07 February, 2007

Pastel Society Newsletter

I am the new guy at the Pastel Society of America, having been juried in last year. My "Pastelagram" arrived in the mail yesterday, and I provide a link to this attractive newsletter here. It's in a PDF format. If you can't get the link, go to "publications" from the home page of the PSA link.
By way of providing more understanding of the PSA, I will add the following quote. It has some "good to know" statements about the medium that I have chosen to focus on:

“In the third quarter of the 19th

century, Degas’s startlingly

inventive use of pastel, and his

dedication to its brilliance,

beauty and seemingly endless possibilities,

rescued this extraordinary

medium from being relegated to a

footnote in art history. Exit Degas,

and the prominence of pastel was

eclipsed. Until, in the third quarter

of the 20th century, 1972 to be

exact, the reputation of pastels was

revived yet again by the forceful and

farsighted efforts of Flora Giffuni,

who in that year founded the Pastel

Society of America.

This fall, with the stunning

work on view in the Bernhard

Gallery of The National Arts Club,

the Pastel Society of America’s 34th

Annual Exhibition proclaims that

one of our earliest goals — “to focus

attention on the Renaissance of pastel”—

has been successfully

attained. No longer a medium in

search of itself, pastel now stands on

its own as the vibrant, protean material

it truly is. It has matured, proven

its lyrical and muscular talents, and

outstripped the epithet

“Renaissance” that once rightfully

touted the reemergence of a resource

that had been marginalized and misunderstood

for too long. We can

finally get beyond the slightly defensive

impulse to praise a pastel in

terms of how its pictorial qualities

compare to an oil painting, and simply

praise the outstanding qualities

of pastel work.” Diane Rosen, PSA

4 comments:

Lindsay said...

Casey!! I'm so excited. Now I know who you are! These paintings were in the Pastel JOurnal last month and I LOVED THEM then and of course now!
So happy you are blogging and we get to see more of your daily work. I really like this post about the re-emergence of pastel. I subscribed to PJ because my oil pastel teacher, George Shipperly was featured. OPs are a VERY marginalised media. I hope people will begin to accept and appreciate all pastel work.
Thanks for sharing the link. I'm off to visit it.

Ed Maskevich said...

Congrats on being juried into the PSA. Quite an honor.

Casey Klahn said...

Hi, Lindsay. Glad when a post can be an inspiration. That's right, your blog does have a lot of nice oil pastel work.
I have a couple of OPs that I did hanging in my kitchen, and I love the medium. Although, I don't use it much, since I have been so focused on a "body of work".
I can't argue with the split from soft pastel and oil pastel, as they are so different in so many ways. If it helps, I am constantly asked (or told) about my oil pastel works, when patrons are looking at my soft pastel works!
"Oil pastels, right?" So, I guess that the profile of the oil pastel medium is way up among the layman. That's a good thing.
Thanks for the good word, Ed. I don't put much emphasis on technique, but that's certainly what the peerage look at in juries like this. After a few years, the techniques just come from repetition.
Also, my first interests in joining a society were well received, which was a good feeling. Now, an acquaintance of mine has taken over at the Northwest Pastel Society, and it has really improved and taken off. So, now joining that one is on the "to do" list.
Anyone out there have good results for their career by joining these societies?

Casey Klahn said...

FYI, do download that Pastelagram PDF file if you're a pastellist. It seems like a Pastel Journal redux, but it turns out to be more in-depth.
Read the article on artistic growth.

Abstract Expressionism, Art Criticism, Artists, Colorist Art, Drawing, History, Impressionism, Modern Art, Painting, Pastel, Post Impressionism