The Frescos of Oleg Supereco

Oleg Supereco has spent nearly a decade living in Italy. Though he's starting to develop an Italian accent, his roots are firmly planted in Moscow, where he was born and raised. 

Yet despite his Russian origin, Oleg is a painter who has come to be known as one of the leading proponents of the Italian art of buon fresco, and was recently commissioned to paint the pennacchi and the cupola of the Cathedral Church of St. Nicholas, in Noto (all images here) after it collapsed one night in 1996.

The buon fresco technique has now been virtually abandoned because of the difficulty of the procedure (once the mortar is spread on the wall you have only two or three hours to paint before it is dry), and for the lack of large clients with deep pockets. Accepting the proposed project in Noto brought many challenges, but was one of those opportunities that occur only once in life.

Still, it was a mammoth undertaking. The dome itself has an area of ​​about three hundred square meters, and is considered the largest contemporary fresco in Italy.

Working on a scaffold 32 meters off the deck, the first step was to remove the earlier plaster because it was cement-based, and replace it with traditional lime-based plaster, which allows more flexibility and better breathability. Supereco then started transferring his drawings of the thirteen figures that make up his scene of the descent of the Holy Spirit.

 

"The iconography of the entire project was drawn up by the Rev. Charles Chenis, then Secretary of the Pontifical Commission for Cultural Heritage of the Church, who proposed an organic cycle in which was proposed: the Heavenly Jerusalem with the Assumption (the nave Central), Pentecost and the Evangelists (dome with its plumes); Christ Blessing (apse), the seven sacraments (glass dome); saints venerated in the Diocese (windows of the nave), the Ladder of Paradise Madonna patroness of the Diocese and four local saints (right transept); Cross with four fathers of the Church (left transept).

A course that will make the vast Cathedral of Noto a rare example of a stylistic blend of the baroque and the present."

His father, realizing Oleg's passion for the Visual Arts, took him to see his first museum at a young age, intending to visit only those halls showing the modern art of the day. Oleg, however, had other plans. He spotted, in another separate area, some old Russian icon paintings and was immediately entranced. Despite Oleg's insistence, his father would not let him get a closer look. These were the first years of perestroika, after all.

That first meeting with Russian icons left a permanent impression. "I was immediately taken by the expressive power - remember - I do not get enthusiastic about Impressionism, Realism and Soviet art that speaks of everyday life. I was just struck by the faces of the icons; it was something higher, not made ​​with hands. Something clicked. I said 'I have to do that.'" If you ask him when he realized that he would become a painter, he has no doubts: "Always."

After finishing art school, Oleg enrolled in the Academy of Fine Arts in Moscow. It was there that he met a pivotal figure in his artistic life; Ilya Glazunov, present rector of the Academy and one of the most important contemporary Russian painters. The old man saw something of a kindred spirit in young Oleg, who described him as "a fighter against the dark forces." By that he meant the "dark forces" of secularism and modernism in art. "A great man, before whom you feel small. One of those people who happen along once every hundred years. He was perhaps the only one who understood me." The two men shared a deep religious faith that bonded them. "Painting is a prayer through which I communicate with the Lord and He communicates with me. I am only an instrument."  

When asked why he paints, he replies simply: "Because I can't not paint." 

His inspiration is clear; so what does he say about his style?

"It's certainly a (style of) painting that is based on the idealized concept of mimesis, that is, an art that is inspired by nature which brings out only the good parts." His work, as he wrote the Rev. Chenis in 2004, is "heedless of the seasons of contemporary art."

Gladunov grasped the potential of the young student, yet other teachers accused of being too Western and too Italianate, and artistically too "Catholic". But his teacher defended him and today, among the many students he had during his long career, Gladunov appoints only three or four as being the best. Oleg is one of them. Supereco traveled to Italy, where he continued his studies with a scholarship to the Academy of Fine Arts of Venice, graduating in 2004, and where he lives and works to this day.

A monograph, sponsored by the Prince Sebastian Von Furstenberg, his patron, is available from Amazon.  

Transferring the day's cartoon

Supereco's initial sketch for one of the pennacchi figures

 

Postcards From the Front: WWI Sketches of Percy Matthews

The last surviving veteran of World War I died this week at 110 years old. Out of the tens of millions who served, Florence Green was the very last, and her death marks the passing of one of the defining events of human history.

The human urge to create art somehow endures despite the most hellish conditions imaginable. In some cases it can be a desperate effort to record events as documentation, such as the scratched visions of concentration camp horror or the drawings of David Olère. In others there is a discernible effort to create something beautiful, perhaps in an attempt to transcend misery through art, or maybe it's just the fleeting relief fighting artists found while concentrating on the act of sketching.

Percy Matthews trained as an artist in England before serving on the Western Front during World War I as a Private in the Kentish Buffs, and later in Salonika (today called Thessalonika, Greece), as a Lieutenant in the Middlesex Regiment. The remarkable sketches reproduced here are from a collection of scenes and characters drawn from military and civilian life at that time. Percy's son Peter donated these sketches to the Imperial War Museum in 2007, almost one hundred years after they were first created.

 " You will be driven into the sea,

and you will not have time even to cry for mercy"

Greek Chief of General Staff

There's a deep humanity in the portrait drawings of Percy Matthews sketched during "that awful pause (between fighting) in which defenders and attackers are braced up to face the ordeal, with fear or desperation, with cool courage or with blazing ardour."

Dulce et Decorum Est, by Wilfred Owen, (1893-1918)

Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,
Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,
Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs
And towards our distant rest began to trudge.
Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots
But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame; all blind;
Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots
Of tired, outstripped Five-Nines that dropped behind.

Gas! GAS! Quick, boys! -- An ecstasy of fumbling,
Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time;
But someone still was yelling out and stumbling
And flound'ring like a man in fire or lime . . .
Dim, through the misty panes and thick green light,
As under I green sea, I saw him drowning.

In all my dreams, before my helpless sight,
He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.

If in some smothering dreams you too could pace
Behind the wagon that we flung him in,
And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,
His hanging face, like a devil's sick of sin;

If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood
Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,
Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud
Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues, --

My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
To children ardent for some desperate glory,
The old lie: Dulce et decorum est
Pro patria mori.

Harold Anderson (1894-1973), The Happy Greeting

Eye Deep in Hell: Trench Warfare in World War I by John Ellis is a terrifying read, full of crawling around in the fetid slurry of rotting corpses and mustard gas, and makes Anderson's painting (above) seem like a kind of manufactured lie on a par with Russian posters of happy, well-fed peasants while millions were starving to death in the Ukrainian 'bread basket' during WWII.

The truth is, Daddy was more likely to come home looking like the poor sod in this disturbing video of a shell shock victim from World War I than the saccharine chocolate box cover by Anderson. You can also watch War Neuroses, filmed in 1917 at Netley Hospital in its entirety here. It's disturbing viewing, and makes society's desire for shuttered normality during the 1930s and (later) 1950s completely understandable given what the world had just gone through.

Still from the Seale Hayne shell shock video

From the artistic fiction of fairies and butterflies drawn on postcards and sent back home to children missing their fathers, to the disturbing visions of Otto Dix, artists have been using art as a method of processing pain as long as there's been war.

There has been a huge effort recently to make freely accessible a vast collection of drawings, letters, documents and memorabilia from the hands of the people who were there. Here are some fantastic online resources whose breadth of content, excellent image databases, attractive presentation and ease of use will make you forget all about that boring To Do list you've been avoiding all day.

The Great War Archive

First World War Digital Poetry Archive

Europeana 1914-1918 (The World War I documents of everyday life)

World War I Document Archive

1418: Documenti e Immagini dela Grande Guerra

UK National Archives

Damien Hirst: The Pale Student of Unhallowed Arts

 "I saw the pale student of unhallowed arts kneeling beside the thing he had put together. I saw the hideous phantasm of a man stretched out, and then, on the working of some powerful engine, show signs of life and stir with an uneasy, half-vital motion. Frightful must it be, for supremely frightful would be the effect of any human endeavour to mock the stupendous mechanism of the Creator of the world"

Frankenstein, by Mary Shelley 

"Put some more monkey chemicals in FrankenHirst: His Gagosian show got panned"

Ever look at a Damien Hirst painting and thought "a monkey could paint better than that"? Hirst's Gagosian PR charade (Jan 12 -Feb 18) got me thinking about chimps. Not because he resembles one (Frieze describes him as "looking like a fossil from the Britpop era for whom time froze sometime around 1995 in the Groucho Club toilets"), but because his work reminds me of monkey art.

"I just move colour around on its own"

Damien Hirst 

"mmmuuuuuuuuuuhhhhhhhhh"
Frankenstein's Monster

Hirst's Gagosian show: "A Perfect Storm of Banality"

Ghost Artists

A notice appeared in the Washington Post in 1952 advertising The Ghost Artists, whose slogan "We Paint It - You Sign It" tempted would-be artists to skip the whole 'creating' part and just go straight to the exhibition. Why bother doing all that work when you could hire ghost artists to do it for you? Just sit back and soak up the adulation.

The notice received tons of serious replies and a flurry of attention. Washington newsmen descended upon the Georgetown address of The Ghost Artists only to find that it was nothing more than a prank by Hugh Troy (1906-1964). Troy was an artist and Illustrator, but it seems that his true passion was the pranks for which he is known to this day.

"People should be mystified more than they are. 

Life moves along too regularly."

Hugh Troy

According to lore, on another occasion at a 1935 exhibition of the works of Vincent Van Gogh in New York's Museum of Modern Art, Troy made a fake ear out of some meat and put it on display with a plaque that read:

"This is the ear

which Vincent Van Gogh

cut off and sent to his mistress,

a French prostitute, Dec. 24, 1888."

Whether any of this actually happened is open to debate. By that I mean Troy's apocryphal tale, but also the bit about Van Gogh cutting his own ear off: The story that it was, in fact, Gauguin who did the cutting has been doing the rounds for a while. Either way, Troy seems to have delighted in exposing the public as gossip-hungry and gullible fools.

New Mona Lisa Discovered

Detail of the newly discovered and restored copy of the Mona Lisa

A new twist to the never-ending saga of the Mona Lisa occurred earlier today when The Art Newspaper leaked that the Prado has discovered a copy of the Mona Lisa believed to have been painted alongside Leonardo himself. But who painted it?

"The Prado now believes its copy may be the work of one of Leonardo's two favorite pupils, either Giacomo Salai or Francesco Melzi", says the Guardian's Jonathan Jones.

The copy is revealing for reasons other than it's inherent artistic qualities. According to The Guardian, Leonardo "picked his pupils for their looks, not their talent. He delighted in Salai's curly locks, says Vasari, who also attests to the beauty of Melzi, even in old age. They were not gifted artists."

The copy does give us an insight into the Master's studio process as well as perhaps revealing what Lisa Del Giacondo actually looked like at the time Leonardo painted his portrait. Leonardo spent a few years tweaking and fiddling with his painting (which may allow for the confused reading of his intent), rendering it a little less than a faithful representation of his model. Leonardo's endless tinkering added about 20 years to the face of what would have been a young woman in her 20s.

There are numerous copies of the Mona Lisa painted after Leonardo's death (and many variations inspired by his masterpiece), but the shocking news that this copy is believed to have been made in the same room as Leonardo, even as Lisa Del Giacondo was posing for the Master, has astonished the art world. The Prado's experts made their verdict upon removal of the black paint that obscured a Tuscan landscape.

The copy is undergoing a final clean before the Prado plans to send it on tour, beginning with the Louvre in March.

Spot The Differences: The real Mona Lisa (left) next to the newly discovered copy (right)

Restorers worked hard to remove a thick black paint from the background of the copy

Prado employees next to the restored copy of Mona Lisa

Mona Lisa, by Leonardo da Vinci

Maddalena Doni, by Raphael

Étude de mains, by Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres

Artist Websites: What makes them suck?

I'm in the process of designing a portfolio website for myself, and got a bit scared when I saw this.

Katherine Tyrell gathered feedback via Making a Mark from her readers showing what not to do on your artist website or blog. Her graphic needs no explanation, and is an eye-opener.

I agree with all the issues raised by her poll, but it also made me wonder: I upload the largest images I can find because that's what I personally look for on a site, but does that make my site load too slowly? Please do drop me a line and let me know if you've any problems with the blog. I'd really appreciate it.

Further reading:

50 fresh portfolio websites for your inspiration!
50 stunning portfolio websites for your inspiration!

The Origin of Oil Painting in Italy

St. Jerome In His Study, Antonello da Messina

Just who was it that developed the secret of oil painting? How did they invent the medium that produces such vibrant colors and fine detail, and can survive the ravages of centuries?

The 'Secrets of the Masters' is a debate that has raged for centuries. Scholars arguing over the methods and materials of the Masters can be a tedious affair fraught with contradictions. But, as the Creationists say: Never let the truth get in the way of a good yarn.

Like medieval monks spending a decade debating how many angels could fit on the head of a pin, it can end up sounding like meaningless bone-picking to the average layman. But there are some great stories around it.

A bit of background

Equally, the story of the spread of this new medium from the Netherlands to Italy is just as full of doubt and hearsay. No lesser than Vasari claims that there was a friendship between Van Eyck and Antonello da Messina which explains the introduction of oil painting to Italy, but as Eastlake later pointed out, this is improbable as Van Eyck died in 1441 and "the earliest genuine date seen on pictures by Antonello is 1465.

That reminded me of the Monty Python sketch where Michael Palin claims he wrote all Shakespeare's plays, but John Cleese points out that Shakespeare died 300 years before Palin was born. "Ah well," replies Palin, "this is where my claim falls to the ground."



That Antonello visited the Netherlands and was entranced by what he saw is not in doubt. Vasari says that when he first saw a painting by Van Eyck in Naples, he was “so strongly impressed by the liveliness of the colors and by the beauty and harmony of that painting” that he dropped his tools, picked up his shirt-tails and ran off to Flanders.

However, the painter from Messina was struck with a deep homesickness that drove him back to Italy. He is known to have fled the Netherlands and settled in Venice around 1475, where, Kugler tells us, "the sight of his new method produced a revolution."

An example of Antonello's new formula in action. The detail is superb.

The story of the Origin of Oil Painting in Italy

Imagine for a second what it must have been like to be Giovanni Bellini: You're desperate to prove yourself and get out from the shadow of your father Jacopo and your brother-in-law Andrea Mantegna. Two colossal names in Art, and little old you in the background. Then along comes Antonello back from swanning around Europe with Van Eyck, bragging about some secret he learned. Now if only you could only get your hands on that formula.

Alexandre Dumas picks up the story from here:

"In 1452 Venice was in a great furor over the arrival of Antonello da Messina, who had already been preceded by his tremendous reputation. Never before had such painting been seen - so brilliant and with tones so harmoniously blended.

"One day a nobleman of great elegance, and purporting to have arrived from Padua but three days before, presented himself to the painter to have his portrait painted. The price was fixed at twenty ducats and the appointment made for the next day.

"The young man followed the work of the master with great curiosity, although as he said, he had never been interested in art. The following day the stranger presented himself as on the day before. The sitting had already begun when a young girl, who posed as a model for the leading Viennese painters, came and knocked at Antonello's door. He sent word to remind her that the appointment had been for the evening and not for the morning. The model however replied that he must examine her then or not at all.

"Antonello went grumbling into the next room, begging the young nobleman to excuse him, which the latter did with the most gracious air imaginable.

"But he had hardly closed the door behind him, when the stranger made one bound from his chair to the bottle, which contained the precious elixir, and filled from its contents, a small flagon, doubtless prepared for that purpose; then replacing the bottle on its table, he resumed his place and his accustomed pose so naturally that Antonello, on returning five minutes later, found him as he had left him."

The young man was, of course, no other than Giovanni Bellini. Was the story true? Who cares.

Portrait of the Doge Leonardo Loredan, by Giovanni Bellini

St. Francis in Ecstacy, by Giovanni Bellini

This is one of my favorite paintings of all time (and is a real treat to visit at the Frick in New York). St. Francis' moment of clarity is practically hallucinogenic in the hands of Bellini. It's as if the Universe froze for an instant. Round one to Bellini.

Still, history weighed in and picked the winner: Vasari referred to Bellini's "arid, crude and labored style." "Giovanni Bellini's reputation recovered only slowly from Giorgio Vasari's verdict," whereas "Antonello da Messina became an artist of legendary proportions during the Nineteenth Century" [Bätschmann], and became exalted on a level with the best painters from Northern Europe. "Antonello's (St. Jerome) possesses a harmony and geometric clarity of structure that even Jan van Eyck could not match." High praise indeed from Keith Christiansen.

 "Antonello's art sets up a powerful dynamic with the viewer,

who is encouraged by illusionistic devices ...

to experience painting as an extension of reality."

Okay, but what exactly was this secret medium of Antonello's? You think I'm just going to give it away for free? Look for an upcoming post where I lay it out in detail, for free.

John Vanderlyn: Panorama of Versailles

John Vanderlyn spent his later years whipping out his wares for anyone who'd take a look at them. I love the idea of him as a sort of Nineteenth Century Tall Grass artist pimping for cash like some itinerant rough tradesman. I'm not sure why that appeals to me. Maybe because the back-story injects a bit of life into work that's a bit stale and dry otherwise.

Things weren't always rough for him, though. Upon seeing Vanderlyn's copy of Gilbert Stuart's portrait, Aaron Burr pledged to pay any expenses necessary for the young artist "to cultivate his genius to [the] highest point of Perfection." Well that's quite a difference of opinion from his write-up in Appleton's Cyclopedia, which called his work "hardly more than respectable." Ouch.

^{[On a side note: Appleton's Cyclopedia of American Biography was the original Wikipedia. Museum Of Hoaxes claims that, out of the thousands of biographies at least 200 have been found to be false. The entries were not checked for content. Sounds familiar, ahem].}

Vanderlyn's panorama at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City

<sup>Time Magazine, upon the installation of the mural into it's current location at the Met, called it "one of the biggest, most elaborate and most thoroughly forgotten paintings in American history." 

At 165 feet in length and some 3,000 square feet of canvas, you might expect it to have more of a presence. It's cold neo-Classical style is partly to blame. It's more of a mathematical exercise in visual perspective than painting, and it's telling that the most flattering adjective Time came up with to describe it was "big".</sup>

His portrait paintings had fallen flat commercially, so he turned to painting grand panoramas (including Paris, Athens and Mexico), the only surviving example of which is this panorama of Versailles in the Metropolitan Museum of Art. This project was no different to his others and never made money, embroiling Vanderlyn in money problems with Burr (among others) for many years.

“The whole history of Vanderlyn’s life from that period to 1836 is a record of straits and struggles, repeated efforts and disappointments, and cruel injustice withal,” wrote a sympathetic (historian) Benjamin Myer Brink. “It is enough to say that the entanglements of the rotunda and kindred panorama projects were fatal to his peace and paralyzed his pencil.” [source]

The artist depicted himself pointing out Czar Alexander I and King Frederick William II of Prussia to the right of the Basin de Latone (above).

"The painting was originally intended for display in the Rotunda built by Vanderlyn in 1818 at the northeast corner of City Hall Park in New York. Its showing there was not as successful as Vanderlyn had wished. In search of some profit, Vanderlyn toured intermittently with the panorama until his death." [Met]

He died in 1952, a block-and-a-half from where he was born, a broken and embittered man. His grave at Wiltwyck Cemetary lay neglected for years. He did receive something of a eulogy from Brink some years later, who called him “a man of genius, an artist of renown, an honor to his country, (who) achieved broad and enduring fame.” Kind of a lie really, but nice of him to say.

The Future of Arts Education

Did you know?

"Students receiving arts-based instruction for at least 3 hours on 3 days of each week are 3 times more likely to be elected to class leadership positions." Dr. Shirley Brice Heath, Stanford University, 1998.

"Arts participants are less likely to drop out of school." Dr. James S. Catterall, UCLA, 1997.

"Employers (56%) and superintendents (79%) agree that a college degree in the arts is the most significant indicator of creativity in prospective job candidates." Ready to Innovate, 2008.




For some technical reason, email subscribers to this blog seem to see nothing but a big black space whenever I embed videos. This TED speech by Ken Robinson is well worth watching (if you're not already one of it's 3,000,000 + viewers). If you can't see the video on this post, you can watch it here.

The nitty-gritty...

How do you feel about your education in the arts? If you're anything like me, you were told to stop wasting your time with all that painting, and go learn something that will earn you a living.

A scathing report on the present state of arts education was released last year by the NORC detailing the decline, and outlining recommendations for sweeping reform, of our current approach to education and the arts.

"After a century of steady growth both in schools and out, there has been a significant decline in the proportion of American children who have taken classes or lessons in the arts. In 1930, less than a quarter of 18-year olds had taken any classes or lessons in any art form during their childhood. By 1982, that figure had risen to sixty-five percent. But by 2008, and throughout a period of heightened concern and effort to improve schools, particularly those serving low-income children, it had dropped below half again, and the decline shows no sign of abating."

"Arts education among white children is down only slightly since 1982. The decline has been precipitous, though, among African American and Hispanic children. They have absorbed nearly the entire decline." (Rabkin & Hedberg, 2011) Some analysts of their research tells a re-assuring story of adult arts participation, but it's children and the arts that are seen to be in rapid decline.

Rabkin et al tell us that "among the art forms, the decline has been most serious in music and visual art, the two disciplines most commonly taught in schools. Simple deduction leads to the inescapable conclusion that the decline in childhood arts education has been most dramatic and concentrated in schools that serve African American and Hispanic children. There is a virtual arts desert in many of the schools they attend."

Indeed, not only has there been a significant drop-off in Arts education, there is also a concurrent drop-off in audience numbers for Arts events and activities. According to the NEA, "American audiences for the arts are getting older, and their numbers are declining". Some of that may be accounted for by the recent recession, but the numbers are still pretty stark.

Other data I found fascinating were the figures relating to gender participation in arts-related activities. According to NEA Director of Research and Analysis Sunil Iyengar, "The NEA’s own Survey of Public Participation in the Arts (SPPA) and related studies have long chronicled the gender imbalance favoring female versus male attendance at many types of live arts events.  Monitoring the Future suggests that the difference becomes apparent even before adulthood. From 1990 to 2005, roughly 30 percent of female 12th-graders did music or other performing arts activities after school, compared to only 17 percent of males." Furthermore, according to NCES, "female students also outperformed male students in creating visual art", where "the average responding scores for female students were 10 points higher than for male students in music and 11 points higher in visual arts." 

"93% of Americans agree the arts are vital to providing a well-rounded education for children."

Harris Poll, 2005.

"There’s not a straight line between the crochet club and the Ivy League", says June Kronholz, "but a growing body of research says there is a link between after-school activities and graduating from high school, going to college, and becoming a responsible citizen".

Despite Kronholz' assertions, and faced as we are with sweeping budget cuts, I find little reassurance that NELS is working on a soon-to-be-released study exploring possible links between extracurricular arts engagement and positive academic and social outcomes. I worry that Washington sees things differently to the American people (and the statistical evidence) on this issue.

Ever since A Nation At Risk, the infamous Reagan-era 1983 education reform study that claimed a "rising tide of mediocrity" in our Nation's schools is posing a national security threat, arts education has taken a real pounding. The report, when it bothered to mention the arts at all, suggested that they are nothing but a distraction from the real business of schools. That opinion has been shaping policy in arts education ever since.

And yet, over and over, research has strongly and consistently associated arts education with higher student achievement. "Careful evaluation of program after program has shown that learning in the arts is strongly correlated with improved student behavior, attendance, engagement in school, critical thinking, problem solving, creativity, social development, and, yes, even test scores." [Rabkin, 2011]

I don't get it. The system is failing, and everyone knows investment in the arts will help. Even Arne Duncan himself recently wrote that “education in the arts is more important than ever. In the global economy, creativity is essential. The best way to foster that creativity is through arts education.”

This is certainly a very challenging time for education, but the pendulum that swung away from the arts during these last three decades of school reform may swing back if values like creativity and innovation are more broadly embraced as essential purposes of education. Thank you, and good night America.

You still reading this? More of the NEA findings...

There are persistent patterns of decline in participation for most art forms. Nearly 35 percent of U.S. adults – or an estimated 78 million – attended an art museum or an arts performance in the 2008 survey period, compared with about 40 percent in 1982, 1992, and 2002.

• Attendance at the most popular types of arts events – such as art museums and craft/visual arts festivals – saw notable declines. The U.S. rate of attendance for art museums fell from a high of 26 percent in 1992-2002 to 23 percent in 2008, comparable to the 1982 level.
  
• Between 1982 and 2008, attendance at performing arts such as classical music, jazz, opera, ballet, musical theater, and dramatic plays has seen double-digit rates of decline.
  
• Fewer adults are creating and performing art. For example, the percentage of adults performing dance has lost six points since 1992. Weaving and sewing remain popular as crafts, but the percentage of adults who do those activities has declined by 12 points. Only the share of adults doing photography has increased – from 12 percent in 1992 to 15 percent in 2008.
  

Aging audiences are a long-term trend. Performing arts attendees are increasingly older than the average U.S. adult (45). The aging of the baby boom generation does not appear to account for the overall increase in age.

• Audiences for jazz and classical music are substantially older than before. In 1982, jazz concerts drew the youngest adult audience (median age 29). In the 2008 survey, the median age of jazz concert-goers was 46 – a 17-year increase. Since 1982, young adult (18-24) attendance rates for jazz and classical music have declined the most, compared with other art forms.
  
• Forty-five to 54-year-olds – historically dependable arts participants – showed the steepest declines in attendance for most art events, compared with other age groups.
  

Educated Americans are participating less than before, and educated audiences are the most likely to attend or participate in the arts.

• College-educated audiences (including those with advanced degrees and certifications), have curbed their attendance in nearly all art forms.
  
• Ballet attendance for this group has declined at the sharpest rate – down 43 percent since 1982.
  
• Less-educated adults have significantly reduced their already low levels of attendance.
  

The Internet and mass media are reaching substantial audiences for the arts.

• About 70 percent of U.S. adults went online for any purpose in 2008 survey, and of those adults, nearly 40 percent used the Internet to view, listen to, download, or post artworks or performances.
  
• Thirty percent of adults who use the Internet, download, watch, or listen to music, theater, or dance performances online at least once a week. More than 20 percent of Internet-using adults view paintings, sculpture, or photography at least once a week.
  
• More Americans view or listen to broadcasts and recordings of arts events than attend them live (live theater being the sole exception). Classical and Latin or salsa music were the most popular music categories (with 40 and 33.5 million viewers/listeners, respectively), and 33.7 million adults reported listening to, or viewing programs or recordings about books/writers. The same number (33.7 million) enjoyed broadcasts or recordings about the visual arts.