The Post's "Geek" art critic Michael O'Sullivan reviews Dan Flavin at the NGA.

The Washington Posts's Jacqueline Trescott today has a story on the "Funky Furniture Controversy" at the DC City Museum that was first posted here and by Jesse Cohen at ArtDC and discussed on the air yesterday at the Kojo Nmandi show.

I am told that the DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities is actively looking for a place to hold the exhibit and may have an alternative space lined up!

The Vampire Keeps on Rising

(Thanks AJ).

This article in the Christian Science Monitor discusses an exhibition opening at the UCLA Hammer Museum in Los Angeles titled "The Undiscovered Country."

The show examines the role of representational painting in a post-photographic world by looking at 65 works by 23 painters from the United States and abroad over the past four decades.

"This is not the straightforward landscape and formal portrait that dominated art for so many centuries. Instead, it's a concentrated effort by artists to come to terms with a world suffused with real-world imagery - and find a new role for realistic painting within it."

This all simply means that for years a lot of influential people in the art world have been trying and insisting on denigrating painting, especially representational painting - but in the end, as it has happened several times in the vicious circle, painting refuses to die and suddenly it is back in vogue and trendy curators are scampering all over the place to find the painters they've been ignoring for so many years.

Not too mention some art critics who have made a career and name by pushing the "painting is dead" slogan.

I call this "Contemporary Realism." That is: realism with a bite.

And (shameless plug coming) if you want to see an artist whose works have been called "the leading edge of the new urban realists" by the New York Times, come see David FeBland's fourth solo with us at Fraser Bethesda. Opening reception is tonight from 6-9 PM as part of the Bethesda Art Walk.

As promised, here I will post all the different websites and shows that I discussed on the air at the Kojo Nmandi Show, together with Jeffry Cudlin, the talented young new art critic from the Washington City Paper and Dr. Claudia Rousseau, the highly respected art critic from the Gazette Newspapers. The audio from the show is here.

We started the show by discussing the "Funky Furniture Controversy" that I discussed here a while back.

Rather than re-hash what we talked about, the best thing to do is to review what Art.DC posted yesterday. This posting by Jesse Cohen tells the story from the horse's mouth. Please read it.

I then gave Kojo's listening audience the scoop on the fact that the same woman who is sponsoring the Trawick Prize for Contemporary Art has been so disappointed by the hired curators disdain for painting that she is in the process of deciding to institutionalize an annual art prize of $10,000 just for area painters (DC, VA and MD).

I then reviewed the main pockets of gallery concentrations in the area and the specific times when they host openings and extended hours. I explained that it is free, and that artists are usually present, many are catered, etc.

• First Fridays – Dupont Circle Galleries
• Second Fridays – Bethesda Art Walk
• Second Thursdays – Alexandria, VA
• Third Thursdays – Downtown area galleries
• Third Fridays – Georgetown's Canal Square galleries

I also announced that there’s a new Art-O-Matic being planned – It will be from November 12 to December 5, 2004. It will be at 800 3rd St, NE (3rd and H St.). Over 1,000 artists participated in the last Art-O-Matic. Open to all artists; more details at Art-O-Matic's website. This is great news for Washington, DC art lovers.

We then discussed some important new museum shows opening soon:

• Ana Mendieta Retrospective opens next week at the Hirshhorn Museum. First major retrospective of Cuban-American artist Ana Mendieta. She was a "Peter Pan" child sent away from Cuba by her parents to be raised in the US away from the brutality of Communism and was raised in foster homes in Midwest. She then died a spectacular death by "falling" from the 34th floor of her home in NYC. I gave well deserved kudos to Olga Viso, who curated this show.

• Dan Flavin Retrospective at the National Gallery of Art. Now until Jan 9. The whole issue of conservation was extensively discussed. The curator of the exhibition essentially says: "when the flourescent lights go out - that's it!"

• I gave props to Jonathan Binstock and Stacey Schmidt (curators of the 48th Corcoran Biennial) for looking in their own backyard. Selected area artists for the 48th Corcoran Biennial have been announced and (for a change) they include James Huckenpahler (represented locally by Fusebox Gallery, Colby Caldwell (represented locally by Hemphill Fine Arts), and Baltimore-based photographer John Lehr. Last Thursday I had posted all the selected artists here.

I also discussed some important gallery shows opening soon:
• FuseBox: A group drawing show from Nov 6 – Dec 18 including drawings by Terence Gower, Jason Gubbiotti, Ulrike Heydenreich, Cynthia Lin, Joan Linder, and Nicola Lopez. Drawing, like paintings is suddenly the “hot” genre in the art scene. Next year they will have a solo by Ian Whitmore, a very talented young area-based painter.

• Conner Contemporary has Erik Sandberg opening on Nov 19 through Dec 23. One of the most talented local young painters and one of my all-time favorites.

• Kathleen Ewing has Bruce McKeig’s pinhole photography of urban parks. October 22 – Nov 27.

• There’s a new gallery in Georgetown’s Canal Square: Anne C. Fisher Gallery and next Oct. 15 they have the works of Phyllis Elizabeth Wright.

• Tranformer Gallery continues to have an unique exhibition program. Jayme McLLellan and Victoria Reis have been doing a great job. Currently they have an exhibition of text based multimedia work by three Texas artists. Until Oct. 16.

• Friday, Oct. 8 is the Bethesda Art Walk – 19 Bethesda art galleries and art venues.

Kojo then asked each of us to mention our favorite area artists. I rambled on about Manon Cleary (represented locally by Addison Ripley) and Tim Tate (represented locally by us). Later on I added Erik Sandberg (represented by Conner Contemporary).

There was also a very spirited discussion between Jeffry Cudlin and Dr. Claudia Rousseau about abstract and representational art in the context of contemporary art. Get the audio of the show here.

Welcome to all the new readers who are discovering DC Art News for the first time thanks to the great link from my appearance on the Kojo Nmandi Show earlier today discussing Washington area art and artists.

I have a special opening to attend tonight, but I promise that as soon as I get home I will post here all the links and events mentioned on the air. You can also listen to the show again on the internet by visiting the Kojo Nmandi Show archives. They will soon have the audio of the show online.

The WAMU telephone operators told me that the phones were buzzing and a lot of people waited a long time but were unable to ask their questions. Please feel free to email them to me, and I will try ot answer them.

Later today I'll be on the Kojo Nmandi Show discussing Washington area visual arts and artists. Tune in to WAMU 88.5 FM around 1 PM.

If you have any questions or art issues, you can call Kojo during the show at (800) 433-8850 or you can email me questions to kojo@wamu.org.

After the show I will post here all the websites and information that we discuss on the air.

Everytime that I start thinking that I am too harsh on the Post, they do something to prove to me that they (the corporate they or editorial they who makes decisions as to what is to be covered by their writers) haven't got the foggiest sense of what place they hold in the cultural tapestry of our city and how they manage to mismanage it when it comes to the visual arts.

Read this waste of printspace and weep with me for a newspaper that has some of the smallest art coverage of any major daily in the US and yet devotes the time and effort and space to cover mass produced garbage and use the word "art" in describing it.

Perhaps if more people knew that they could buy original art by emerging artists at the same prices as the "wall decor," they would not waste their time and money buying expensive posters.

"... a growing trend of consumers who buy art -- known in the industry as "wall decor" -- that is made and marketed to coordinate with prevailing trends in home furnishings...

... "People are absolutely buying more art. In the last two or three years, our art sales have doubled," said Becky Weber, Crate & Barrel's accessories buyer, who declined to give specific sales figures.

None of this is lost on artists -- whose royalties are tied to sales -- as they create images of quaint Parisian cafes, jammin' jazz combos, monochrome geometrics and ye olde hunting scenes."

Makes my head hurt.

Elsewhere in the Post, Jessica Dawson, who generally is supposed to review Washington area galleries (I think), treks to Annapolis to review Louise Nevelson: Selections From the Farnsworth Art Museum at the Mitchell Gallery, St. John's College.

I now eagerly await for the Annapolis Capital to send their art critic to DC to review one of our shows.

Oh wait...

City Museum Censors "Funky Furniture" Show.

Area artists Chad Alan and Maggie O'Neill have been organizing an interesting exhibition for the City Museum of Washington, DC titled "Funky Furniture."

Several area artists are involved and have been working for the last few months for this exhibition. I have been made aware by several people of a developing controversy now rapidly revolving around this show.

I am told that entries for the show were brought in over this past weekend, and when viewed a couple of days ago, there were at least six adjudged by the museum management to be "not acceptable" because of sexual and/or offensive content. One of the objectionable ones was an end table with "The bitch set me up" carved with on the surface with a razor blade.

The entire show has been removed from the main floor, and some may be allowed in smaller spaces elsewhere, but the offending six will not appear.

There are apparently ongoing negotiations with the museum management, but this has the smell of art censorship.

In a paradoxical way, this brewing controversy could be exactly what the museum needs to increase its visibility and maybe even get some people to visit it.

Look for Washington Post and Washington City Paper stories in the next few days, but you read it here first.

Target Gallery has a Call for Artists

Deadline December 31, 2004.

Open Call for 2005 Exhibition Proposals at the Target Gallery in Alexandria, Virginia. Open to all individual artists and groups in all media in North America.

Jurors: Richard Dana, a well-known and talented Washington, D.C. based artist and arts activist; Millie Shott, Exhibitions Director, Strathmore Hall, Bethesda, MD; and Virginia McGehee Friend, Washington area collector of contemporary Fine Craft.

Deadline for Proposals: December 31, 2004. Exhibition Dates: October 26-December 4, 2005

Fee: $35 for 20 images (slides or JPEG CD) and proposal. For Applications: email them here, or call 703/838-4565 ext. 4, or send SASE to:
Open 2005
Target Gallery
105 N. Union Street
Alexandria, VA 22314

Grammar.police has a really good pre-review preview (police that!) on the Dan Flavin retrospective at the NGA.

Sarah Tanguy is the new head of the Department of State's Art in Embassies program.

Established by the United States Department of State in 1964, the Art In Embassies Program is a global museum that exhibits original works of art by U.S. citizens in the public rooms of approximately 180 American diplomatic residences worldwide. To submit images to their staff for consideration in upcoming exhibitions please e-mail .jpg or .gif images of your works no larger than 50k in size, to this email address.

Pilfered from AJ:

Carmel, the famous little seaside town in California has decided that they have too many galleries and has imposed a moratorium on licensing new art galleries in the city. You can read the story here. This is the same silly town that passed a law in the 80s forbidding eating ice cream in public and then elected Clint as mayor.

61 galleries have opened in Carmel since 2000, bringing the total to about 120. Of the city's roughly 300 retail shops, approximately four out of 10 are art galleries.

When I lived there in the late 80s (I used to review books for the newspaper publishing this story), and I used to exhibit my artwork in a Carmel gallery that has since closed, and during my last visit in the late 90s, one thing was clear: A lot of them were and are crap galleries - that is, they are the type of galleries that sell a lot of reproductions, decorative art, gyclees by the millions, etc. Many others show the work of just one artist, or do not change shows regularly.

Because Carmel's main business is tourism, the galleries aim to tourists. And tourists come to Carmel because of its beauty, to play golf, see the Spanish mission, stroll around the beach, and because of... galleries.

Still, seems silly to pass regulations forbidding what obviously is the town's main attraction.

Locally, we have the same flavor of an issue around Dupont Circle, where the locals have decided that no more "new" galleries can be opened. As a gallery closes (such as Elizabeth Roberts will soon), it can be replaced by a new gallery in the same building, but no new galleries can open in a building that hasn't been a gallery prior to the sale.

And so we're all hoping that Elizabeth Roberts will be able to find a buyer for her building that wants to open a new gallery in that building. I've spoken to Elizabeth and she would prefer for that to happen as well.

A while back I posted a bit about a fiery DC area artist (Marsha Stein), who decided that the reported woes of the City Museum of Washington, DC deserved some hands on action.

So she's taking some action.

Stein has come up with a project to revitalize what the City Museum of Washington, DC does to leave a significant footprint on our city.

Here it is, in her own words:

This project will bring together artists from the Washington, DC area to form "artistic teams" and create collaborative pieces that convey ideas about Washington, DC.

The works of art created by the teams will be displayed in a feature exhibition at The City Museum of Washington, DC.

Visitors will be invited to vote on their favorite piece, as well as describe why they made this choice. The artists will be documented on film while they are in the creative process for educational purposes. These pieces will be auctioned at the close of the exhibit.

The goals of the project are to:

1. Bring the artistic community together
2. Empower DC artists to create an artistic movement
3. Integrate artists with the community

A jury panel will select the teams. The call will invite individuals as well as those who can form teams of two or three to send slides as well as describe why they want to do "team art."

All artists, newspeople and visual art lovers who are interested to participate, learn more, or put in their two cents are invited to:
Karma Restaurant
1919 Pennsylvania Ave, NW
(19th and I, NW)
On Monday, October 18, 2004 from 6 - 8 PM
I'm curious as to what can develop; So.... see you there.

Good week in Washington if you are a lover of the visual arts.

This Friday is the second Friday of the month and thus time for the Bethesda Art Walk with all these art venues participating from 6-9 PM.

We will host the fourth solo show by David FeBland, who has become our best selling artist (and whose solo debut in Europe a few months ago sold out in Germany).

FeBland paints what the New York Times dubs "urban realism" (the Times called him "the leading edge of the new urban realists") and the Washington Post has called "a revival of the Ashcan School."

And Calder Miró, which opens at the Phillips Collection on October 9, 2004, showcases the emergence of a new type of abstraction in the work of these two giants of modern art as seen in the context of their five-decade friendship. That same day, at 11:00 AM, the eminent Spanish art historian Victoria Combalía, will discuss Alexander Calder’s art in the context of Calder's travels to Spain in the early 1930s when he was Miró’s guest in Catalonia. Contact Mary Ann Bader (202) 387-2151 x4235 or Mela Kirkpatrick (202) 387-2151 x4220 for tickets to the lecture.

I have been astonished by the re-emergence of Catalonia and the Catalan language in the last few years. The last time that I was in Barcelona, there wasn't a single ad or street sign in Spanish! Everything was in the native language (again)!

That same day, the Corcoran opens "Inventions: Recent Paintings by Caio Fonseca", which will run until February 14, 2005.

The LA Times discusses"Reporting the Arts II," a study conducted for Columbia University's National Arts Journalism Program and released Saturday at a conference of newspaper editors in New Orleans. The report looked at arts journalism in 13 American cities in October 2003 and compared the findings with a similar analysis that had been done five years earlier.

The findings: "In all the cities our researchers visited, they found evidence of growing vitality in the arts. But when it comes to journalism, the opposite is true."

DC was not included in this study, but doesn't this paragraph describe the Washington Post's coverage:

"Our findings reveal an alarming trend: During the last five years, none of the papers we looked at increased the amount of their arts criticism and reporting. Editors at many dailies are filling smaller news holes with more and therefore shorter stories. Pieces on "high" arts, as well as those with hard reporting about cultural institutions, continue to take a backseat to soft-focus features on the latest movie star, CD or rock concert... Now many art sections have become viewer guides, devoting the bulk of their efforts to calendars, the daily TV grid and tiny thumbnail reviews."

In DC, under the leadership of its Arts Editor Leonard Roberge, the Washington City Paper continues to take over the void created by the Post's tiny visual arts coverage. This trend is apparently also common in other cities, as the piece discusses that:

"The alternative press, once derided by mainline news outlets, has also proved so successful at covering local arts events that media giants such as Tribune Co. and Gannett have started publications that mimic those brash competitors."

And the article closes with a key prediction:

"The greatest hope of quality arts journalism is the Internet. By going online, a reader can gain access to what seems like the work of every news organization and blogger on the planet. But there's a problem with the Web: The information is there, but you have to go looking for it. Articles and ideas are not placed at the reader's front door or local newsstand. The Internet cannot form the kind of connective tissue for our cultural life that newspapers offer.

We don't know where the talented cultural writers of tomorrow will come from and what type of art they will champion. They may choose to ply their trade outside newspapers, feeling too hemmed in by old routines and space constraints."

You can order the actual report here.

Thanks AJ!

Tyler Green does a tiny DC gallery walk-through.

DCARTNEWS reader Shark chimes in with a very funny comment on the Flavin Retro at the NGA:

"I've always wondered: Have museums and collectors stocked up on replacement bulbs for their Flavin works?

What happens in a hundred years or so (a decade, even?) -- when nobody can find a flourescent tube?

PS: Shark's Prediction: Flavin won't even be a minor blip on the art history landscape. He and the likes of Donald Judd will be lucky to be footnotes.

(But Marfa [Santa Fe without the scenery] is nice this time of year!)"

The power of the Internet surfaces again...

I received a studio email (I think) thanking me for pointing out to the world that the movie trailers for the new Motorcycles Diaries movie were mispronouncing Ernesto "Che" Guevara de La Serna Lynch's name, and Lo and Behold: there's a new voice over the same movie trailer.

Now... Che's name is not mentioned at all!

GE-varah, GE-varah, GE-varah (soft "G"... like in "get").

Blake Gopnik at the Washington Post with an excellent video review of Dan Flavin at the NGA.

Poor Flavin's show will soon come down in history as the exhibition that everyone loved but that was cursed with the cheesiest headlines in art history.

Gopnik's is "Glowing Review" while Kimmelman was "To Be Enlightened, You Pull the Switch."

By the way, in case you missed it, a few days ago Gopnik dissed "imperious art critic Clement Greenberg." Read it here.

The pot calling the kettle black?

Last night I went gallery hopping around Dupont Circle and managed to catch a few shows, drink some free cheap white wine and nibble on some cookies.

I started at Gallery 10, a terrific cooperative, artist-run gallery. The current exhibit is by Judith Richelieu, a former librarian at the Library of Congress.

She has 25 portraits of women artists, writers, etc. as part of a series called "Eligy." Richelieu complements them with carved wood saints that accompany the portraits. I overheard the artist discuss the fact that she "wasn't a portrait artist," which I found a little odd in terms of her current exhibition.

I'm not really sure what to think of the portraits. Richeliu obviously works from published photographs (nothing wrong with that), but every single one of her portraits is done in the same odd, unsual grayish skin tone for all the women, as if they all share a shark somewhere in their family tree.

It is a bit disorienting, but perhaps Richelieu wants to use the common gray skin color as a unifying force. My favorite piece was the portrait of Spanish artist Remedios Varos. The works are on exhibition until October 30.

Up the street, Kathleen Ewing Gallery has photographs by contemporary Native American artists Zig Jackson, Victor Masayesva, Jr. and Hulleah Tsinhnahjinnie. Michael O'Sullivan wrote about this exhibition:

"For Indian art with a bit of an edge (something you won't find at the new museum, by the way), try Kathleen Ewing Gallery's "Contemporary Native American Art." Along with the photographs of Victor Masayesva Jr. and Hulleah Tsinhnahjinnie, the show includes several selections from some of photographer Zig Jackson's more pointed black-and-white pictures, including his shots of tourists taking snapshots of Indians in full regalia, which turn the exploitative gaze back on the exploiter, and his conceptual series featuring the artist in feathered headdress and sunglasses posing in front of a customized sign demarking "Zig's Indian Reservation," which happens to be wherever the artist sees fit to stand."

The exhibition closes October 9.

Marsha Mateyka yet again has an exhibition from the Gene Davis estate. See them here, and you can see some recent results of Gene Davis' auctions at Sotheby's here.

Elizabeth Roberts Gallery is having its farewell show, as the gallery is closing at the end of this show as ELizabeth is moving to the Bay Area. On exhibition are works by Alice Oh. Her paintings are derived from the behavior and morphology of infected blood cells as seen under the microscope and are fascinating to study how nature and art align to deliver some very interesting results. I am sure that Ms. Roberts is hoping NOT to get the same sort of cosa nostra goodbye review that Jessica Dawson gave the Sally Troyer gallery when it closed.

Below the Elizabeth Roberts Gallery things were going gangbusters for The Studio Gallery; several sales took place in the few minutes that I was there. The current exhibition is "Works on Paper" by Phyllis Jayne Evans.

The Studio Gallery is celebrating its 40th anniversary this year - this is a spectacular achievement and in "gallery years" something rare and noteworthy, as most galleries close within a year of opening and a hardy few survive past four or five years.

I then visited Fondo del Sol, fully aware that once I said hello to Marc Zuver it could possibly be another week before I'd leave. Fondo del Sol is one of the cultural jewels of our city, and the current exhibition(s) do not disappoint. Zuver has curated a fascinating grouping of works under a exhibit titled "In Search of Lost Iberia," where he submits a theory that the peoples of ancient Iberia and ancient Georgia (the former Soviet republic, not the Southern state) share a common name, bloodlines and history in a distant past. There are some striking works of art by Alejandro Arostegui, Rogelio Lopez Marin ("Gory"), Vladimir Kandelaki and Mumumka Mikeladze.

Of these, Kandelaki's works stand out by their sheer complexity and by the powerful ant-Soviet and pro-Georgian messages they delivered when first created in the 1980s. They are courageous works that represented the brutal Soviet repression of the Georgian people and the decay of Soviet Communism.

And if you want to see one of the most powerful exhibitions around the theme of Native Americans (in fact so powerful that you'll never see anything like it in the new National Museum of the American Indian), then go see Michael Auld's installation "Surviving Genocide: Remembering Anacaona."

For the last several years Michael Auld has been researching and documenting the indigenous people of the Caribbean; some, such as the Tainos, were thought to be extinct, until "discovered" by Auld, in small mountain pockets of people.

When I first saw Auld's works a few years ago, what stuck in my mind was an extraordinary wooden sculpture of Itiba Cahubaba, the legendary Earth mother of Taino legend. This stunning piece depicted the Earth mother giving birth simultaneously to two sets of twins, who became the fathers of mankind. This was a gripping piece not only because of its artistic value, but more importantly because it marked the rebirth of Taino culture after nearly 500 years of being nearly forgotten, erased and virtually destroyed.

Auld's current exhibition adds another powerful installation based on a sculpture of Anacaona, the famous Taino queen who was the wife of one of the five caciques of Hispaniola and one of the first recorded Native American characters met by the Spaniards when they first landed on that unfortunate island. She was subsequently murdered by the Conquistadors, whom she had invited to her village.

In Auld's installation, a life-sized cherry wood sculpture of Anacaona sits in a cohoba trance in a traditional bohio (house) made from sixteen carved large lizards and snakes. The queen is adorned with conch jewelry and feathers, and delivers a stern message to contemporary viewers. It left me feeling uncomfortable and thinking that at one point Father Bartolome de las Casas estimated that there were six million Tainos in the Caribbean when the Spaniards first arrived.

When I managed to escape Zuver's animated discussion I headed over to Irvine Contemporary Art, which has a spectacular exhibition by one of the most talented young painters that I have seen in years: Bruno Perillo.

The Brooklyn-based Perillo brings a superbly talented brush to the revived genre of painting. He was recently reviewed by Michael O'Sullivan in the Post who wrote that Perillo has "witty, conceptual works that allude to both highbrow and lowbrow culture." O'Sullivan nailed it, and the show has nearly sold out, reviving my hope that Washingtonians are discovering that they can actually buy art here in the city!

Next I went to the Washington Printmaker's Gallery, where Jen Watson gave me a quick tour of the main show (monoprints by Christine Giammichele) and the always strong group show in the back gallery by the gallery's member artists.

My last stop was at Conner Contemporary where Avish Khebrehzadeh's show has also sold very well. The show was reviewed by Dawson here and by Cudlin here, but I think that it was this article on art collectors Tony and Heather Podesta that drove the collectors to one of the best galleries in the city.

Keep coming back.