Dali House

The moon, Venus and Jupiter gave me a collective smile on December 1, broadening my own grin, stemming from a nice plaudit received earlier.

Dali House is getting enough traffic from Google to place it among the “100 Must-see Art Blogs (of Every Form)”, a list released last month by the US-based ArtCareer.net.

Art Career bills itself as “the complete resource for careers in the visual arts”, including tools, schools, online instruction, news and reviews, galleries and tips from the pros.

There are nine categories on the must-see-blogs list, and Dali House is under “art history” at #78.

I’d only seen a couple of the other blogs on the list previously, but having a browse through had me wondering what their authors might think of my determinedly casual approach should they too decide to have a look around the neighbourhood.

A few of them are too airlessly academic for my taste, others way too serious about a beautiful subject, and still others merely parade gallery press releases but, by far, most are really good.

Joining my effort in the “art history” category are Charley Parker’s Lines and Colors, which shows what a proper web designer can do with painters’ and illustrators’ biographies, and he gets lots of ads as a result.

On the austere side is Art History Newsletter by NYU PhD candidate Jonathan Lackman and various contributors, really just a series of event synopses.

A pair of art-history majors in upstate New York put out the Art History Blog, with many thoughtful essays and reviews.

Shelley’s Art History Blog by artist and educator Shelley Esaak has been an About.com staple since 2003 and has a good sense of humour, which is always appreciated.

Beth Harris and Steven Zucker teach the subject online and at SUNY’s Fashion Institute of Technology, and their blog SmartHistory is completely geared to instructors.

The Earthly Paradise by “Margaret” can show all those people who use Blogger sites what can be done visually within the design constraints forced on them. Its content is “inspired by Romantic poetry and the Pre-Raphaelite brotherhood”, it has big pictures and it’s lovely to look at.

Israeli freelance writer Elijah Shifrin’s Art and Critique is also a treat for the eyes, and the analyses of selected works are quite good.

In another category called “By the Artist” I couldn’t help noticing a blog called Chasing Vincent. Lance Woodson of Little Rock, Arkansas, works in the telecom industry but certainly has a passion for Van Gogh, whose ability to rise above life’s grimness “to create something greater than himself” he finds endlessly inspiring.