Protecting the ‘Flip Side of the Canon’

Peter Trippi is an unabashed enthusiast for what he refers to as “the flip side of the canon,” the classically trained practitioners, past and present, of traditional art. As the editor of Fine Art Connoisseur since last year, and an independent art historian, he furthers those traditions, curating, researching, and writing about art rooted in the practices of past eras.Once modernism gave birth to abstraction, the producers of traditional art—and their proponents — struggled to maintain their relevance. But according to Mr. Trippi, there has been a gradual return in the art world to realism, and renewed interest in artists who proclaim their allegiance to pre-modern eras. “Without a doubt, we are seeing a renaissance of this kind of work,” Mr. Trippi said. “With more young artists moving into representation and more exhibitions, whether it’s old or new work. It’s a lot more visible and okay to aspire to and talk about representation than it was a decade ago.” Fine Art Connoisseur speaks to the collector of traditional art, reviewing recent exhibitions, providing historical insight, and profiling some of the world’s best private collections.Mr. Trippi’s specialty is 19th-century British painting and says his first encounters with Academic art were “electrifying.” What began as a love affair with the paintings of the Pre-Raphaelites as an undergraduate exchange student in Scotland eventually led him to carve out a career devoted almost exclusively to art produced during the Victorian era. In addition to writing a monograph on Pre-Raphaelite J.W. Waterhouse, Mr. Trippi, now 42, has worked at three major New York arts institutions, the Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum, the Brooklyn Museum, and, most recently, the Dahesh Museum, where he served as director until last year.Working from his home on the Upper West Side’s Riverside Drive, Mr. Trippi is able to pursue both his scholarly and publishing interests. He is co-curating a retrospective of Waterhouse, which is slated to tour London, the Netherlands, and Montreal next year. Meanwhile, his daily routine is dedicated to the editorship of Fine Art Connoisseur. When the magazine was founded in 2004, it was devoted exclusively to plein air painting, but upon assuming editorial control of the magazine, Mr. Trippi sought to strengthen its reportage and expand the content to include portraiture, still life, sculpture, history painting, and works on paper created since 1800.The magazine’s coverage includes both historical and living artists. Its contributors are curators, critics, art historians, and teachers. For the July/August issue, Mr. Trippi asked Sherry Camhy, a drawing instructor at the Art Students League in New York City, to write about teaching and practicing the Renaissance art of silverpoint. Each issue of the magazine also features contemporary realist artists selected by Mr. Trippi for consideration for his readers’ collections. “Meeting these artists has been a real pleasure,” Mr. Trippi said. “They are very articulate about their links to the past, whether it is Leonardo da Vinci, Winslow Homer, or Georgia O’Keeffe. They tip their hats to the masters, yet also have their own voices and aren’t making knock offs.” They include watercolorist Gary Bukovnik and trompe l’oeil artist Anthony Waichullis, who are also taking advantage of innovations in printing, materials, and pigments to reinvent traditional genres.A certain placidity reigns in the pages of Fine Art Connoisseur, but Mr. Trippi said he believes readers are ready to gradually embrace the “darker” side of representational art, as found in the canvases of realist artists like Frida Kahlo, who is subject of the cover story for the current issue, and grittier imagery, such as plein air works of Brooklyn’s Gowanus Canal. Mr. Trippi said he hopes to feature Walton Ford and Alexis Rockwell, two living artists who have radicalized natural-history painting, in future issues.Yet Mr. Trippi also said the contemporary art world has much to learn from the atelier-trained artists regularly featured in his magazine. The academy tradition gives the artist basic skills, such as drawing, that are increasingly deemphasized in university-based Master of Fine Arts programs due to younger artists’ focus on multimedia. “There are some very talented students in these programs,” Mr. Trippi said. “But what if film and video go right out of style 20 years from now? Then we will have a generation of artists with no techniques to turn to. I think drawing would be so helpful for them to have in their arsenal as they move forward, and I don’t think it’s a skill easily captured later in life.” Not all skills are created equal, however. Mister Trippi laments the irony and pulp sexuality that preoccupies current figurative artists such as John Currin. “I want more from that great brush,” he explained.Reflecting on the current art market’s seemingly insatiable appetite for the master artists of modernism and post-modernism, Mr. Trippi sees himself as a proponent for “the little guy,” burnishing the reputation of artists both past and present whose oeuvre has been neglected or underappreciated. And as the chief of a magazine dedicated to the interests of private collectors of traditional art, Mr. Trippi is confident that the demand for art with “substantive content and meticulous technique” will continue to intensify. “The growing market reflects the desire among art collectors for the illustrative, for art that shows us our world, and for the beautiful.”

Protecting the ‘Flip Side of the Canon’

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