More murals bite the dust

Apparently the Ariel Rios Building murals are not the only ones in extremis.

According to this story by Diane Haithman in the Left Coast Times:

"On Thursday, attorneys representing artist Kent Twitchell filed a claim against the U.S. Department of Labor in connection with Twitchell's large-scale mural "Ed Ruscha Monument" — a six-story portrait of fellow artist Ruscha on a building owned by the federal agency — being painted over in early June. Twitchell said he received no notice, as required by law, that the paint-over would take place.

Within the past few days, two more downtown murals, Frank Romero's "Going to the Olympics" and Willie Herrón's "Luchas del Mundo" (Struggles of the World) were partly covered with mud-colored paint, an apparent error by a Caltrans work crew cleaning up graffiti.

A Caltrans spokeswoman described the covering as a mistake and said plans are in place to remove the paint next week. Because of a protective coating, she said, the removal process will not affect the artwork."

Read the entire article here.

However, Bill Lasarow at LAMurals.org states that the partial painting-over of Frank Romero’s celebratory "Going to the Olympics" mural was done "in order to save it from graffiti taggers" - not on purpose to destroy it, and that in fact the covering up was apparently scheduled and part of the process and Romero is going to work on the mural some more!

New painting term

In the CP, Capps reviews E3: Painters at Transformer and describes one of the artists' works as:

"...And Passacantando’s untitled clusterfuck of color doesn’t seem to have gained much from all the criticism—it’s static through and through, despite its technical merits."

And let me be the first one to congratulate the Texan in coining a new way to describe a painting, as Googling "clusterfuck of color" reveals that no one else on the planet has apparently ever used that art term before; and I like it!

Art history legend has it than when Greenberg came to DC in the late 50s (or was it early 60s?) to give a lecture, he stated that "painting should be thin." After that statement settled in, apparently some DC area artists actually broke out their caliphers and started measuring the thickness of their paint above the canvas. Eventually, according to Wolfe, the Washington Color School was partially borne out of that statement.

I'm keeping my fingers crossed that even as I write this, someone is considering clusterfuckism in art.

Update: An alert DC Art News reader detects that although clusterfuck of color is unique, when it is Googled at "cluster fuck of color," these entries are logged by Google's ever busy robot spiders.

Wanna go to a closing and an opening tomorrow night?

Then come to Adams Morgan on Saturday night from from 7 to 10 p.m. and go to the closing reception for "Focusing On The District" at Studio One Eight gallery.

This photography show showcases scenes from various parts of the city.

Studio One Eight is located at 2452 18th St. NW. (directly above Julia's Empanadas - mmm).

If instead you wanna head down to the beach in Norfolk, then DC artist Andrew Wodzianski opens in Norfolk for a solo exhibit. Old Dominion University Gallery hosts "Coulrophobia and Other New Paintings." Twenty nine paintings on display with thirteen new ones being unveiled. Opening reception on Saturday, July 22 at 7pm and the show goes through Aug. 22, 2006.