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Opening Night Preparations for Immortality and Vulnerability show curated by Didi Menendez and Sergio Gomez for the Zhou B Art Center and Poets and Artists.

Howard Tullman's heavily caffeinated life

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Howard Tullman, who collects nudes by painter Nadine Robbins, is the subject of one of her pieces being exhibited next month at Zhou B Art Center in Bridgeport.

Though he's fully clothed, the portrait is revealing: Tullman is holding a 7-Eleven “Double Gulp” of Diet Coke.

“Sadly, I drink at least 100 ounces a day,” says the CEO of 1871, an organization that grooms digital startups in Chicago.

All that caffeine explains a lot.

Along with running the tech community headquartered at the Merchandise Mart, Tullman sits on a dozen nonprofit and civic boards, is working on a screenplay and is a serious art collector. On the weekends, he writes a blog about entrepreneurship.

He is leading 1871 at a time of enormous change. The tech hub is adding another floor to its Mart offices, it's working to attract big companies to connect with startups and it's making plans for tech incubators in new fields, including retail.

NO CONSENSUS

Tullman also is wrestling with how to increase women's participation in tech. A year after announcing plans for a women-centric incubator, funded in part by philanthropist Liz Lefkofsky, he says the organization couldn't find consensus on how to make it succeed. So he's working with 1871's board to spread funding more broadly to help women get access to training, technology and mentors. The organization says nearly a third of its 725 members are women.

Chicago Tribune columnist Melissa Harris called the move away from a women's incubator “utter neglect,” but others say it's impossible to squeeze all the needs of women techies into one vertical program.

Maura O'Hara, executive director of the Illinois Venture Capital Association and an 1871 board member, says it's not a “de minimis issue.” But as with any entrepreneurial venture, a new program takes a while to gel, she says.

“Howard excels at getting people really excited about initiatives. He puts a germ of an idea out there and people get excited and then there are energy and resources around it,” O'Hara says. “Howard needs to be allowed and the board needs to be allowed to start something and watch it evolve over time.”

Away from work, Tullman is fine-tuning a screenplay that started as a play and was featured byVictory Gardens Theater in 2011 as part of a fundraising effort for guest playwrights. He says he has a representative in Los Angeles but isn't seeking financing for the work yet.

STEALING MILLIONS

It's about five young friends who take low-level jobs in a presidential campaign and then steal millions without anyone noticing. “The candidate and senior management of a campaign are the least knowledgeable about any operational details of a campaign. There's enormous scrutiny on money coming in to a campaign and zero on how it's spent,” says Tullman, a regular donor to political campaigns.

Tullman, 69, who will be honored in May by the Illinois Humanities Council for his work in technology and the arts, started collecting Pez dispensers and lunchboxes when he was growing up and continued as an adult “enabled by eBay,” he says. When his two now-grown daughters were young, he bought Madame Alexander dolls, once traveling hundreds of miles to get one repaired.

Today, he and Judith, his wife of 30 years, collect art that they showcase in a private gallery. With more than 1,500 pieces and the time it takes to seek out new artists, it's like a business, he says.

So how did he have time to pose for Robbins' painting?

“She shot a million photos of me while I was working,” Tullman says. “I couldn't have sat still for that long.”

Tullman Collection Artist Nadine Robbins

Nadine Robbins Paints Unconventional Portraits and Oysters

Home » Art » Nadine Robbins Paints Unconventional Portraits and Oysters

Renee Phillips Posted By Renee Phillips on Dec 4, 2014 | 0 comments

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Whether Nadine Robbins is creating a large painting of a family portrait or a closeup view of vibrant red oysters glistening on a bed of ice, her approach is always  unconventional. The unique perspective that she brings to her light-filled realistic paintings has attracted the attention of numerous collectors and praise from the art community.

For instance, critic John Seed, writing in the Huffington Post, chose Robbin’s portrait “Mrs. McDonald” as one of his “Ten Memorable Paintings for 2013.” Seed praised the “sultry mood and unique beauty” of the image, and was then inspired to write a second article — “An Alluring Woman with Fries” — dedicated to analyzing the painting more completely.

Nadine Robbins, Rolling Buns, oil on linen, 48” x 72”.

Nadine Robbins grew up in Southern France and currently lives in the Hudson Valley, New York. Her large portraits have been featured in exhibitions worldwide. The prestigious Royal Society of Portrait Painters in London selected “The Rolling Buns” (above) and “Acacia and the Bowman” to be included in two consecutive annual exhibitions.

Her nude portrait “Moxie” is part of the legendary Tullman Collection in Chicago, Illinois. The painting was also a finalist in the international Creative Nude Art Erotic Signature’s Art Competition.

Keith Shaw, art critic and art historian, referred to Robbins’ portrait, “The Golden Gown,” as “the best nude oil painting I’ve seen in the Berkshires, outside The Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute in Williamstown, Massachusetts.” He remarked, “Nadine Robbins is a superb figure painter, and her double portrait is an American masterpiece.”

Nadine Robbins, PEACE, oil on linen, 72” x 66”. A year in the making, this painting of the Crosby family portrait, was recently unveiled at the Frying Pan Gallery, Wellfleet, Massachusetts to the delight of collectors Ned and Kelly Crosby from Osterville, Massachusetts.

A few weeks ago, I had the pleasure of asking Nadine Robbins a few questions about her art.

RP: Nadine, please tell me how you first became interested in art.

NR: Having lived in France, I grew up in a culture steeped in visual art. My mother, herself an artist, encouraged me and introduced me at a very early age to her favorite painters, Renoir, Picasso and Dali. Winning best artist in my elementary school was pretty memorable as well. I think that my fate was sealed. I guess art is in my DNA too.

RP: Your extraordinary portraits have been hailed as masterpieces and having unique beauty. What attributes do you think distinguish your portraits from those by other portrait painters?

NR: My portraits aren’t conventional. For years, I worked as a graphic designer, and I spent far too much time doctoring images of people in Photoshop. That drove me crazy. I don’t want to idealize my subjects or strive for any conventional sense of beauty.

People inspire me and I’m intuitively attracted to those who exude authenticity and confidence. When I’m at a photo shoot for a painting, I try to capture people in various ways, whether it’s a humorous pose or a candid one. These photo sessions are informal and improvisational. I stay on the lookout for moments that speak to my intuition. My best work has come when my plans go awry and I go with the moment. What comes from it are real, uncluttered and serendipitous moments.

Nadine Robbins, Mrs. McDonald, oil on linen board, 18” x 24”. This painting was chosen as a finalist in the 31st Annual Artist’s Magazine’s Competition.

RP: What do you try to capture in your portraits?

NR: I take a modern, uncluttered approach to portraiture by abandoning the rigid postures of traditional canvases. I invite people to relax and show their silly, sassy, confident or mysterious selves. I want to convey their personalities through a striking pose, sumptuous gown, eating french fries, or sticking out their tongues. Anything goes as long as my paintings depict real people in accessible—even vulnerable—moments.

With my portraits, I hope to give something to people that they can relate to and feel drawn to, and maybe a laugh and a smile as well. My portraits have personality.

RP: Your portrait subjects appear so natural. How do you prepare for your portrait commissions?

NR: To start, I love to get the chance to meet the people I paint and hang out; dinner, some drinks and relax. It’s a casual and comfortable way of getting to know each other and throwing ideas around. If we don’t have a chance to socialize, that’s ok. Either way, I just dive right in and start with a photo shoot that is kind of like a journey without any kind of fixed destinations.

Later, when I look over the photos, I often end up not picking the image I planned or thought was going to be “the one” during the shoot. The final image choice appeals to my visual sense of humor or intuition.

Nadine Robbins, Oysters in the Afternoon, oil on linen, 36” x 18”. This painting is available as a limited edition print.

RP: You achieve extraordinary accuracy, exquisite texture and light in your paintings. I’m sure your painting process is laborious. Please explain your painting process.

NR: I use traditional methods. I block in color where I apply a thin layer of oil paint — with only turpentine added — intended to help determine values and color relationships. I then apply a thicker layer, in which I add linseed oil to the turpentine and create what’s called a medium that is then added to the oil paint. The process “fat over lean” refers to the principle in oil painting of applying paint with a higher oil to pigment ratio (fat) over paint with a lower oil to pigment ratio (lean) to ensure a stable paint film.  It is believed that the paint with the higher oil content remains more flexible. This second layer is where accurate color and shapes are crucial. It takes the longest.

The third and final pass is the most fun and much less technical. It’s where I add fine details and highlights or touches of black — all the goodies that make the painting pop and come alive.

RP: In addition to your portraits, you are also known for your incredible series of oyster paintings. How did they come about?

NR: I grew up outside Charleston, South Carolina and in Europe, always close to the sea and seafood. I’m crazy about food in general, and I chose oysters as a subject because they are something I really love. It was either going to be cheese or oysters. I opted for oysters, as they are better for my waistline! I see each oyster as an individual: sculptural and raw, beautiful and abstract.

Nadine Robbins, Afternoon Cocktail, oil on cotton, 12” x 12”.

RP: Do oysters still continue to hold your interest?

NR: Yes, in between my paintings of people, when I find myself in need of a moment to breathe and am hungry for new inspiration, I go back to my roots near the sea to paint oysters — pure and beautiful.

RP: Is there a particular philosophy that motivates you?

NR: I am driven by passion in whatever I do. I’m also a very hard worker, with a work ethic rooted in my years as a graphic designer. I relate to what the artist Chuck Close says: “I don’t work with inspiration. Inspiration is for amateurs. I just get to work.”

RP: Nadine, where can we view your art work in the near future?

NR: I’ll be part of a group show called “Immortality and Vulnerability” in Chicago in April of 2015. I’ll show two paintings, which I’m currently working on, that explore bad habits and guilty pleasures.

To see more of Nadine Robbin’s art work, visit her website at www.nadinerobbinsart.com

To read the Luxe Beat Magazine version of this article click on the title Nadine Robbins Paints Unconventional Portraits and Oysters

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Author: Renee Phillips 

Renée Phillips is an author, arts writer, and curator who lives in New York, NY. She is founder/director of Manhattan Arts International (www.ManhattanArts.com), “A creative community of art professionals that provides mutual support, encourages camaraderie, and rewards artistic excellence”. The author of several books she is most recognized for six editions of "The Complete Guide to New York Art Galleries" and three editions of “Success NOW! For Artists: A Motivational Guide for the Artrepreneur”. Her articles related to art and business and art and inspiration appear on the www.ManhattanArtsblog.com weblog. She is an art business columnist for Professional Artist magazine. Known as “The Artrepreneur Coach” Renée provides career direction for artists world-wide and has presented dozens of art business seminars including those at New York University, Art Institute of Chicago, Museum of the Moving Image, and New York Foundation for the Arts. She has curated more than 60 art exhibitions in New York galleries and alternative spaces. Her annual “Celebrate The Healing Power of Art” exhibitions have gained worldwide recognition. As an arts' advocate she has served on the advisory boards of several non-profit arts organizations including the UNCF "The Art of Giving Back". She is a member of the International Association of Art Critics, USA. She was founder and Editor-in-Chief of Manhattan Arts International magazine 1983 - 2000. Renée studied art at the Art Student's League and was a fulltime professional artist before becoming an active arts writer and advisor. Her current artistic pursuits include painting and creating one-of-a-kind wearable art.

The art of Serendipity.

The art of Serendipity.

Nadine Robbins is a painter who is also a photographer.

Nadine Robbins in her Hudson Valley Studio. The painting on the wall and on the floor are from the photo shoot.

Nadine Robbins paints portraits from her own photography shoots. This is a common practice since the invention of the camera. The camera obscura may have been used to create masterpieces as far back as Vermeer.

Nadine uses her photography to capture that “one” painting. The one that will be chosen to be immortalized in oil. In a recent shoot last year she photographed a local model Kaitlin Naylor who was in the nude.

Nadine not only set-up the shoot for that “one” painting but she had also been asked by me for a cover of PoetsArtists where Nin Andrews was editing an Erotica Issue also known as the Chanticleer edition. I did not feel comfortable calling it Erotica because that in itself brings all sort of implications when publishing poetry and art. I am not sure if that is the reason why she asked Kaitlin to hold up ostrich eggs or if by chance it was already one of the props she had in the studio where she photo shoot took place. Maybe she can answer that later in the comments.

During the shoot, Kaitlin took a break and had lunch. McDonald’s must have been near by beccause Nadine also captured Kaitlin eating her lunch. Nadine decided to paint Kaitlin eating french fries. Now two paintings evolved from the same photo shoot. The painting of Kaitlin eating fries later was chosen by John Seed for his article in the Huffington Post, 10 Most Memorable Paintings of 2013. The painting of Kaitlin holding up the ostrich eggs made it to the cover of the August 2013 issue of PA and the painting of Kaitlin eating lunch later made it to the cover of a collection of essays written for the Huffington Post by John Seed.

Here is Nadine Robbins speaking about the shoot:

“I decided to photograph Kaitlin holding ostrich eggs to play with the concept of the female anatomy being outside of Kaitlin’s body as opposed to just a nude. A tribute of sort to women with a slightly different angle. I like adding props and although many times they don’t work, this time they did and the concept worked. Plan A didn’t go awry.

Unbeknownst to either of us, plan B came upon by accident. It was one of those steamy summer days. The warehouse where we were shooting was sizzling and her flame-colored hair was frizzing wildly. Postponing for a cooler day wasn’t an option, so I took a run to the local golden arches for more water. On a lark, I ordered a happy meal. I soon learned that Kaitlin, enviously thin, loved her fries. The misery of the heat and humidity evaporated as she savored the salty spuds. And all my preconceived ideas about what I wanted to capture with Kaitlin also evaporated as we went with the moment prompted by an opportune treat.

The images that came out of the shoot were fantastic and I am still using them for new paintings a few years later. Kaitlin is a fabulous model. Between posed shots, we talk and laugh and I’m always shooting. One of the shots is going to be a life-size painting of Kaitlin that I think will be the best one yet.”

The painting of Kaitlin eating french fries has lead to a series of other portraits which will be shown next year at the Zhou B Art Center in Chicago. A yearly art show I co-curate with Sergio Gomez. I will not give too much away for the show but will say that one of the portraits will be of Matthew Hittinger a well known poet also from New York and the other of Howard Tullman, the entrepreneur of entrepreneurs from Chicago. The photo shoot of Howard Tullman took place at the 1871 Building at the Merchandise Mart where Howard is heading new digital startup companies and when Nadine was visiting Chicago for this year’s show at the Zhou B Art Center. I saw the photos of these shoots and I am looking forward to the paintings.

John Seed

Professor of Art and Art History, Mt. San Jacinto College

An Alluring Woman With Fries and McDonaldization in Art

Posted: 12/27/2013 10:35 am

Nadine Robbins, Mrs. McDonald, oil on linen board, 18 x 24 inches

When I first glanced at Nadine Robbins' painting Mrs. McDonald a quote from the anthropologist Margaret Mead popped into my head:

Always remember that you are absolutely unique. Just like everyone else.

The canvas locked me into a Lacanian gaze with a naked woman -- a rust-haired model named Kaitlin -- who the artist has portrayed in a way that highlights her sultry mood and unique beauty. Then again Kaitlin isn't entirely shown as unique: she likes some McDonald's fries now and then, so she can't be all that different from the rest of us can she?

Those thin yellow pillars of starch, fried golden, sprinkled with a revelatory tang of salt and presented in an apple-red carton are a contemporary image of temptation that transcends all boundaries of gender, culture and belief. The image of Kaitlin's finger reaching for a fry has a teasing sensuality that would make even the most ascetic nutritionist salivate.

A detail of Mrs. McDonald

Mrs. McDonald naturally invites comparisons to an earlier narrative involving food and female nudity: In Medieval and Renaissance paintings innumerable Eves tempt Adam with appealing apples. As the shopworn myth goes, after one bite of that piece of fruit Adam and Eve find themselves expelled from the Garden of Eden into the wider world where they become aware of good and evil, of maleness and femaleness and of all opposites. They will go on to raise a family, and their sons will invent fratricide, war and tribalism when Cain murders Abel.

We call what follows civilization and culture. In other words, it is a very powerful and central myth. I think that one of the things the Eve story tells us is that if you control the food you control the culture. Would it be fair to say that in the 21st century the corporation is the snake?

Detail of a 16th century Eve by Lucas Cranach

Veering back towards contemporaneity, Mrs. McDonald strikes me as a self-consciously powerful woman who makes her viewers complicit: she is keeping her fries to herself knowing that we are judging her for indulging in a guilty pleasure. "You have caught me," her raised eyebrow seems to say, "but you are just like me because you love them too, even though you know they are bad for you." Mrs. McDonald is an Eve for our contemporary situation, one in which we insist on our individuality and difference while both craving and fearing commonality. We know that we can't go back to the garden of innocence, but our shared cravings -- which corporations apparently understand better than any individual -- can at least remind us of the human urges that bind us across nations and faiths.

A survey conducted by Sponsorship International discovered that far more of the people it surveyed worldwide could recognize that McDonald's golden arches (88 percent of respondents) than could recognize the Christian cross (54% of respondents). The word logo is derived from logos which originally meant "the word of God" and apparently the religion of capitalism -- a polytheistic faith with hundreds of prominent Gods/Corporations -- does a better job of knowing how to connect humanity than any faith or political party or leader. French fries are now the most popular vegetable in America, a favored food of Republicans and Democrats, gays and straights, Christians and Muslims: if they didn't make us fat we could think of them as a positive social force, right?

Then again those of us who like our culture highbrow regularly express our fears over the McDonaldization of culture; a process in which an emphasis on efficiency leads to predictable, controllable outcomes. The sociologist George Ritzer is credited with inventing the term and theorizing that McDonaldization is an extreme form of "rationalizing" in which logically consistent rules are substituted for traditional, illogical ones. As many of the world's current economic and social problems make painfully clear, The quest for efficiency works against individuality and spawns de-humanization, a dynamic that has increasingly plagued civilization and culture since the Industrial Revolution.

Visual Artists have been split on how to adapt to modernity's embrace of efficiency at the expense of craft and variety. Marcel Duchamp celebrated factory-made (readymade) objects as "art" and Andy Warhol, an extreme pragmatist and canny social observer, adopted mass production and mass imagery as the keystones of his art. Beginning with the Arts and Crafts movement, other innumerable artists -- those who continued to assert their individuality and channel their ideas through their limbs -- have resisted McDonaldization while running the risk of being called conservative because their artistic habits are the same as those of Medieval monks not artist/CEOs who let other's multiply their products and ideas for them. By choosing to paint representationally in a style that demands mastery of traditional skills Nadine Robbins is one of the former.

The contemporary artists that I most admire are distinctive individuals whose commitment to individual expression seems to defy and deflect predictability and McDonaldization. I like artists who are inefficient and whose motivations are human, fallible, and even unpredictable to the point of being quixotic. Like so many of my liberal, educated friends I fear corporations and corporate products since I worry that their ability to create commodities that I might actually crave collectivizes my acquisitive and therefore evil impulses. My fears are of course hypocritical as my entire lifestyle is an ocean of corporate products. Liking art allows me to point to one tiny island of culture and say "Look, individualistic and hand-made objects are still being made: Hallefreakinlujah!"

In searching the internet to find other contemporary works of art that involve McDonald's and/or McDonaldization I found myself very entertained by this vignette of a mass crucifixion of Ronald McDonalds from the vast diorama The Sum of All Evil created by Jake and Dinos Chapman.

Detail of The Sum of All Evil 2013 by Jake and Dinos Chapman Image Courtesy PinchukArtCentre Photo © Sergey Illin

I don't know that this scene has any precise meaning, but it struck me as suggesting a kind of revenge fantasy that the artists had concocted as an imaginative antidote to fast-food cultural totalitarianism. It might also be said that the Chapman diorama falls in line something sociologists have predicted in regards to McDonaldization: it predicts an unintended extreme that is the end-point of a over-rationalized culture taken to extremes. As the website www.mcdonaldization.com explains:

It turns out that over-rationalizing a process in this manner has an unexpected side effect. It's called irrationality. In a sociological context that simply means that a rationalized system may result in events or outcomes that were neither anticipated or desired, and in fact, may not be so good.

Jake and Dinos Chapman are moralists who have taken advantage of artistic free speech to make a point that is hyperbolic. Their thinking is imaginative breathtaking but also sensationalistic. I don't have as much angst -- or as many fears -- about the potential horrors of extreme McDonaldized culture as they apparently do. The fact that they can make and display their work in a major museum (The Tate) actually contradicts what they appear to be saying.

Maybe the reason that I was so struck by the painting Mrs. McDonald is that it transmits the idea that it suggests an individual can manage or even take control of the considerable power of corporate products corporatized culture. The current Renaissance of representational art and artists strikes me as being well-positioned to counterbalance and comment on the cultural influence of McDonaldization. Humanist values in art and culture have always been the powerful weapons against the excessive influence of powerful organizations.

If our culture can value, recognize and support the work of artists who can reflect both our individuality and our collective needs in meaningful works of art we can all enjoy and indulge in a Happy Meal now and then without fear. I understand that there is now a McDonald's at the Louvre and the museum is doing just fine.

Digital collage by John Seed via Photofunia