Since June 26, four massive man-made waterfalls have been in operation in New York City. The waterfalls were designed by world-renowned artist Olafur Eliasson. There is less than a month left to view the installations, which are only up through October 13.

1. Erecting four 90- to 120-foot waterfalls along the East River was no small feat. Costing $15.5 million, the waterfalls required 64,000 square feet of scaffolding and more than 20 permits from various agencies. With such work involved, it’s no wonder Olafur Eliasson employs a small army of helpers: his “laboratory” has about 15 engineers, architects, and technicians on staff, in addition to the approximate 30 artists, assistants, and mathematicians on his payroll.

2. Eliasson’s life has been remarkably culturally diverse. The artist is from Denmark, but is of Icelandic heritage, and spent his summers as a youth in Iceland. He speaks four languages fluently, though “not flawlessly,” and commutes to his studio in Berlin from Copenhagen. With his art historian wife, Eliasson has two adopted children from Ethiopia.

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Readers Melanie & Johnny requested a post on American artist Patricia Buckley Moss (born 1933), who is famous for her paintings of the Amish and Mennonite communities. So today I present some _flossy facts about P. Buckley Moss, “the people’s artist.”

1. When she was a child, Patricia Buckley was not expected to accomplish much. Due to her dyslexia (which was only diagnosed in adulthood), Buckley was deemed “not proficient in anything” until her artistic abilities were discovered. Later, at Washington Irving High School for the Fine Arts, she was voted “Least Likely to Succeed” by her peers.

2. Today, Moss (who married in the 1950s) is highly successful, selling prints for nearly $1,000 each. She has received numerous awards, including American Mother Artist of the Year in 1976 and one of eight Virginia Women in History in 2008. The P. Buckley Moss Museum, devoted to her work, has been open since 1989 and welcomes approximately 45,000 visitors each year.

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Reader BobM requested a post on Cecilia Beaux (1855-1942), a famed but now forgotten contemporary of Mary Cassatt. September 7 was the 66th anniversary of the death of this American artist, so today we’ll take a look at her life and most famous painting, “Les Derniers Jours d’Enfance” (”The Last Days of Infancy”).

1. Twelve days after Cecilia Beaux was born, her mother died of puerperal fever and her father soon fled back to his native France, unable to handle the loss of his wife. Beaux and her sister were thus left to be raised by relatives. Beaux later recalled that, since they rarely saw their father, “We didn’t love Papa very much, he was so foreign. We thought him ‘peculiar.’” Yet it was from her father that she inherited her artistic abilities.

2. Beaux grew up to be an independent, professional woman with a work ethic more typical of a man of her day than a woman. Devoted to her art, she never married and only spent time with men who wouldn’t sidetrack her artistic career. She continued to live with her family, who were very understanding and expected few household responsibilities from her. As Beaux recalled, “I was never once asked to do an errand in town, some bit of shopping… so well did they understand.”

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Over the past year, the art on “Feel Art Again” has ranged from the traditional masters (Leonardo da Vinci, Vincent Van Gogh, both shown above) to the highly controversial (DuanPen, Marcel Duchamp, both shown below).

Pablo Picasso believed, “Every child is an artist. The problem is how to remain an artist once he grows up.” Everyone has a different idea about what exactly is and isn’t art and who can and can’t be classified as artists.

So today, I ask all of you:

What is art?

What is good art?

Who qualifies as an artist and who doesn’t?

Some things to consider:
The mediocre Dutch artist who pulled “the greatest art hoax of the 20th century.”
Wim Delvoye’s tattooed pigs banned from SHContemporary.
The proposed “abortion art” by a Yale art student that was declared a hoax by Yale.
The toddler whose ketchup paintings have fooled some collectors.

“Feel Art Again” appears every Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday. You can e-mail us at feelartagain@gmail.com with artist suggestions or details of current exhibitions.

Today marks the 69th anniversary of the death of Konstantin Korovin (1861-1939), a “famous painter” of Russia who is little-known in the U.S. Although Korovin disliked categorizations, he is considered one of the first Russian Impressionists with works like “Parisian Street.” A bit about his life:

1. When Konstantin Korovin first entered the Moscow School of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture at age 14, he was studying in the architecture program. After two years, he switched to the painting department, and then went on to the Academy of Arts in St. Petersburg. Just three short months into his study, though, he returned to Moscow, as he found the teaching methods at the Academy of the Arts to be outdated.

2. Paris played a large role in Korovin’s life, as evidenced by his many “Parisian Boulevard” paintings. Of his first visit to Paris in 1885, he wrote, “Paris was a shock for me… Impressionists… in them I found everything for what I was scolded back at home, in Moscow.” In 1900, he designed the Central Asia section of the Russian Empire pavilion at the World Exhibition in Paris. Later, in 1924, he permanently moved to Paris, where he remained until his death.

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Two readers, Corrine and Hill-Dawg, requested a post on the American artist Sol LeWitt (1928-2007). Today is the 80th anniversary of his birth, so to celebrate, we’ll take a look at his life and his art.

1. One of Sol LeWitt’s early jobs was with Seventeen magazine. In the 1950s, while he attended the School of Visual Arts in New York City, he worked at Seventeen doing paste-ups, mechanicals, and Photostats. He later worked for a year as a graphic designer for architect I.M. Pei.

2. LeWitt strongly believed that art should not be about the artist. He apparently turned down awards and interviews over the years in an attempt to suppress all interest in himself, instead of his work. Greatly disliking the prospect of his photograph in the newspaper, he once covered his face at a museum opening, explaining to the newspaper photographer, “I am not Rock Hudson.” His “Autobiography” work (1980) consisted of more than 1,000 photographs of his apartment, yet he only appeared in one—one in which he was barely discernible.

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Several weeks back, reader AMT requested a “Feel Art Again” post featuring Mexican muralist José Clemente Orozco (1883-1949). Tomorrow is the 59th anniversary of Orozco’s death, so today we’ll take a look at his life and his art.

1. While mixing chemicals to make fireworks to sell for Mexican Independence Day in 1904, José Orozco injured his left hand and eye. His injuries weren’t treated for several days, though, because of the holiday, by which point gangrene had set in. After his hand and wrist were amputated, he abandoned his architectural studies to pursue painting.

2. Orozco had first become interested in painting during his school years, when he would watch the illustrator José Guadalupe Posada at work. Posada worked in shop windows, in full view of the public, on the path Orozco took to school. Orozco “would stop and spend a few enchanted minutes in watching;” it was his “awakening to the existence of the art of painting.”

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Few artists had the opportunity to paint Native Americans from first-hand experience, but Canadian Paul Kane (1810-1871) was one of those lucky few. In honor of Kane’s birthday, which was yesterday, we’ll take a look at his life, his travels through Canada, and his art.

1. Paul Kane explained his motivation for depicting Native American life thusly: “I had been accustomed to see hundreds of Indians about my native village… But the face of the red man is now no longer seen…”

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On this date in 1944, Bella Rosenfeld Chagall passed away from a viral infection. As the love of Marc Chagall’s life, Bella was his model and his inspiration for 35 years. In honor of their love, and at the request of reader BobM, today we’ll take a look at Marc Chagall (1887-1985) and his 1918 painting, “Double Portrait with a Wineglass,” of himself and Bella.

1. Shortly after arriving back in Paris after several years spent home in Belarus, Marc Chagall was greeted with a surrealist delegation that included Max Ernst. According to TIME magazine, the artists “actually knelt before Chagall, begging him to join their ranks,” but he refused, saying, “I want an art of the earth and not merely an art of the head.”

2. When World War II broke out, Chagall was urged by the Emergency Rescue Committee to move to America, but he was loathe to go. He asked an agent from the committee, Varian Fry, if there were any cows in America. Fry assured him that America had not just cows, but goats too. Chagall then asked if there were trees and green grass. Fry replied, “We have all that,” after which Chagall was apparently “enormously relieved.” The Chagall family and 3,500 pounds of Chagall’s artwork were loaded onto a transatlantic ship, and the family spent the next several years in America.

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Tomorrow is the 22nd anniversary of the death of British sculptor Henry Moore (1898-1986). At the request of reader Katie, we’ll take a look at the life of the man “generally acknowledged as the most important British sculptor of the 20th century,” whom TIME magazine described as the man who “put modern sculpture on the map.”

1. Both World War I and World War II greatly impacted Henry Moore’s life. Moore had just graduated Castleford Secondary (later Grammar) School at the onset of WWI. At the request of his headmaster, he designed and carved a Roll of Honour to include the names of all his former classmates who were entering the war. Moore himself served for two years with the Civil Service Rifles in the 15th London Regiment, during which he was gassed at the Battle of Cambrai. Nevertheless, “the war passed in a romantic haze of trying to be a hero.” In 1940, during a WWII bombing raid, Moore’s studio in London was hit, forcing him to move out of the city. He was appointed as an official war artist and, because materials were scarce, mostly drew instead of sculpting. His drawings focused on the Londoners sheltering from the bombs in the Underground stations.

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