Opportunity for Artists and Curators

Deadline: February 20, 2009

VSA arts seeks exhibition proposal(s) that include artists with disabilities for consideration to be displayed at the Kennedy Center Terrace Gallery from May-June 2009. Proposals will also be considered for programming in advance of and during the 2010 International VSA arts Festival. VSA arts encourages curators and researchers from the cultural, university, and museum communities, including those with disabilities, to incorporate the work of artists with disabilities into their exhibitions. We welcome proposals that address, challenge, and expand the discussion about disability and culture.

Exhibitions may include a wide range of media such as digital art, drawing, installation, painting, photography, printmaking, sculpture, and video.

VSA arts is committed to expanding the understanding, development, and appreciation of contemporary work by artists with disabilities.

For more information visit this website.

This weekend in DC


Irvine Contemporary is the exhibition manager of Manifest Hope:DC, a celebration of art and artists who were motivators of the national movement that helped bring Barack Obama to the presidency. Manifest Hope:DC is produced by EMG and Shepard Fairey's OBEY group, and is also sponsored by MoveOn.org and the SEIU.

Details here.

MANIFEST HOPE:DC
January 17-19
3333 M St., NW
Washington, DC

Saslow on Ellyn

The WaPo's Rachel Saslow on Dana Ellyn at H&F Fine Arts.

Half a day

I'm setting half a day to go see the "Che" movie today... the protests and picketing of the film have already begun.

Frank Warren at Lisner

One of the world's greatest art ongoing projects is PostSecret, and its creator, my good friend Frank Warren, will be at Lisner Auditorium at George Washington University on January 23rd discussing the project.

Online link to buy tickets for the Lisner event is here. Also check out this video.

American Hero

Chesley B. "Sully" Sullenberger III
The right guy, at the right place, at the right time. This 57-year-old former Air Force fighter pilot has been flying for more than 40 years, and has been with US Airways since 1980.

Andrew Wyeth

Chadds Ford, PA January 16, 2009--Andrew Wyeth, often referred to as America's most famous artist, died in his sleep at his home in Chadds Ford, surrounded by his family early this morning, after a brief illness. Wyeth, 91, was painting until recently, with some new works exhibited at the Brandywine River Museum in 2008.

Wyeth ignored the preferences of the art establishment during the heyday of abstract expressionism but nonetheless won international acclaim with exhibitions throughout the world, received many awards, and inspired countless imitators. His work brought some of the highest prices for a living American artist. His painting, Christina's World (1948), is one of the best-known images of the 20th-century.

"The world has lost one of the greatest artists of all time," said George A. Weymouth, a close friend and chairman of the board of the Brandywine Conservancy.

Andrew Newell Wyeth was born in Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania on July 12, 1917, a son of the internationally renowned painter and illustrator N.C. Wyeth and his wife Carolyn Bockius Wyeth. Theirs was a creative family: Henriette Wyeth Hurd, Carolyn Wyeth and Andrew were painters; Ann Wyeth McCoy was a composer; and son Nathaniel was an engineer and inventor with many patents to his credit.

At age 15, Wyeth began his academic training in his father's studio. In that year, on one of his boyhood walks, he discovered the Chadds Ford farm of Karl and Anna Kuerner. Wyeth was intrigued by Kuerner, a German immigrant and World War I veteran, developing a close relationship with him over the years. Wyeth has found subjects in the Kuerner farm's people, animals, buildings and landscapes for hundreds of works of art over more than 75 years.

The Wyeth family spent summer months in Maine, and Andrew Wyeth's early watercolor landscapes, much influenced by the work of Winslow Homer, met with enormous critical acclaim at his first one-man show at the William Macbeth Gallery in New York City in 1937. An exceedingly self-critical artist, this immediate success did not reassure him. Feeling that his work was too facile, he returned to his father's studio for further concentration on technique.

Wyeth soon began working in egg tempera, a technique introduced to him by his brother-in-law, the painter Peter Hurd. Tempera became his major medium. He said that it forced him to slow down the execution of a painting and enabled him to achieve the superb textural effects that distinguish his work. His other mediums were watercolor and drybrush watercolor.

In 1940, Wyeth married Betsy James, whom he had met in Maine the previous summer. It was Betsy who introduced Wyeth to her long-time friend Christina Olson, who had been crippled by polio. Olson's character represented "old Maine" to him, and she became his model for many works of art, including Christina's World.

Wyeth caused a sensation in 1986 with the revelation of a large collection of paintings featuring German immigrant Helga Testorf, a Chadds Ford neighbor. The paintings were first exhibited at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC, the following year, and were then exhibited internationally and seen by millions.

In 1987, the exhibition An American Vision: Three Generations of Wyeth Art, featuring 117 works by N.C., Andrew, and Jamie Wyeth, traveled to the Soviet Union and to nine cities around the world.

In addition to his wife, Wyeth is survived by two sons, Nicholas, a private art dealer in Maine, and his wife, Lee; and Jamie, also a very well-known painter, and his wife, Phyllis; and granddaughter Victoria Browning Wyeth.

Wyeth received many awards during his lifetime. In 1963, President John F. Kennedy named Wyeth the first artist to receive the Presidential Freedom Award, the country's highest civilian award. In 1970, he was the first living artist to have an exhibition at the White House. Wyeth's other tributes include the gold medal for painting from the National Institute of Arts and Letters (1965), several painting and watercolor awards and numerous honorary degrees. In 1977 he made his first trip to Europe to be inducted into the French Academy of the Fine Arts, becoming the only American artist since John Singer Sargent to be admitted to the Academy. The Soviet Academy of the Arts elected him an honorary member in 1978. He received the Congressional Gold Medal in 1990. Most recently, he was awarded National Medal of Arts in 2007. He also received numerous honorary degrees.

One-artist exhibitions of his work routinely broke attendance records at major museums, including the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts in Philadelphia, the Baltimore Museum of Art; the Whitney Museum of American Art; the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; The Art Institute of Chicago; and the Museum of Fine Arts, San Francisco. His work was also exhibited at museums throughout the world, including the National Museum of Modern Art in Tokyo; the Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg; the Palazzo Reale in Milan; and the Academie des Beaux Arts, Paris, among many other museums. He was the first living American artist to have an exhibition at the Royal Academy of Arts in London. An exhibition of his work at the Philadelphia Museum of Art in 2006 drew 177,000 visitors in 15 1/2 weeks, the highest-ever attendance at the museum for a living artist.

His work is included in many major American museums, including The Museum of Modern Art in New York City and the National Gallery of Art, as well as the Brandywine River Museum in Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania and the Farnsworth Art Museum in Rockland, Maine, to name only a few.

Services will be private. A celebration of his life and work will take place at the Brandywine River Museum at a date to be announced. In lieu of flowers, the family requests donations be made to the Brandywine River Museum and the Farnsworth Art Museum.

-- Brandywine River Museum

Opportunity for Artists

Deadline February 6, 2009

20th National Drawing & Print Competitive Exhibition. A minimum of $1500 available in purchase prize money. Drawings and prints (not photography) in any medium are eligible. A non-refundable entry fee of $30 entitles the artist to submit up to three entries. The Juror is Allegra Marquart, Professor of Printmaking at Maryland Institute College of Art. Deadline February 6.

Enter online here.

National Drawing and Print Competitive Exhibition
Attn: Geoff Delanoy
College of Notre Dame of Maryland
4701 North Charles Street
Baltimore, MD 21210

Email: gormleygallery.ndm.edu

Taxman

It makes me feel kinda warm and fuzzy that the nominee for Treasury Secretary, Timothy Geithner, who essentially will be in charge of the IRS, and who is supposed to be a financial genius, made an "innocent mistake" and failed to pay $34,000 in taxes between 2001 and 2004.

If financial geniuses can make $34,000 mistakes on their favor, get audited by the IRS, get off a couple of years' worth of back-taxes, and then become the IRS' boss, things are good for the rest of us "regular" financial types.

But, since some of Geithner's mistakes were forgiven by the IRS because of the statute of limitations, he actually got off not paying off some of his back taxes. I hereby call for Geithner to donate that tax amount that he should have paid, but didn't because of statute of limitations, to the Smithsonian Institution.

Live Model Drawing at MPA

The McLean Project for the Arts in Virginia is offering a January session as well as Winter and Spring sessions of Open Studio -- Live Model Drawing.

Details here or call 703.790.0123
for directions and registration.

The arts to get their $ from the economic recovery package

"For the last month, Americans for the Arts has been working with the field, Congress, and the Obama Transition Team to include support for the nonprofit arts sector and individual artists in any federal economic recovery package. With your help, we have been compiling examples of how the recession has affected arts groups. We are getting this compelling information along with our economic impact data into the hands of key policy leaders in Washington.

Last week, Americans for the Arts officially proposed Nine Recommendations for Economic Recovery & the Arts to help nonprofit and governmental arts groups as well as individual artists during this economic downturn. Today, Americans for the Arts President and CEO Bob Lynch met with the Obama Transition Team to discuss these and other ideas.

Also today, the House Appropriations Committee released an $825 billion economic recovery package. Included in the proposed bill is an infusion of $50 million for the National Endowment for the Arts (in addition to its annual appropriations) to specifically preserve jobs in the nonprofit arts sector threatened by declines in philanthropic and other support. The House plan proposes additional opportunities throughout other parts of the federal government that could also help the nonprofit arts sector and individual artists. Many of these other opportunities correspond closely with our Recommendations for Economic Recovery & the Arts."

Details here.

Steven Soderbergh's Che

More on my expectations of Steven Soderbergh's Che, which bring some prejudices, notions, knowledge, facts, and ideas about how a film should depict Guevara.

Ernesto "Che" Guevara de La Serna Lynch. Charcoal on paper, 5 x 17 inches, c.1999 by F. Lennox Campello
Read it here.

At the Corcoran

Alberto “Korda” Díaz’s image of Che Guevara as saint, guerrilla, and fashion statement is considered to be the most reproduced image in the history of photography. The stunning documentary film, Chevolution (Red Envelope Entertainment, 2008), codirected and produced by Trisha Ziff, explores how and why this image became so important. Through original footage, notable interviews, and a look into vast archival collections of Che images, this film tackles the complexity and contradictions of what this important photograph still means today. Ms. Ziff is a curator of contemporary photography, filmmaker, and Guggenheim scholar who lives and works in Mexico. Following the screening, she discusses the film and takes questions from the audience.

The lecture is January 21, 2009 at 7PM. Sign up for the lecture here.

That photo of Che by Korda has been commercialized beyond belief, and Korda never received any compensation from the appropriation of his image. A few years ago, just before he died, the Cuban dictatorship allowed him to sue a French company and prevent the use of the image on a "Che" Vodka.

A couple of years ago I helped one of the collectors that I advise to acquire a huge collection of vintage Korda photographs which were his private copies and proofs and which passed to his daughter upon his death. They are now safe in a private collection in West Palm Beach and she received some good money for them.

But from the millions of Che T-shirts and posters and endless reproductions of the photograph, Korda never received a penny.

My favorite Che T-shirt is below...

Artists' Websites: Jen Blazina

Longing Installation. Cast resin, steel, screen-print, bridal satin, reverse painting; varying dimensions by Jen Blazina

I find Jen Blazina to be one of the most interesting artists from the Greater Philadelphia area. Last year she was awarded two residencies: the Frans Masereel Centrum in Belgium and a National Endowment for the Arts Grant to attend a fellowship at The Women's Studio Workshop.

Before that Blazina has been awarded numerous other residencies including: Women's Studio Workshop in New York, in 2006; Scuola di Grafica in Venice, Italy; Kala Art Institute in Berkeley, CA, in 2005 and 2007; The Creative Glass Center of America's Residency Fellowship for 2003 in New Jersey; Millay Colony for the Arts in New York. She has also been awarded numerous grants including the Leeway Foundation Grant, the Maryland State Arts Council, and the Independence Foundation Grant.

Visit her website here.

Obamartmania

There's an orgy of art shows about Obama going on across the nation and I am a little overwhelmed by the huge number of galleries and venues which have all come up with the same idea of doing an art exhibition with BO as the subject.

In fact I'm even participating in one here in Philly myself; more on that later. I am in the process of creating my own Obama piece for that show.

The Man from Illinois, by Scott Seidman - At Manifest Hope DC
Around the DC region, from what I can gather from emails, buzz and talking to people, the Manifest Hope DC and the one at Heineman-Myers Contemporary Art seem to be the ones that people are talking about.

These kind of love-in art shows present a tremendous opportunity for artists looking for the cheap element of shock to help them gather their 15 minutes of fame. This is where an opportunist shockmeister can produce some really offensive artwork and exhibit it in the name of dissent. In this case, you don't even need an offensive work, just something against the huge pro Obama art tide.

Because we live in a free nation, and because people are people, and because the mainstream media only pays attention to art and artists when there's shock involved, someone exhibiting some anti-Obama artwork would make worldwide news in a sea of pro Obama artwork.

Artwork about Bush, at least what I saw in the last 8 years was 100% negative, and anti-Bush from the very beginning of his Presidency. I can't think of a single pro-Bush artist or work of art, and because logic tells me that not every artist in the world was anti Bush, I (perhaps with flawed logic) then deduce that no artist had the cojones to show his pro-Bush sentiment.

Artwork about Clinton always included a healthy mix of pro and con pieces.

But I seriously doubt that someone will have the cojones to create and exhibit any anti Obama work of art (at least not now). And because of that, they will miss this once in a lifetime opportunity to offend and be propelled to worldwide fame. Look what it did for Andres Serrano and Chris Offili! On the other side, no matter what those guys ever create, they will always be known for "Piss Christ" and "Virgin Mary."

We know you're out there.

Update: I forgot about Bailey.

Miriam Kagan

Miriam Kagan's GenerationYGive is a must read blog and this is the reason why she started blogging.

Visit it here.

More on Obama at NPG

Yesterday I told you that the Shepard Fairey portrait of Obama had been acquired by the National Portrait Gallery.



Today I learned from my colleague Martin Irvine, whose fine DC art gallery represents Fairey, that the work had been acquired through the generosity of my good friends and ubercollectors Heather and Tony Podesta.

Wanna buy some Rothkos?

J. Ezra Merkin, the New York financier tied to Bernard Madoff’s alleged $50 billion Ponzi scheme, is hearing from collectors interested in buying his dozen $150 million Mark Rothko paintings, the world’s largest private grouping, according to his art adviser.

Though the paintings aren’t for sale now, “everything has a price,” said Ben Heller, 83, who helped Merkin buy the abstract expressionist paintings during the past five years.

“I am flooded with phone calls,” said Heller, the stepfather of actress Kyra Sedgwick who was himself a Madoff victim.

The Rothkos, housed in Merkin’s Park Avenue duplex, include two 9-by-15-foot studies for murals that Rothko executed for the Four Seasons restaurant in the Seagram Building and Houston’s Rothko Chapel, and a third, smaller study for a Harvard University mural. The Four Seasons mural paintings are in the National Gallery in Washington.

Merkin’s Ascot Partners LP lost $1.8 billion from investments with Madoff, according to lawsuits. A second fund, the $1.5 billion Gabriel Capital LP, which also invested with Madoff, was closed last month.

Read the whole piece by Lindsay Pollock here.

Maruch Cafeteria

Located just a few minutes' taxi ride Miami Airport, Maruch Cafeteria is a perfect example of how real Cuban food can be sampled from a working class perspective, rather than from the haute cuisine perspective, or even the "real restaurant" approach, as Maruch is more akin to the million delis that dot New York City with hot food, but from a Cuban angle.

The City of Hialeah borders Miami airport, and just a handful of years ago it was an almost 100% Cuban and Cuban-American area. It appears to me that the ethnic diversity of the city is changing radically over the years, as I see a lot of businesses with Dominican, Colombian, Central American and even Brazilian names and products. Signs are nearly all in Spanish or have a Spanish translation, and they are also beginning to reflect the ethnic changes in the city, as Papuserias and Dominican Hair Salons are popping up everywhere. It is a clean, busy, nearly all working class neighborhood, with quiet one level homes with immaculate lawns in palm tree neighborhoods as well as super busy main commercial streets such as Palm Avenue and LeJeune Road.

I'm not sure how long Maruch Cafeteria has been there, but it is certainly a neighborhood hot spot, and chances are that if you drop by at lunchtime or dinner time, you'll see a lot of cops from the nearby precinct eating there, as well as a crowd of mostly working class Cubans and a sprinkling of Central American day laborers, often baffled by the Cuban dishes, but attracted by the cost of the food and the size of the servings.

There are about twenty small tables, and a small army of Cuban women of all shades, ages and shapes working behind the hot food counter, which is an array of Cuban food ranging from the kind of food that you'll see at any Cuban restaurant around the world, such as ropa vieja, tostones, black bean soup, yucca, etc., to less common but still very Cuban items such as vaca frita, ajiaco, tasajo, chicharron and more. If it is a sandwich that one desires, it is custom-made on the spot, and they offer the ubiquitous Cuban hot pressed sandwich or the lesser known, but tastier (at least to my taste) medianoche sandwich.

As you enter Maruch, the smell of garlic and cumin warn you that this is the real deal, and all the food (except for desserts) are behind a hot food counter with handwritten Spanish signs above each item. The prices are also written above each item, and range from $4.95 to $9.95 or so for a plate.

A plate usually includes one main item (pork, fish, chicken, goat, and beef) and two sides, plus rice and black beans or congri (both the congri made with black beans and the one from Oriente province made with red beans).

Congri is sort of a Cuban version of dirty rice, as the rice and beans are cooked together, and the white rice turns black or red, depending on the bean used.

There are several items of each kind of meat, such as 2-3 kinds of fish choices, 3-4 pork choices, etc.

The meat portions are huge.

In fact they are an exaggeration of culinary offering and would probably distress a hoity toity restaurant critic, but fit perfectly into the cultural norm of a neighborhood Cuban hole in the wall, mom & pop restaurant cafeteria, such as Maruch is.

When I say big, I mean really huge. Imagine a steak the size of a laptop screen, or a piece of fish 2-3 times the size that one normally gets in a restaurant.

In fact, I have never seen bigger portions of food served in any Cuban restaurant, or any other for that matter, anywhere else in the gazillions of restaurants that I have been in my life. These are Texas-sized portions times two!

When I last visited Maruch, I ordered chuleta de puerco, rice and black beans, yucca con mojo, platanos fritos, boniato and a couple of beers.

It was an enormous meal; an exaggeration of food to a spectacular degree and I enjoyed every bit of it. The pork was tender and well-seasoned, the black bean soup gave up their garlicky cuminy smell that separates Cuban black beans from all other ethnic Latin American black bean dishes, and the mojo for the boiled yucca was spectacular, reeking of garlic, olive oil, onions, and lime juice. The boniato (Cuban yam) was sweet and tender and the platanos fritos thick and sweet. This orgy of starches really complemented the huge portion of pork, and I ate it all.

In spite of the huge meal, afterwards I had a cuatro leches for dessert. "You must try cuatro leches," said in Spanish the raven-haired and green-eyed Cuban waitress, who looked more like a tanned Irish woman than what Hollywood thinks as Cuban. "The owner makes it herself."

Cuatro Leches is a taste numbing Cuban dessert cake made from four different kinds of milk (such as cow's milk, evaporated milk, condensed milk, etc.). Cuban culinary urban legend has it that there are ocho leches makers out there, who introduce other milks (such as goat milk, and other milks that one better not ask about) into the recipe, which is not for calorie counters, even at just four milks.

I finished my meal with a cafe cubano, or a Cuban coffee, which is a tiny shot of super-sweet espresso with enough caffeine to ensure that I'd be up half the night remembering the orgy of food that I had consumed.

Maruch Cafeteria is located at 92 East 8th Street, Hialeah, Florida 33010, telephone (305) 805-9302‎. Next time that you're hanging around Miami airport with a few hours to waste, or just feel like exploring a true gem of typical Cuban food, go to Maruch and tell them that Ana Campello's son sent you.

From Soup to Nuts

Jack Rasmussen. Boned, 2008. Acrylic and collage, 18x24 inches.

From Soup to Nuts: Art for All Tastes is the title of the exhibition at the
Jean Albano Gallery in Chicago and it is not only noteworthy because of the very cool art in this group show, but also because it includes the above piece by my good friend Jack Rasmussen; his first exhibit in 30 years!