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Nestor Topchy is a painter, sculptor, installation artist, and performance artist in Houston, Texas. He was born in Somerville, New Jersey in 1963. His work interweaves paradoxical strands of thought, incongruous painting techniques, disparate artistic traditions, and antithetical pictorial attitudes to express a coherent and pantheistic vision of reality.
Topchy holds a BFA from the Maryland Institute College of Art in Baltimore (1985) and an MFA in Art from the University of Houston (1987). In 1982, Topchy chanced upon a retrospective of Yves Klein's work at the Guggenheim, organized by Dominique De Menil for the Rice Museum in Houston. Topchy credits Klein's use of IKB, a saturated ultramarine blue pigment that represented "the void”, as a pivotal discovery. After using this color on spherical sculptures, Topchy realized their connection to Pysanky, ornate Ukrainian Easter eggs which he made in childhood with his mother and paternal family, who immigrated from Stalinist Ukraine as displaced persons following world war two. Further inspired by Klein, Topchy earned a black belt in judo under Karl Geis from 1998-2014 and is currently practicing Tomiki Aikido and Kyudo in the Heki Ryū Bishū Chikurin-ha lineage of Kanjuro Shibata XX. He has also studied Buddhism, Taoism, Qigong and Gnosticism. From 2003-2007 he studied Chinese painting with "Frank" Chiu Ching Ping. In 2004 Topchy studied Icon Writing at the Prosopon School in NYC.
From 1989 to 2001, Topchy was Co-Founder and Artistic Director of [Zocalo/TemplO], a nonprofit artist-run performance compound he shared with Rick Lowe and Dean Ruck. TemplO/Zocalo was an incubator for experimental artistic activity, and gave artists of all disciplines a forum for creating, exhibiting and staging experimental and edgy works. The complex housed artists' studios and living spaces, a gallery, indoor and outdoor stages, and embodied the belief that art is a creative and spiritual way of doing anything.
Many TemplO/Zocalo collaborators achieved regional and national prominence, including Andrea Grover of Aurora Picture Show, The Art Guys, Jason Nodler and Tamarie Cooper of Catastrophic Theater, Kevin Cunningham of Three Legged Dog in New York, dancer Richie Hubscher and lighting designer Christina Giannelli of the Metropolitan Opera, Mariana Lemesoff of Helios Arts/AvantGarden, New York painter Giles Lyon, the late video pioneer Andy Mann, and conductor Jon Axelrod . Alison de Lima Greene, curator of the Museum of Fine Arts Houston, which owns a bit of Topchy's earlier work, described TemplO as Gesamtkunstwerk, a total work of art. [1]
In the early 1990s, Topchy noticed rows of shipping containers stacked ten high in the Houston Ship Channel. He imagined the containers as the building blocks that could serve a community's needs in a beautiful way, at once creating a utilitarian and situational art.
In 2004, as part of the Project Row Houses Festival (with the support of Rick Lowe, its then Interim Director Michael Peranteau and in collaboration with architect Cameron Armstrong and artist Jack Massing), Topchy installed a single donated container simply known as Seed. Within Seed Topchy constructed mock-ups of shipping containers converted to habitable boxes re-purposed as a school, hospital, jail, shop, mall and residential living facilities. Seed became the prototype for Organ, a proposed living work of art and architecture and sustainable village to be constructed from 486 steel shipping containers. Organ was featured in the 2009 "No Zoning" exhibition at the Contemporary Arts Museum Houston curated by Toby Kamps and Meredith Goldsmith, and with further assistance from consultant Mariana Lemesoff, architect Si Dang, engineer Hisham El-Chaar, then Executive Director Heidi Vaughn, the project become an emergent reality. now known as HIVE, or Habitable Interdisciplinary Visionary Environment, the project is looking to reach the next stage beyond planning to acquire a permanent site, grow its board of directors, and build community.
In 2006, Topchy began his "Iconic Portrait Strand", using traditional Byzantine materials—egg-vinegar tempera, minerals, honey, beer, vodka, fig milk, cloves, linseed oil and gold leaf—painted on deme-shaped wooden panels.
During a five-minute session, Topchy measures the composition with a camera Lucida, draws the sitter from life, and takes a digital snap shot for color reference. Topchy paints the image over a period of months. "After the cut out boards are sized, gessoed and polished, a drawing, or graphia, is positioned on the board which feels right for that specific image. It is then transferred with carbon paper, etched with a stylus, and red clay bole is applied to the areas to be gold leafed. The gold leaf is applied first and then finished. The twelve layers of egg/vinegar tempera is applied in puddles to the horizontal board and allowed to sink in and dry. Each layer is an opportunity to be still in meditation and contemplation. When finished, the image is anointed with olipha/oil to seal it." [2]
According to Topchy, "Sitters are recruited through word of mouth via station 32, Haitian slang for the number of teeth in our mouths. Direct person-to-person contact and transmission replace computer hardware with human wetware. Through real-time art, the portraits enjoin individuals in a growing corpus as each new sitter's likeness is added."
"The portraits belong to the Demekon family. Each individual portrait functions like a single gene maintaining an agency within a larger corpus, itself a system and identity positioned within a yet larger unseen agency. As a whole, the entire group is assembled into a socio-cultural strand of DNA," Topchy said.
According to poet Randall Watson, Topchy rejects the traditional notions that divide the sacred and the profane, insisting instead on the equivalent necessity of the ordinary as a container through which the extraordinary is revealed. Such work has an epiphanic, revelatory cast, for while clearly not canonized by an official edict of the church, Topchy's subjects are beatified by context, or in other words, by the artist's gesture. They too, he proclaims, are manifestations of a divine embodiment. [3]
But we cannot fail to notice with some disquietude that all these portraits have 'the look', through and through, of medieval icons! The gold leaf, the flatness, the abstractions typical of iconographical paintings, the vermicular style, etc. are all there. Moreover, they not only look like icons, they have also been executed following rigorously the Novgorod Russian tradition of icon painting in egg tempera that Nestor studied at the Prosopon School in New York City. Thus we come face to face with the most evident of the apparent disparities and contradictions of the work: these paintings are at once medieval Byzantine icons and modern portraits! The conflict is profound. [2]
A portrait by Topchy, more precisely, the manner in which Topchy depicts the features of the heads, often creates this same distinctive feeling of the beyond...they insinuate a beyond. The facial features are articulated by 'calligraphies' of diverse origin, they come not only from egg decorating but also from orthodox icon painting, Chinese calligraphy, expressionism, cubism. [4]
In early 2011, the Ivan Honchar Museum in Kiev presented Topchy's work in a solo exhibition.
In 2012, Topchy received an Idea Fund / Andy Warhol Foundation grant for his project Archetapas-Gastronanza, a collaboration with Robert Rosenberg (AKA Chef Bob) to create a total, edible work of art coupled with scientific inquiry for public consumption via a continuing series of public tasting/performance events wherein participants enter a repurposed shipping container or trailer to be offered an array of geometrically shaped, colored, flavored gelatins and given an opportunity to complete a recorded associative survey whereby a consensus is realized as to which edible sculptures are assigned specific archetypal significance.
Archetapas is an evolving menu of colored, flavored geometric shapes, Demes derived from the Demekosm, a drawing system of interlocking circles and lines from which much the worlds geometries have been and are traditionally derived.
"We are introducing a gustatory element to create a total, edible work of art for public consumption and scientific inquiry in order to establish an interdependent connection conjoining universal design, color and flavor, an emergent, distinct order, an iconic art gleaned following series of public pate de fruit tasting/performance/events wherein participants enter a specially re-purposed trailer to be offered Archetapas from the menu, until a consensus is realized as to which shapes are ultimately assigned specific archetypal significance; together we will name it. Via this survey an integral, edible corpus will be established and a subject fitting each shape defined.
On the computer screen presented survey, the question "looks like?" appears below each shape and the participants answers are stored in a database. The Any universality of shape, color and flavor most appropriate for each iconic geometrical shape is established based upon empirical consensus recorded over time. For example, would most people agree that a certain five-sided shape should be called a house? Should taste like chocolate, or ginger? Will every one think "house "when they see this shape? Etc. The results, both qualitative and quantitative, assigning and establishing each shape a subjective identity can serve to gather a taxonomy of verifiable , universally arising subjects, concurrently, to reconcile subject and object through the collective subconscious mind.
It is anticipated that this project will include and transcend the quantitative data and qualitative meaning gathered from many people with different backgrounds; it is a poly-cultural associative survey which is pre-lingual and may yield archetypal forms that are universally recognizable. Such shapes will have multiple connotative purposes as well , one of which is establishing subject matter for painting, and at the least uniting minds through shared experience.
What would be truly surprising would be to find that shape could not evoke subject, that subject could not evoke color, and that color could not suggest flavor, seeing that things have always found their expression through a system of reciprocal analogy, and that this may be a universal, verifiable truth."
Oil painting is the process of painting with pigments with a medium of drying oil as the binder. Commonly used drying oils include linseed oil, poppy seed oil, walnut oil, and safflower oil. The choice of oil imparts a range of properties to the oil paint, such as the amount of yellowing or drying time. Certain differences, depending on the oil, are also visible in the sheen of the paints. An artist might use several different oils in the same painting depending on specific pigments and effects desired. The paints themselves also develop a particular consistency depending on the medium. The oil may be boiled with a resin, such as pine resin or frankincense, to create a varnish prized for its body and gloss.
Tempera, also known as egg tempera, is a permanent, fast-drying painting medium consisting of colored pigments mixed with a water-soluble binder medium, usually glutinous material such as egg yolk. Tempera also refers to the paintings done in this medium. Tempera paintings are very long-lasting, and examples from the first century AD still exist. Egg tempera was a primary method of painting until after 1500 when it was superseded by the invention of oil painting. A paint consisting of pigment and binder commonly used in the United States as poster paint is also often referred to as "tempera paint", although the binders in this paint are different from traditional tempera paint.
Hans Holbein the Younger was a German painter and printmaker who worked in a Northern Renaissance style, and is considered one of the greatest portraitists of the 16th century. He also produced religious art, satire, and Reformation propaganda, and he made a significant contribution to the history of book design. He is called "the Younger" to distinguish him from his father Hans Holbein the Elder, an accomplished painter of the Late Gothic school.
Visual art of the United States or American art is visual art made in the United States or by U.S. artists. Before colonization there were many flourishing traditions of Native American art, and where the Spanish colonized Spanish Colonial architecture and the accompanying styles in other media were quickly in place. Early colonial art on the East Coast initially relied on artists from Europe, with John White the earliest example. In the late 18th and early 19th centuries, artists primarily painted portraits, and some landscapes in a style based mainly on English painting. Furniture-makers imitating English styles and similar craftsmen were also established in the major cities, but in the English colonies, locally made pottery remained resolutely utilitarian until the 19th century, with fancy products imported.
Andrew Newell Wyeth was a visual artist, primarily a realist painter, working predominantly in a regionalist style. He was one of the best-known U.S. artists of the middle 20th century.
Alice Neel was an American visual artist, who was known for her portraits depicting friends, family, lovers, poets, artists, and strangers. Her paintings have an expressionistic use of line and color, psychological acumen, and emotional intensity. Neel was called "one of the greatest portrait artists of the 20th century" by Barry Walker, curator of modern and contemporary art at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, which organized a retrospective of her work in 2010.
James Browning Wyeth is a contemporary American realist painter, son of Andrew Wyeth, and grandson of N.C. Wyeth. He was raised in Chadds Ford Township, Pennsylvania, and is artistic heir to the Brandywine School tradition - painters who worked in the rural Brandywine River area of Delaware and Pennsylvania, portraying its people, animals, and landscape.
Russian lacquer art developed from the art of icon painting, which came to an end with the collapse of Imperial Russia. The icon painters, who previously had been employed by supplying not only churches but people's homes, needed a way to make a living. Thus, the craft of making papier-mâché decorative boxes and panels developed, the items were lacquered and then hand painted by the artists, often with scenes from folk tales.
A panel painting is a painting made on a flat panel made of wood, either a single piece, or a number of pieces joined together. Until canvas became the more popular support medium in the 16th century, it was the normal form of support for a painting not on a wall (fresco) or vellum, which was used for miniatures in illuminated manuscripts and paintings for the framing.
Portrait painting is a genre in painting, where the intent is to represent a specific human subject. The term 'portrait painting' can also describe the actual painted portrait. Portraitists may create their work by commission, for public and private persons, or they may be inspired by admiration or affection for the subject. Portraits often serve as important state and family records, as well as remembrances.
The following outline is provided as an overview of and topical guide to painting:
Joseph Edward Southall RWS NEAC RBSA was an English painter associated with the Arts and Crafts movement.
The Portrait of Smeralda Brandini is a tempera on panel painting by the Italian Renaissance artist Sandro Botticelli of about 1475, in the Victoria and Albert Museum, London.
Painting is the practice of applying paint, pigment, color or other medium to a solid surface. The medium is commonly applied to the base with a brush, but other implements, such as knives, sponges, and airbrushes, can be used.
Portrait of a Lady is a small oil-on-oak panel painting executed around 1460 by the Netherlandish painter Rogier van der Weyden. The composition is built from the geometric shapes that form the lines of the woman's veil, neckline, face, and arms, and by the fall of the light that illuminates her face and headdress. The vivid contrasts of darkness and light enhance the almost unnatural beauty and Gothic elegance of the model.
The Boy is an oil painting by Italian artist Amedeo Modigliani created in 1919. It is currently part of the permanent collection at the Indianapolis Museum of Art.
Gwenn Seemel is an American painter. She paints contemporary portraits and releases her work under free licenses.
Anne Everett (1943–2013) was an American artist from the Blue Ridge Mountains, Bedford county, Virginia. She is best known for her work as an abstract expressionist, a colourist and, after 1995, as an icon painter. The greater part of her 55 years as an artist was spent specialising in the egg tempera technique. Raised in Richmond, Virginia, Everett moved permanently to France in 1969. She died in Paris in 2013 and was buried in Vezelay, Burgundy.
Le Fumeur, or Man with Pipe, is a Cubist painting by the French artist Jean Metzinger. It has been suggested that the sitter depicted in the painting represents either Guillaume Apollinaire or Max Jacob. The work was exhibited in the spring of 1914 at the Salon des Indépendants, Paris, Champ-de-Mars, March 1–April 30, 1914, no. 2289, Room 11. A photograph of Le Fumeur was published in Le Petit Comtois, 13 March 1914, for the occasion of the exhibition. In July 1914 the painting was exhibited in Berlin at Herwarth Walden’s Galerie Der Sturm, with works by Albert Gleizes, Raymond Duchamp-Villon and Jacques Villon.
Hans Holbein the Younger painted the Portrait of Erasmus of Rotterdam several times, and his paintings were much copied, at the time and later. It is difficult to disentangle Holbein's original work from that of his workshop and other copyists. Possibly five largely original versions survive, as well as a number of drawings made as studies.