Washington, DC Art News

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The Elsie Hull exhibition at Spectrum Gallery is a subtle display of black and white photographic oval jewels. The show, "Portals" is an array of prints mounted on white canvases of various sizes creating a two or three dimensional installation.

This show is a fine exhibit at a cooperative gallery with a most innovative installation. And the back walls, with works of its gallery member artists, offers some interesting works as well.

But, if you care about quality photography at prices that are indeed affordable, this show is worth a visit. It has captivating black and white images of cats, cows, etc. And the staff is friendly and helpful.

Elise Hull, "Portals." Open from February 25 until March 13th at Spectrum Gallery, 1132 29th Street, N.W.; 202-333-0954.

Modigliani: Beyond the Myth opening Saturday, February 26th at the Phillips Collection is worth the price of admission. The show originated at the Jewish Museum in New York; however, the Phillips added twenty-five works to its show. It features about 100 paintings, drawings and sculptures by the artist.

The third floor of the new renovated annex has been transformed from a sterile museum atmosphere into a lovely warm gallery with soft colored walls, arches and columns. The five galleries have interesting lighting and the installation is excellent.

Now, I am not a fan of Modigliani, but I could not resist embracing his work during this exhibition. It includes much more than his women with the skinny necks. In the first gallery there are beautiful sculptures lined up on a platform and lots of crayon and pencil sketches. In galleries three and four are his controversial nudes and the last gallery has a powerful presentation of his famous signature paintings of women with the skinny necks.

The Phillips Collection, 1600 21St., N.W. $14 for general admission, $12 for seniors and students, no charge for persons under eighteen. Show runs through May 29th. (202)387-2151.

"The principle which gives support to a work of art is not necessarily contemporary with it. It is quite capable of slipping back into the past or forward into the future. The artist inhabits a time which is by no means necessarily the history of his own time."

Henri Focillon (1881-1943), French art historian.

Wild nights! Wild nights!
Were I with thee,
Wild nights should be
Our luxury!

Futile the winds
To a heart in port,—
Done with the compass,
Done with the chart.

Rowing in Eden!
Ah! the sea!
Might I but moor
To-night in thee!

"Her Triumph"

I did the dragon's will until you came
Because I had fancied love a casual
Improvisation, or a settled game
That followed if I let the kerchief fall:
Those deeds were best that gave the minute wings
And heavenly music if they gave it wit;
And then you stood among the dragon-rings.
I mocked, being crazy, but you mastered it
And broke the chain and set my ankles free,
Saint George or else a pagan Perseus;
And now we stare astonished at the sea,
And a miraculous strange bird shrieks at us.

Eight elephants in northern Thailand have painted their way into the Guinness Book of World Records after an art lover living in the United States shelled out a jumbo 1.5 million baht ($39,000) for their canvas creation — the highest price ever paid for elephant art.

"Solar's inclusion is notable for two reasons. Yes, it's a fine piece, characterized by the kind of dynamic stillness found in Noguchi's best, most Zen-flavored work, but it also serves Fletcher's thesis that Noguchi was probably more innovative than people generally give him credit for. Is there the influence of Constantin Brancusi (for whom Noguchi briefly worked as a studio assistant while in Paris) in some of Noguchi's earliest pieces? Certainly, and the biomorphic iconography of the surrealists makes more than one appearance in Noguchi's later art as well.

But art isn't a horse race, or at least it shouldn't be. What Noguchi did well he did very well. Whether works represent his fascination with the pure refinement of form, as in the gestural simplicity of 1970's "The Bow," or express the gut-punch racial politics of 1934's "Death (Lynched Figure)," or whether they lie somewhere in between, as in the phallic squishes and fleshy plops of his work of the 1940s, Noguchi's most powerful sculptures beg for extended viewing.

Noguchi was not one of the great innovators of the 20th century. Most of his work built on ideas that others had before him. But he had a wonderful hand and eye. "Deft" is the word that springs to mind in looking at Noguchi's art, rather than "inspired."

The biomorphic shapes on view in "Lunar Fist" come out of earlier works by Jean Arp; the aggressive id the sculpture seems to flaunt had been a staple of surrealism for years already. But the simple gesture of making the whole work light up gives it an energy that wasn't in its static sources.

...But put a light bulb in a blob of cast cement and colored plastic hanging on the wall, as Noguchi did in "Lunar Fist," and you get somewhere distinctly new. Make a work of art recall the lamps that light the modern world, and it gets a novel kind of leverage.

"Roof" is the largest work of art commissioned by the gallery in a quarter-century. Its designer is an art star who, unusual for art stars, is as much admired by the broad art public as he is by the pros. The English wallers he has hired to build his dry stone sculpture are more than mere assistants. "Roof" pays homage to their muscles, their steadfastness, their history. To watch them is to know that they are core to what it is."

"According to some tired minds, with little left to say but to repeat slogans, painting is dead. Luckily for the rest of us, most artists missed that fax.

And a very good painting show at the McLean Project for the Arts focuses that very nice non-profit space on painting. The show is called "Strictly Painting IV" and has been an ongoing tradition at MPA and one of the few remaining all-painting shows in the region, especially now that the Corcoran’s Biennial (which used to be a painting show) is all over the place.

This biennial juried exhibition attempts to survey painting in the mid-Atlantic region, and the works selected seeks to present a broad view of area painters and explore the styles of the region's painters. In the past, sometimes this goal has failed miserably. The exhibition was juried this year by Sarah Finlay, director of Washington’s Fusebox Gallery and by Deborah McLeod, MPA’s new Director of Exhibitions. It is immediately clear that the two jurors have done an excellent job, and I think have tried to offer a diverse, "well-balanced" show – rather than focusing on a tight, unsolvent visual agenda, as Terrie Sultan (the juror for the previous version of this event) did a couple of years ago.

This year, the combination of a savvy commercial gallery owner with an experienced eye on Washington artists (prior to opening Fusebox, Finlay worked at the now defunct Baumgartner Gallery) and a new Director of Exhibitions (McLeod just came from the Peninsula Fine Arts Center near Norfolk), proves to be a good one.

The show includes some well-known area names and some new ones. Among some of the area’s better known artists selected for this show are Pat Goslee, David Jung, Jose Ruiz and Jonathan Bucci, as well as emerging young talent like Heide Trepanier, Tammy Maloney, Maggie Michael and Paloma Crousillat, all of who stand out at this show.

This is a very important show, and even so more now that the Corcoran’s Biennial has abandoned its focus on painting – not only as a refresher of what is going on in the studios of some of our area’s painters, but also as a re-affirmation that painting is alive and kicking and still king of the hill in a confused art world often thrown off tilt by a never-ending thirst by some art critics and curators for what’s "new" rather than what’s good. This is also a very unique opportunity to see fresh new works by several area artists who have rarely shown work outside of their Universities and studios, and a perfect opportunity to acquire work by young, new talent.

My favorite work was a dizzying painting by Ian Whitmore titled "Glinting," which displays virtuous brushwork and a clear understanding of composition and color. In this work, a series of figures, almost lost in a tornado of movement and color, rise from the lower left of the canvas to the upper right, and fools the eye (by the application and use of color) into seeing color and form, rather than figures, or dancers, or whatever they are. We forget that it is a representational work (and among the minority in the show), and see a painting of forms and color, almost as close to an action painting as realism can approach."

"Sometimes artwork is like magic.

The Kathleen Ewing Gallery, widely respected as one of the top photography galleries in the world, departs from that tradition and showcases the magical illusions that are the sculptures of Janos Enyedi.

Visitors should be warned: Prepare to be fooled when you enter the gallery and see this show. Titled "The American Industrial Landscape – Reconstructed: Power, Steel, Concrete," the exhibition consists of photographs and three-dimensional assemblages by Enyedi; and it is the assemblages that steal the show.

They will deceive you; let me say it again: be prepared to be fooled. At first sight they appear to be metal and steel, and extraordinarily heavy; but they are all actually paper. It is not just the illusionism that makes this show the best in town this month; it is that plus Enyedi’s unerring eye at capturing what at first sight appears to be boring, industrial eyesores and delivering breathtaking migrations to the realm of fine art.

Janos Enyedi is a master. Not only do I feel that his work is a brilliant reaffirmation of the power of creativity, skill and technical ability, but the man is a magician in making us hold our collective breath in seeing (for the first time in many cases) beauty where there should be none, majesty where commonness was the goal and the transformation of the ordinary into the sublime.

The gallery is located at 1609 Connecticut Avenue, NW and this show hangs until February 26. Concurrent with this gallery exhibit, Enyedi’s work is also on view in the Headquarters Gallery at the American Institute of Architects through April 8."

There's one question that leaps to mind upon seeing "The Motley Tails," Sharon Louden's quirky extravagance of an installation at Numark: Exactly how many My Little Ponies died for this?