Critics would likely seize upon the sight to observe that popular approval does not equal artistic quality, especially when the art in question is insufficiently socially aware. Certainly that’s the view of Washington Post art critic Blake Gopnik, who in reviewing the show derided Rockwell as the cowardly, “aw, shucks” epitome of Middle America. Rockwell “doesn’t challenge any of us, or himself, to think new thoughts or try new acts or look with fresh eyes,” wrote Gopnik. “From the docile realism of his style to the received ideas of his subjects, Rockwell reliably keeps us right in the middle of our comfort zone.”Read the review here.
This perception of the artist’s work as soothing sentiment for the masses is nothing new, but “Telling Stories” proves it simplistic. The show, drawn from the collections of fellow storytellers George Lucas and Steven Spielberg, confirms that Rockwell had a deep understanding of America’s character and a masterly ability to convey it to canvas. True, his vision focused on our virtues, not our sins. But only in the self-loathing landscape of contemporary intellectual thought would that be cause for criticism.
Pá Guantanamo
Con cuatro pesos vamos a jugar los gallos
Y en caballo nos vamo pá Caimanera
Ya que en Los Caños siempre gana Campello
Ese gallego no pierde desde antaño
En Caimanera juegan mucho lo Americano
Y por eso espero que triunfe mi gallito sano
Y si gana facil mi gallito bueno
Ahi mismito empieza la parrandera
Pá Guantanamo salimo en caballo
Pá Guantanamo a cojer la borrachera
Pá Guantanamo a tomar un palo bueno
Pá Guantanamo a bailar un son montuno
Pá Guantanamo salgo de Caimanera
Pá Guantanamo a bailar con la jeva entera
Pá Guantanamo a buscar los tragos buenos
Pá Guantanamo en fiesta gallito bueno
Yo nunca má juego en Los Caños
Ya que alli siempre gana ese gallego
Ese Ciclón no pierde de hace muchos años
Y a mi gallo y bolsillo le ha hecho much daño
En Caimanera juegan mucho lo Americano
Y por eso espero que triunfe mi gallito sano
Y si gana facil mi gallito bueno
Ahi mismito empieza la parrandera
Pá Guantanamo salimo en caballo
Pá Guantanamo a cojer la borrachera
Pá Guantanamo a tomar un palo bueno
Pá Guantanamo a bailar un son montuno
Pá Guantanamo salgo de Caimanera
Pá Guantanamo a bailar con la jeva entera
Pá Guantanamo a buscar los tragos buenos
Pá Guantanamo en fiesta gallito bueno
Here’s an unhappy scenario: a young gallery, with nearly empty coffers, hasn’t collected payment on six of the seven sales the dealer closed at a June satellite art fair in Basel. The dealer—who paid all fair-related expenses months ago—needs to cover his rent and overheads. He can’t pay the artist, who needs money for his own bills plus materials for an autumn show. To make matters worse, the dealer must remain calm and detached, while trying to extract payment. “It’s this old-school gentleman thing,” the dealer told me. “You don’t want to appear desperate.”Lindsay Pollock in the Art Newspaper; read it here.
The artist whose poster of Barack Obama became a rallying image during the hope-and-change election of 2008 says he understands why so many people have lost faith.Read it here.
In an exclusive interview with National Journal on Thursday, Shepard Fairey expressed his disappointment with the president -- a malaise that seems representative of many Democrats who had great expectations for Obama.
My mustache has just made the it to the "Top 6 mustaches in local arts"!
If you had the opportunity to return to Cuba tomorrow and were free to build something, what type of building would you erect and where?May he rest in peace.
His answer:
"Well, the key word in your question is freedom. Assuming things would take a normal path, towards democracy, I would go to Cuba even if it were to only build a small hut."
Tomorrow is the opening for my first substantial exhibition in the DC area in four years. The show will be at the School of Art & Design at Montgomery College's King Street Gallery, located in the beautiful Morris & Gwendolyn Cafritz Foundation Arts Center at 930 King Street in the Montgomery College, Takoma Park/Silver Spring Campus.An exhibit of works on paper depicting mythical themes, or themes connoting transformations—mythical, magical or organic.The opening is tomorrow, Thursday, September 23, 5:00 – 7:30 pm. I hear there will be a TV crew at the opening, so it sounds like a fun night. There will also be an artists' panel on Monday, Sept. 27, at noon, for one hour. I will be available at the panel and after the panel to discuss and answer any questions that you may have about anything dealing with the visual arts, career, galleries, etc.
The exhibit will include prints, drawings and installation works employing paper with wax and other media.
The National Mall in Washington has seen all sorts of enterprises over the years, but who would build a translucent, inflatable bubble there, protruding from the doughnut-shaped Hirshhorn Museum and looking, from renderings, like a giant jellybean colored robin's egg blue? And why?Judith H. Dobrzynski writes in the WSJ about Richard Koshalek's visions for the Hirshhorn. Read it here.
That would be Richard Koshalek, the Hirshhorn's voluble director, who when announcing the 145-foot-tall bubble last December uncharacteristically said little about its purpose other than that it would host four week-long international events, every spring and fall, about contemporary art and culture.
I first came across the work of Johanna Mueller at the last Artomatic and was immediately seduced by it.A vanity gallery is an art gallery that "rents" its space to artists in order for the artist to have a show. Thus, the main driver in having a show at a vanity gallery is not necessarily the quality of the artwork, but the artist's ability to pay the gallery to host his/her artwork.I wrote this article on vanity galleries over six years ago and it is still getting new comments and an interesting argument between gallery dealers and artists. Read it and comment here.
Myth and Transformations
As I was thinking about organizing this exhibition, I was inspired by the work of the four artists who so graciously accepted the invitation to show their work together here. These are Leah Frankel, Johanna Mueller, Leslie Shellow and F. Lennox Campello. All of them have been working and exhibiting in the Washington DC region for some time, and all of them, in one way or another, have shown interest in the themes of mythology and transformation.
Mythology has always captivated me. Since childhood I have loved the ancient stories that so often involve transformations to explain the origins of things, from animals to trees and stars. The ancient Roman writer Ovid’s wonderful book, the Metamorphoses, is all about change, and many of those tales, one might imagine, were, by Ovid’s time, already understood in metaphorical terms. My extensive researches into mythology—first for my master’s thesis into the Celtic legends that served as bridges to the Christian faith in Ireland, and later, for my doctoral dissertation, into astrological lore and tales of the origin of constellations—have filled me with a great love for this most human of practices. Mythology is universal, and many, probably the majority of myths, involve the theme of transformation.
Artistic expression of the concept of transformation, and allusion to mythological themes or archetypes is not limited to existing myths. Indeed, it is not limited to figural styles. The idea of transformation, especially as in so many myths, from some dark place into the light, from animal to human or human to some other form, from one plane of existence into another, can be expressed by abstract means. And, since the archetypes of myth are universal, they can be manipulated into new stories and meanings.
The work of Johanna Mueller fully illustrates this last point. Her work employs a mythical framework, most often without alluding to specific mythic sources. Hers is a personal world of fable, where the lioness is enlightened and the deer are connected by heartstrings. Many animal characters re-appear in her work, sometimes morphing into others. Mueller herself has said, “I want to create something of a ritual space, to create the feeling of the symbolic spirits of my creations moving from one form to another. I think that having these repeating forms take on different shapes and sizes helps to convey that idea.” Thus, the concept of transformation is also a part of her iconography. Mueller’s incredibly detailed plastic plate engravings provoke and resonate in the mind of her viewers, touching on their own mythologies.
F. Lennox Campello’s drawings are more grounded in familiar stories from ancient Greek, Roman and Celtic mythology, and from martyrology and hagiography. Campello’s Minotaur rises up with all the frightening strength that such a hybrid monster can project, dark and menacing. His Witch Dub shrieks in the black water that is the origin of the city of Dublin. The story of St. Sebastian, a favorite subject of artists since the Renaissance mainly because it was an opportunity to represent a male nude in Christian art, has had a new life in contemporary expression as the target of misunderstanding and persecution of all kinds.
On a more organic and less specific level, Leslie Shellow’s installation connotes the mythology of the Great Mother, the goddess who gives forth the life of the earth—plants, flowers, animals, people. Her paper forms and delicate drawings seem to literally be growing in the gallery, taking over the spaces. In this, Shellow’s work expresses both the benevolence of the Goddess, and her dark side as well. While Nature is life-giving, it is also chaotic and unpredictable, irrational and capable of great destruction. Shellow’s sensitivity to the transformational character of growth is evident, and accounts for the surprising power of her work. Simple paper rings are transformed into evidence of being.
Finally, the hand-made paper works of Leah Frankel express the notions of myth and transformation in more abstract ways. Frankel’s Grade is a work that connotes transformation from darkness into light, a theme that is at the core of many myths. Being abstract, the work provides a mythical framework that can carry stories projected on it by the viewer. The myth of Orpheus comes to mind, but so many stories about moving through the darkness to the light, to new life—or, even more fundamentally, the hidden mystery of birth—a theme that goes back as far as human pre-history. The Paperstack also shows movement from bottom to top, gently transforming the piled papers into a moving form. Frankel’s work is open to viewer interaction, providing a space for thought and physical response that is deeply personal.
Claudia Rousseau, Ph.D.
School of Art + Design at Montgomery College
September, 2010
But Work of Art reminded me that there are many ways to become an artist and many communities to be an artist in. The show also changed the way I think about my job. Over the ten weeks it aired, hundreds of strangers stopped me on the street to talk about it. In the middle of nowhere, I’d be having passionate discussions about art with laypeople. It happened in the hundreds, then thousands of comments that appeared below the recaps I wrote for nymag.com. Many of these came from people who said they’d never written about art before. Most were as articulate as any critic.Read Saltz's thoughts on the show here.
The Smithsonian American Art Museum has appointed E. Carmen Ramos as its curator for Latino art. Ramos will be responsible for acquiring artworks for the museum’s permanent collection and producing a major exhibition and catalog based on the museum’s Latino holdings for fall 2013. She begins work on Oct. 12.I'm a little confused by Ms. Broun's comment. It seems to set a niche for what Latino artwork will be collected, specifically those "who transform personal experiences and cultural heritage into vivid artworks."
“I am thrilled that E. Carmen Ramos is bringing her expertise and insights here to help us feature Latino artists who transform personal experiences and cultural heritage into vivid artworks,” said Elizabeth Broun, The Margaret and Terry Stent Director of the Smithsonian American Art Museum. “These stories are culturally specific, but also American and universal.”
“I am thrilled that E. Karmen Ramosdottir is bringing her expertise and insights here to help us feature Nordic artists who transform personal experiences and cultural heritage into brooding artworks,” said Elizabeth Broun, The Margaret and Terry Stent Director of the Smithsonian American Art Museum. “These stories are culturally specific, but also American and universal.”In any event, F. Lennox Campello welcomes E. Carmen Ramos to the DMV.
An exhibit of works on paper depicting mythical themes, or themes connoting transformations—mythical, magical or organic.The opening is Thursday, September 23, 5:00 – 7:30 pm. I expect to see all of you there to make me look good...
The exhibit will include prints, drawings and installation works employing paper with wax and other media.
Two murals painted by a Texas Southern University student 40 years ago were ordered destroyed by school President John Rudley, who disagreed with the university museum director's opinion that the artworks' historical significance made them worth saving.Read the story from the Chron.com here. "... the school had lost two significant pieces of artwork, said Alvia J. Wardlaw, art history professor and university museum director."
Workers used white paint last week to cover the murals painted by Harvey Johnson, who retired from TSU in 2007 after 34 years as a professor.
One of the DMV's best-known photographers, Max MacKenzie, opens tomorrow in Bethesda's Fraser Gallery. The opening is from 6-9PM.
I dropped by this weekend to see the current Trawick Prize show, now on exhibition at the former Heineman Myers gallery space in Bethesda. Since I was familiar with the artwork of several of the finalists, I was particularly interested in seeing the work of the new names in the finalists' list (new to me anyway).
But perhaps the most interesting new discovery for me was Anne Chan's work which explores the slick metallic world that seems to surround us everywhere in this ever growing age of technology. 
The movie Machete, currently playing all over the place and directed by Ethan Maniquis and Robert Rodriguez is by far one of the most awful films that I have seen in years. Its only redeeming quality is that it allows the use of the word "Mexploitation," which is a very cool new word which showcases the ever amazing muscularity of the Englisg language."The freedom granted to those who should have never had it robbed from them is a welcome step. But the heart of the problem remains: the Castro brothers' tyranny is no different and international actors mustn't be fooled into believing that Raúl is any less of a despot than Fidel. He has inherited his brother's house of tyranny, and has changed nothing but the window dressing. And the curtains aren't white. They're red."Read it here.
