Ernesto Lecuona

There is more to Cuban music than salsa, mambo, rumba, son, guaracha, danzon, cha cha, bolero, habanera, zapatilla, zapateo, punto guajiro, criolla, contradanza, and the other many Cuban music genres that have worked their way into daily Western culture.

Today marks the anniversary of the death of Ernesto Lecuona, a Cuban composer and pianist of worldwide fame who composed over six hundred classical pieces, mostly in what he described as "the Cuban vein."

And yet it is an interesting paradox that perhaps his most famous work is Malagueña (The Girl from Malaga) from the Suite Andalucia.

I say paradox because this classical piece has been now interpreted as being the music that bares the soul of Spain in the piano, rather than Cuba, but betrays the island's cultural chains to the colonial mother.

But Lecuona wrote hundreds of other classical piano pieces that incorporated Cuba's unique musical legacy. Perhaps Siboney (a tribute to Cuba's lost Native American tribes) is his best.

Below is Thomas Tirino, Pianist, recorded live November 14, 2003 at the University of Miami, Gusman Concert Hall performing Malagueña. Below that is the great Placido Domingo performing Lecuona's most Cuban work Siboney. If you'd rather listen to just the piano (as it was intended) then the great Ruben Gonzalez plays it last.

Queen Isabella II pulls one on the Pope

“New research reveals that Queen Isabella II of Spain (1830-1904) knowingly gave Pope Pius IX a fake painting of a 16th-century original in her collection. It has also emerged that ten years after her “generous” gift, the Spanish queen gave the original work by Bartolomé Esteban Murillo to King Luis of Portugal.

Read about it here.

Opportunity for Artists

Deadline: January 11, 2010.

The Public Trust of Jacksonville, Florida seeks artists. All participants will electronically submit a detailed pencil drawing of one of the three Le Moyne/de Bry original works, together with 4 other examples of your past paintings so the judges can select the ten best artists to be commissioned.

Artists must also submit an entrance form which may be downloaded from their menu under "Art Contest Entrance Form." No entry fee.

If you are selected as one of the ten commissioned artists, you will complete a painting (sized 24" by 30") by June 11, 2010. At that time you will be paid your $2,500 commission and shortly afterward be featured with your fellow top ten artists in showings of all the new art work at two premier art galleries in Jacksonville.

For complete guidelines, please visit this website. Questions? Contact Andrew Miller at adm@publictrustlaw.org or call (904) 247-1972 ext. 418.

Happy Thanksgiving

I hope that you all have the luck to spend today with your families and that we all think a thought for all those who can't.

Below is how pumpkin pies are made, source unknown, but clever!

Cuban art: Still caliente!

Cuban art continues to rise and gain importance in the international market. Last week, during the New York Latin American Art sales, on November 17 and 18, two major Cuban masters from the vanguardia period reached new world auction records.

My friends from Cernuda Arte in Miami tell me that a work titled Guajiro con Gallo (Cuban Peasant with Rooster), a signature oil on canvas, 24 ¼ x 20 inches, by Mariano Rodríguez, was offered at Sotheby’s November 18 sale. It reached a final hammer price of $482,500, exceeding the artist’s previous record of $354,500 attained eleven years ago.

Another success was, Carnaval (Carnival), an oil on canvas work, 20 x 16 inches by the revered Father of Cuban Modernism, Víctor Manuel García, offered at Christie’s November 17 sale. The painting logged enthusiastic bids before setting a new auction record of $182,500. The former record for a Víctor Manuel painting was $141,900 six years ago.

Heading to Miami

On Friday I'm driving down to Miami for the Art Basel frenzy of art fairs with a van load full of artwork. I will be at Red Dot Art Fair in the Wynwood Arts District and the location of the fair is 3011 NE First Avenue at NW 31st Street, Miami, FL 33137, really close to the massive Art Miami and the elusive Scope.


If you'd like some free passes to Red Dot, drop me an email to lenny @ lennycampello.com and I'll leave them at "will call" at the fair. I'll be in booth B105, so if you are in Miami, please drop by.

I'll be writing from the fairs as much as I can and as time allows. I have free passes to all the art fairs, so I hope to do some writing about some of them.

What the Bader Fund said...

This is what the Franz and Virginia Bader Fund said to my application:

Long Live Freddy Mercury

Man... I wish this guy was still alive and making music. He died on this day in 1991.

Giants in the City

I'm heading down to Miami later this month for the Art Basel Miami Beach frenzy of art fairs and art events, and one of the things that I'm looking forward to seeing is the Giants in the City project, curated by my good friend Alejamdro Mendoza, which returns to the ABMB festivities with the mobile sculpture project at Bayfront Park in Miami from 2-7 December.

Inflatable art sculptures by Gustavo Acosta, Angel Ricardo Rios, Miguel Fleitas, Maite Josune, Tony Kapel, Anaken Koenig, Frank Hyder, Karen Starosta Gilinski, Maki Hachizume, Noor Blazekovic, Tomas Esson, Federico Uribe, Jose Bedia and the curator, Alejandro Mendoza.

By the way, these inflatable sculptures are looking for a venue to be shown in Washington, DC. Everything travels in suitcases and it is super easy to set up, in case some DC gallery or museum is interested in hosting these gigantic works.

Migrations at the Embassy of Chile

This is the last week to see the "Migrations", a mini retrospective of the works of my good friend Joan Belmar, with works from 1995-2009. The exhibition is open from 8:30am to 6:30pm Monday-Friday and is closing on Nov 27th 2009 at 6:00pm.

The Chilean Embassy is located at 1732 Massachussets Ave., N.W., Washington D.C. 20036. Phone: (202) 785-1746.

Laurel Lukaszewski at Project 4

I first fell in love with the movies of Akira Kurosawa when I was a kid. Both my father and I really liked the action-packed masterpieces of Japan's best-known director and little did we know that his minimalist samurai sagas would be the artistic precursors of the martial arts films of today.

I fell in love with Laurel Lukaszewski’s work when I first discovered it in one of the past Artomatic free-for-all mega art shows in Washington, DC. Back then, I picked her work as the key find of that particular Artomatic, and then I sat back in self-righteous pleasure as I saw Lukaszewski continue to grow as an artist and artistic force around the DC region. Back then I had no idea that Kurosawa and Lukaszewski would one day share a moment in my mind's eye and live together forever in this review.

In the past I have also pointed to Lukaszewski as one of the District's artistic powerhouses that are dragging clay and other "crafty" substrates away from the craft world and into the rarified upper artmosphere of the blue chip fine arts world. I call them the Steiglitzes of the other side of the art tracks, dragging their media away from the craft and unto the fine arts arena.

For a couple of years after that Artomatic, in the DC region we all marveled at Lukaszewski’s spectacularly complex interwoven forms, which managed to take the visual sense of the Byzantine into a minimalist context – that’s an almost illogical bridge which would ruin most Vulcan minds.

But the sheer sharpness of this artist’s prowess did exactly that: she delivered these complex, tubular (not in the Californian sense) forms that interlocked in gorgeous wall hanging mazes that pulled us with a new found magnetic attraction to the media of clay.

“There is magic in them works,” someone wearing a Caterpillar ball cap and chewing on a chunk of grass might say, and that magic served Lukaszewski well as it pulled us very close to her work to examine how impossibly complex and how cleverly minimalist they were at the same time.

And now for the exhibition at Project 4.

“God is really only another artist,” Picasso once said. “He invented the giraffe the elephant and the ant. He has no real style. He just goes on trying other things.”

And that is what artists, real fire-in-the-gut artists, are supposed to do. And the fire that burns in Laurel Lukaszewski’s belly really came to a high roar in this exhibition at Project 4 gallery on U Street, NW in DC. And to say that I was left reeling from seeing what a huge new artistic footprint this artist has made in one show would be the understatement of the year.

There are only four pieces in the show: Sakura (a sculptural cherry blossom installation); Pause (a hanging ribbon installation); Ghost (sculptural leaves); and Floridan (an outdoor floor piece).

I’m going to take a chance and write about only one of them, because that one piece describes the new impression that the artist has left on me.

Sakura (detail) by Laurel Lukaszewski
In Sakura, the two-level gallery is used to showcase hundreds of small cherry blossom sculptures, each one individually pinned to the wall, to float and rise up from the main level, like a wave of starlings, from floor to floor. On the edges of the walls where the blossoms grow from, the floor is covered in delicate lost petals. Sakura is Japanese for cherry blossom.


Sakura (detail) by Laurel Lukaszewski
Each individual cherry blossom is a gorgeous example of a master sculptor at work - hundreds of them, floating up in a swirl of shadow-casting flowers is something else more akin to an Akira Kurosawa film come to life in a minimalist dream (for all you Kurosawa fans, I am referring to Sanjuro, specifically the part of the film where the camellia flowers in bloom are cut from the tree and dropped by the hundreds in the river to float down stream, as the signal for attack).

In this piece the artist bridges a paradox: minimalism is less – and she accomplishes that in the art form. And yet, her minimalism requires, no… demands - an entire “home” as its home.

What do I mean by that?

This gorgeous and enormous piece is a re-arrangeable work of art that can be set and re-set and re…ahhh… reset in many shapes, each one of which will yield new results, but the “less” part of minimalism in this case needs and covets more and more of the wall that it requires to anchor itself to.

I submit that Sakura is such a spectacular work of art that when a collector purchases it, and I hope that a savvy one will soon, the only way that it should be showcased would be as the only work of art in that room, home, condo, house or setting. Anything else hanging on those walls around Sakura would diminish the artistic power punch to the solar plexus that Sakura delivers.

It is the triumph of minimalism over space. And it is the triumph of a courageous artist not afraid to flex her own artistic muscles.

The exhibition goes through December 18, 2009. Go see this show and see the trailer for Sanjuro below:

Dramatic Dining

Now in its fifth year, the Food Glorious Food art show and associated 2010 calendar will be unveiled by the Zenith Community Arts Foundation (ZCAF) at Woolly Mammoth Theatre on Thursday, December 3, 6-10pm, with a Calendar Launch Celebration and Silent Auction to benefit the Capital Area Food Bank, celebrating its 30th anniversary in 2010.

Emcee for the evening will be WUSA 9 News Anchor Andrea Roane.

Cooked up by ZCAF in 2005, Food Glorious Food’s menu of food, art and charity is a recipe for success that has raised more than $100,000 for the food bank in four years, while pleasing the palates of art patrons and foodies through a unique collaboration between artists and restaurants. Area businesses add spice to the mix by sponsoring the calendar and donating items for the auction.

The overall project raises money through calendar sales, a percentage of proceeds from a related month-long food art exhibition and the Calendar Launch Celebration.

This year’s theme, Dramatic Dining, was inspired by ZCAF’s new partnership with Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company, who also in its 30th year, shares the same commitment to community values and the arts as ZCAF.

The new alliance, prompted by Food Glorious Food’s move from its former home on Seventh Street NW at Zenith Gallery, will bring a new audience of theatre goers to the show and event, and raise more money for the food bank to help feed the hungry.

Artists: Bert Beirne, Leslie Exton, Cassandra Gillens, Brenda Gordon, Philip Hazard, Robert C. Jackson, Life Pieces To Masterpieces, Chris Malone, Joey Manlapaz, Donna McCullough, Bill Mead, Davis Morton, Stephen Hansen, Michela Mansuino, Ron Schwerin, Bradley Stevens and James Tormey.

Restaurants: Recipes in this year’s Dramatic Dining Calendar have been donated by Acadiana, Bastille, BestCookie.com, Black Salt, Bourbon Steak, Central Michel Richard, Chef Geoff’s, Equinox, The Oceanaire Seafood Room, Oyamel, Teaism, Through the Kitchen Door and Zaytinya.

Calendar Launch Celebration: Highlights of the festive evening will include an exhibition of art in all media, created for the calendar; a silent auction with irresistible items; tastings of the chefs’ recipes featured in the calendar; a cooking demonstration of Central Michel Richard’s recipe and a complimentary calendar for each guest. Tickets, $75, can be purchased by calling the Zenith Community Arts Foundation at 202-783-8005 or emailing zenithcommunityarts@zcaf.org

Artworks on Display: December 3 – January 3, 2010. More details at Zenith Community Arts Foundation (ZCAF).

Little Junester in a drawing

Anderson Campello as a Merman Fingerling
Charcoal on Paper. 3 inches by 2 inches

The Creative List

Washington Life Magazine has a piece titled The Creative List: Visual Arts in its current issue.

They rave about John Smith, Director of the Archives of American Art, and DC area artists Maggie Michael and husband Dan Steinhilber, Manon Cleary, Chawky Frenn, Mark Jenkins, Laurel Lukaszewski, Lida Moser, Jefferson Pinder, Tim Tate and Postsecret's Frank Warren.

Check it out online here.

There's also a The Creative List: Written Word here.

Neptune Artist Market Place Starts Tonight


Over in Bethesda, hard working gallerist Elyse Harrison is having a whole bunch of events starting tonight at 7PM. Click on the image above for a whole schedule of events.

You can also pencil December 13 at 2 PM, which starts with a presentation and tasting with Cacao, fine European Chocolates immediately followed by "A Conversation with Lenny Campello" in which I will answer any and all questions about anything dealing with art: framing, approaching galleries, collectors, collecting, etc.

Wanna go to an opening today?

"Quiet Little Stories: The Art of Graham Francoise" opens today at Art Whino with an opening reception starting at 6:00pm.

Miniatures

THINKSMALL5 is the fifth Biennial International Miniature Invitational Exhibition at art6 and artspace galleries located in Richmond, Virginia. I was honored to have been invited to exhibit.

If you, like me, love to give art as Christmas presents (or any and all present-giving activities), this show is a terrific opportunity to grab some small works at really affordable prices.

Check all the artwork online here and then buy some.

Opportunity for Artists

Deadline: February 15th, 2010

Wanna be in the permanent collection of the Brooklyn Art Library?

We’ll send you a lined Moleskine journal. Fill it up with a narrative of some sort and send it back to us. It will be shown at the exhibition and then permanently reside at the Brooklyn Art Library for the public to see.

Details here.

Things that piss me off...

When you spend an hour framing something under glass, and no matter how much you clean and blow, there's always some debris under the glass trapped between the glass and matted artwork.

One worse than that: you've finally checked it a million times and it's all good, and so you go ahead and finish the framing, turn it over, and discover a hair that has magically materialized under the glass.

One worse than that: So you take it all apart and get rid of the hair, and re-do it all and check it and it looks great. And so you seal the back of the frame, put all the hardware on and bubble wrap it for transportation to the Miami art fairs.

Then you remember that you've forgotten to photograph the new artwork for your records and in order to have a digital image for the Certificate of Authenticity and the gallery's website.

Makes my head hurt...

Come again?

I was just looking at a contract sent to me by an artist. The contract was in response to a "portfolio review" for a group show in a New York City gallery.

The "curator" for the group show was very complimentary of this artist's work and selected a few pieces for the show. So far so good.

The contract details the following (somewhat edited to avoid court costs):

* Press Release will be written for the NYC group exhibition project and distributed via e-mail to World Art Media mailing lists consisting of select museums, galleries, curators, dealers, collectors, writers, art publications, artists, and art fair organizations around the globe. This release will be posted on www.---------- and other websites such as ......... to announce the event.

* ------------ Newsletter Listing announcing the ------ Gallery group exhibition mailed to subscribers in the U.S. and Europe.

* ------------ Daily Newsletter Listing announcing the group exhibition mailed to subscribers in the Far East.

* 500 invitation cards designed, printed and distributed for the show.

* Reception hosted by ------- Gallery.

* Artist’s Reception hosted by -------- Gallery.

* Review / Article: Selected writer will view the exhibition and write an essay on the participating artists’ works and the exhibition. This article will be published both online at ---------- and in print in --------- Magazine.

* Complimentary copies of the magazines with the feature article mailed to artist’s address.

Schedule & Payment Options

Total of $1,900 includes all features listed above. A deposit is due upon acceptance and signing. The payment can be made in full latest by --------.

The hefty $1,900 fee to exhibit immediately makes this gallery (and this show), a "vanity gallery" and certainly a "vanity exhibition" as the artists that will eventually end up in this show will be there based on their ability to fork $1,900 each to cover the costs of what are essentially the normal costs associated with running an independently owned commercial fine arts gallery.

That makes this a vanity show. This by itself is not illegal and there are dozens and dozens of vanity galleries in NYC operating mostly on the dime of the exhibiting artists.

But what caught my eye was the fact that the contract claims that a "Selected writer will view the exhibition and write an essay on the participating artists’ works and the exhibition. This article will be published both online at ---------- and in print in --------- Magazine."

The magazine in question is what (until now) I thought was a reputable NYC-based art magazine. I am puzzled as to how the organizers of this show, months ahead of the exhibition itself, already know that a writer from ------------ Magazine will write an essay about the group show and publish it both in the magazine and the magazine's website.

Words count. The contract never says "review." Instead they use the words "essay" first and then "article." So it appears that the author of this "article" or "essay" is in fact being paid by the organizers of the show to author the piece.

Paying someone to write an essay for an exhibition catalogue, or an essay for an artist's book, etc. is an ordinary event and happens all the time and I myself have been paid to do this dozens of time.

Paying someone to write an "essay" or "article" for a magazine devoted to write about art and artists and art reviews is (in my opinion) something else and I feel dishonest. The fact that the piece would appear in print in this magazine immediately relays to the readers that the author is writing about the show because of its merits (or because it is a bad show) but in all cases from a critical or examinatory viewpoint.

Not because the organizers paid him/her to write about the show.

Makes me wonder if (a) is this a common practice at ---------- magazine? or (b) if not, do the editors know that this writer is doing this?

Only way out of this mess: That the "article" or "essay" is a paid advertising page, and "boxed" in by a line all around it that says "paid advertising" as some newspapers and magazines do when someone takes out an ad and the ad looks like it's an article.

Makes my head hurt... any comments?

Update: The artist in question just discovered that the "curator" actually works for the magazine!