exhibited publicly only once, in 1961, to commemorate Picasso’s 80^th birthday. The lender wishes to remain anonymous.”

Thanks to this lender’s generosity the British public is in for a rare treat.  An art exhibition exploring links between the artist and Britain will open at the museum in the following year.