Art Fair in DC
Last April I mentioned about a possible Art Fair coming to DC.
The organizers were sniffing around the various DC galleries and met with various art dealers to see what the level of interest for organizing a major art fair in the nation's capital area was.
Well, the nation's first major art fair is coming this April 27-30, 2007 at the Convention Center.
Applications can be downloaded here.
Wednesday, July 05, 2006
Sister, Sister
Reston, VA 20190) July 9th, with a reception from 2-4pm.
This is not only a celebration of the bond of sisters creating art, but also a showcase of two exceptionally talented abstract painters.
By the way, go early, as these sisters sell a lot of their work.
Tuesday, July 04, 2006
Friday, June 30, 2006
Why Gopnik is so wrong
Last Sunday, the WaPo's chief art critic, Blake Gopnik penned an article titled Portraiture's Harsh Lessons - Contest Offers Unintended Primer On Do's & Don'ts.
In the article (read it here), this erudite and intelligent man steps outside of his art critic hat to dwell in the dangerous waters of "I know better than you" land and dispenses wildly wrong opinions from the powerful pulpit of the pages of the WaPo.
The National Portrait Gallery is not an art gallery, begins Gopnik, and Blake Gopnik may be an eminently talented art writer, but he is not, and will never be, a gallerist (or at least a successful one anyway).
Gopnik screams (it's bolded, which in onlinespeak is just below for caps for "screaming") Don't think high realism equals art.
I would submit that today one can safely say: "Don't think that __________ equals art," and no one would blink. Let's try some:
1. Don't think that putting a little sculpture in a jar of piss equals art.
2. Don't think that smearing feces on a painting equals art.
3. Don't think that a portrait photograph equals art.
4.
5. Blah, blah, blah equals art.
But then he proceeds to poison the reader's well for fellow art critic Dave Hickey, by actually attacking Hickey in a semi-personal way as Gopnik writes: that Hickey is "famously skeptical about a lot of contemporary art, does his best to boost the exhibition in his catalogue essay (mostly with fiercely backhanded compliments, as when he praises its ignorance of all the current painting he actually likes)."
I think that Hickey's sin may be simply that he disagrees with Gopnik's views. But what Gopnik does not reveal or account for is that he is equally famously skeptical about anything that involves a brush and a canvas.
And this is also evidenced by his previous many anti-realism (and anti-painting) comments in his reviews and articles, and by his now infamous lecture delivered at the Corcoran during his first few months in his new job at the WaPo, in which Gopnik declared that "painting was dead" (yawn) and (in response to a question from the audience, that to the best of my recollection asked something along the lines of "Since you don't seem to like painting, or sculpture, or drawing, or photography, then what should a contemporary artist be doing today?") to which Gopnik answered "video and manipulated photography."
The museum curator who was sitting next to me, leaned over and whispered: "Blake doesn't like pictures."
Gopnik next writes: "For some reason (okay, so let's blame Salvador Dali) "modern" art has come to be equated in many people's minds with the wildly fantastical."
Uh?
Who thinks this? A couple of wasted Google hours can't seem to find any sort of trend where people equate modern art with the wildly fantastical. In fact other than Matthew Barney's now slightly yawnish work, I can't seem to find a wildly fantastical signature to modern art, although I am sure that there are some there, but a trend?
In fact, as a gallerist who deals with both the general public, the collecting public, and members of the arts intelligentsia, I would submit that many "people" on the front lines of the public scene still tend to equate modern art to the sort of stuff that Picasso and Braque and those guys were doing at the beginning and middle of the last century.
In fact the only "trend" that I seemed to find, is the boring and cyclical trend that painting is hot again, and realism is what seems to be riding the crest of that repeating wave, somewhat deflating Gopnik's first point.
Gopnik writes: "The idea that there is something bold about showing ugliness in a portrait instead of beauty has a history at least five centuries old."
OK, so he's right with this point; we agree here, although the fact that it has been done for five centuries doesn't mean that it is bad.
Gopnik writes:
If a portrait wants to prove it's more than empty flattery, it had better go much further than just throwing in some wrinkles -- as Doug Auld does in a close-up of a burn victim named Shayla, whose black skin is a tight mask of scars. It's one of the only pictures in the exhibition that need their links to the grand tradition of painted portraiture: By making a monumental oil painting of a badly disfigured face, Auld evokes the absence of such faces from the art of the past -- and from the larger social consciousness that past represents.I'm not sure if the above is a "do" or a "don't"?
On top of that, the simple freak-show voyeurism implicit in this painting is so vexed, it's compelling. Shayla seems proud to present her damaged self to us in a portrait; should we also be proud of staring at it?
Gopnik writes:
"Titian signed his pictures on their fronts. So did Rembrandt and Manet. That was back when marking the active presence of the artist meant something. Now a signature just seems like empty advertising. Some clear marking on a picture's back is all posterity -- and the market -- demands of any artist. A picture's front should be so great that a signature would only mar it. In this competition, however, artists' names are flourished everywhere. (It yields a new axiom we might call Outwin Boochever's Law: The duller the picture, the more flamboyantly it's likely to be signed.)"He is sort of half right here, but in the half that he is wrong, he shows an amazing ignorance of the power of the signature in art.
As those of you who have been the victims of any of the shows that I have curated, then you know that one of my major pet peeves with artists are the artists who put a huge, or misplaced signature on the front of the work, often marring it. I have actually rejected otherwise decent work from competitions (and sent the feedback to the artists) because I thought that their massive signature destroyed the essence of the work.
But Gopnik is saying (I think) that artists should never sign their work on the front.
When he states that "Some clear marking on a picture's back is all posterity -- and the market -- demands of any artist" he is somewhat wrong (especially with "the market" part, as the huge differences between what a front-signed Picasso brings when compared to an unsigned Picasso (the ones that he gave to one of his wives) and a rear-signed Picasso.
As a gallerist, it has been my experience that collectors not only want a signature, but in fact, if smart enough, they demand it. More often than not, the ones who demand it, want it on the front.
My advice to artists, based on my experience as a gallerist and curator and collector, would be very different from Gopnik.
(1) All artwork should be signed somewhere.
(2) Avoid flamboyant signatures on the front. Knock yourself out on the rear of the piece, but make sure that the signature doesn't "bleed" through the front, as I have seen happen in some photos and also in some paintings.
(3) Nearly all abstract work should be signed on the back (on verso in auction house speak).
(4) You will run into collectors who want a signature on the front. There's a significant psychological connection between art and signatures that Gopnik misses.
(5) In those works where the signature does not affect the composition or "mar" the work, then it's perfectly fine to sign it modestly somewhere where it will not affect the work - the classical area is lower right margin, or if you have a "gallery dressed" painting, sign it on the side.
(6) If you can't figure out where to sign the piece, see rule (1).
A child's toy can outdo oil paints.
No it can't.
Only in the "traditional" eyes of art critics who still wave the fifty-year-old Greenbergian mission to try to kill painting. Face it: it won't happen!
A child's toy to do art is more often than not a gimmick to catch the eye of an art critic trying desperately to always be edgy rather than be objective; it worked in this case.
Save sentiment for greeting cards.
OK, so we agree again. Except for the lines that state: "Art teachers everywhere call these "girl-in-a-room pictures." They try to wean students off them by junior year." As a former art student (University of Washington School of Art graduate), I had never had this experience in my four years in art school, but just in case I called and/or emailed a dozen or so art teachers in the last day or two to see if they knew what the "girl-in-a-room pictures" statement meant - so far the answers have been somewhat amusing (one person thought that they may be John Currin look-alikes), but as far as my very un-scientific poll, there seems to be no "girl-in-a-room pictures" syndrome affecting art schools and no "weaning" of anything other than (in some schools anyway), any technical skill that a student may actually bring to the school as a freshman.
Portrait art shouldn't have to be complacent art.
This last point in Gopnik's list of mostly wrong advice is simply based on (and a re-statement of) this particular art critic's deeply held traditional art criticism belief that art must (it MUST) say something new in order to be good.
So when an artist like Gerhardt Richter comes along and pokes all these traditional art critic beliefs ("painting is dead," "art must say something new in order to be good," etc.) in the eye with his complete disregard of these flawed art criticism axioms, it throws traditional art critics like Gopnik, unable to adapt to a modern art world (where the art, not the critic, nor the criticism, is what carries the day in the end) to a position where:
(a) they can't rip a Richter apart.
(b) they rip the little guys.
"It's the sense of adventure and consuming creative ambition that is missing from this show and that is there, at least as an overarching mission, in most serious contemporary work."No sir, it's not missing, perhaps you can't see it, because when you came to see this show, your eyes were already shut from your anachronistic beliefs about serious contemporary work.
_____________________
The Outwin Boochever 2006 Portrait Competition Exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery, runs through Feb. 18, 2006. See the portraits here.
Thursday, June 29, 2006
The Real (Art) World Opens Tonight
A few days ago I was invited to talk to the student curators participating in Jack Rasmussen’s innovative curator class at American University.
At the same time that I met, talked to and then spoke to the class, I was fortunate enough to not only get inside the focus and purpose of the five student curators, but also received an early peek at the installation process of the show itself, which opens with a gallery talk tonight, Thursday, June 29 at 5PM, immediately followed by an opening party from 6-8PM.
The exhibition, with the most modern youthful title (somewhat borrowed I imagine from MTV’s "Real World" series) of "The Real (Art) World: 5 Curators. 5 Artists. 1 Museum," has the fore mentioned cast of five students in their first curating assignment; the students are: Bernard Birnbaum, Nicole Ferdinando, Meg Ferris, Roxana Martin and Daniela Rutigliano.
The assignment's starting point was somewhat the same for all the students: review artist submissions and proposals and slides sent to the Katzen since it opened its doors a while back, and select an artist for each curator to showcase in the exhibition.
Birnbaum selected Dave D’Orio, Ferdinando selected Marie Ringwald, Ferris selected Jiha Moon (who seems to be everywhere at once these days), Martin picked Genna Watson and Rutigliano picked Ariel Goldberg.
Of the above artists, I was very familiar with Ringwald (a Trawick Prize finalist and an artist whom I included in Seven) and Jiha Moon (a Trawick Prize winner); the others were all new to me.
Meg Ferris passed the first test of my "why did you select blankety blank?" question, as she answered that she had selected Moon based on her visual impressions of Moon’s elegant work and her statement about her work.
When I saw the work, Ferris had already hung it on the wall, and was preparing to add some wall text. We spoke for a while about “textitis,” that fatal disease of most postmodern minimalist art, where the text is often more interesting than the artwork itself, and Ferris seemed to agree that in Moon’s case the artwork should be allowed to carry the exhibition’s focus, rather than text about Moon’s art.
I also asked her about conservation issues, as Moon uses a variety of inks and pigments to create her deceptively complex works, and the longevity of artwork is something that art dealers often worry about, but seems to be generally ignored by museum curators (unless they are acquiring the work for the museum).
Roxana Martin was busily working on the massive task of installing Genna Watson’s larger than life sculptures, and she was next on my walk-through the exhibit. "I selected Watson because her work spoke to me as soon as I saw it," stated Marin, who clearly identified with Watson’s discernible attempt to deliver a set of powerful messages through her large, organic sculptures.
In the center of the lower floor gallery, Watson has a superb spot for her work, and this exhibition should bring her work much well-deserved visibility.
Martin and I then discussed art and artists who create work specifically aimed at a museum audience (rather than a gallery audience).
In this case, by the sheer size of the sculptures, and their “display needs,” it is clear to me that the artist is aiming to have her work displayed in large public spaces, rather than the more intimate scale of most commercial art galleries.
This was of interest to Martin, who I think had not seen the work from that point of view. It is a thought (I think) that rarely crosses the mind of museum curators.
Next I talked to Nicole Ferdinando, and confessed to her that when I first stepped into the Katzen, even though I am very familiar with Marie Ringwald’s work, I initially thought that the work that first faced me was that of area sculptor Janos Enyedi, a reasonable mistake considering that the work that I am referring to is clearly within the family of faux metal wall constructions of barns and metal sheds that Enyedi has been making for years.
However, as soon as I noticed several of Ringwald’s better-known freestanding sculptures (also sheds in this case) – and was corrected by Rasmussen – I realized that the work was a natural progression for Ringwald’s shared obsession (with Enyedi) for constructed structures. I was also pleased to see the four red pieces that I had selected and exhibited at Seven be part of this show, and shared this curatorial selection with Ferdinando.
I also managed to discover some new (new to me that is) set of elegant prints by this talented artists, and these were my favorite from her diverse canon of works selected by this young curator.
We then all sat down and discussed the whole environment of curating a show, and some of the points that I had earlier pinpointed with Ferris, Martin and Ferdinando resurfaced.
Like her fellow curators, Bernard Birnbaum and Daniela Rutigliano shared an acute interest in the work of the artist that they selected, although is Rutigliano’s case I got a sense that she was previously familiar with the artist that she selected, Ariel Goldberg, and Goldberg’s photography.
It was very clear to me that what Rasmussen is doing with this class is having an important and lasting effect on these students, and I would dare say a profound footprint on both their artistic development and appreciation of art, and the complicated web of multi-layered work that goes into assembling an exhibition.
This is an important test for these students, and an event more significant development in the art curriculum of American University; this new ingredient that Rasmussen has added to the complicated soup of being the director and curator of this magnificent art museum will continue to grow and develop, and I think will provide an excellent breeding ground not only for new, budding curators, but also for new artists, perhaps for the first time showcased in a museum environment.
Keep them cooking Jack!
"The Real (Art) World: 5 Curators. 5 Artists. 1 Museum" opens tonight with a reception for the curators and the artists at the Katzen Arts Center. The exhibition runs through August 20, 2006.
Wednesday, June 28, 2006
Standing Stones
I am somewhat of a longtime aficionado of standing stones sites and stone circles, and a new one has been found in the Amazon.
See it here, and see the amazing images from Scotland here.
It was in large part as a result of those photographs and what happened to some of them, that the Fraser Gallery was started in 1996.
Wanna go to an opening tonight?
Artists David Hubbard and jodi are having an opening for a new exhibit located at 901 E Street NW (entrance on 9th Street, NW). The opening is presented by Zenith Gallery for Cambridge Management.
The reception to meet the artists is June 28, 5-8pm and the exhibition runs through July 28, 2006.
The Mystery of Twittering Machine
As I have been traveling so much lately (and I'm heading off to the Poconos this weekend), I have been trying to catch up with some of the art reviews that the WaPo has done in the last couple of weeks.
And I have noticed an interesting mystery in a recent review.
On Sunday, June 18, 2006, Jessica Dawson reviewed the Paul Klee show at the Phillips Collection.
It always bugs me somewhat when Jessica "uses" the Galleries column to review a museum show that will most likely be reviewed by Gopnik or O'Sullivan anyway - to me she's wasting the precious "Galleries" print space, which I believe its supposed to be focused on galleries, on a museum show.
However, in this review she was writing it for Sunday Arts, I guess subbing in place for the WaPo's Chief Art Critic, who as we all know, only writes about museums, and not galleries.
Read that review here. She writes:
At the Phillips, the Duchampian "Twittering Machine" is on view, as is the anxiously Freudian "Girl With Doll's Pram," where the little girl's breasts are the size of Hindenburgs.Then, later on I read Michael O'Sullivan's review of the same show, published at few days later on Friday, June 23, 2006. Read O'Sullivan's review here, and he writes:
Oddly enough, one of my favorite paintings, MOMA's "The Twittering Machine," is not on view at the Phillips, although you'll find it in the accompanying catalogue.Uh?
Is the painting there or not?
And so I call the Phillips, and the nice PR lady tells me that O'Sullivan is right, and that "The Twittering Machine," although published in the catalog, did not make it to the exhibition. And she's cracking up because it was highlighted in the Dawson review, and although published in the catalog, it is not listed in the checklist for the exhibition.
"Did she actually ---," I begin to ask.
"Come to the exhibition?" interrupts the nice Phillips lady, "Yes, she did... and that's what makes the mention of a piece not in the exhibition even odder."
Sigh...
Update: As usual, Bailey is crazy.
Tuesday, June 27, 2006
Trawick Prize Finalists
Congrats to the finalists for this year's Trawick Prize.
Christine Buckton-Tillman (Baltimore, MD)This year's prize competition was juried by Ashley Kistler, Curator at the Visual Arts Center of Richmond; Jack Rasmussen, Director of the Katzen Arts Center at American University in Washington, D.C. and Gerald Ross, Director of Exhibitions at Maryland Institute College of Art.
Caryl Burtner (Richmond, VA)
Eric Dyer (Baltimore, MD)
Suzanna Fields (Richmond, VA)
Adam Fowler (Washington, DC)
Kristin Holder (Washington, DC)
Kirsten Kindler (Richmond, VA)
Maxwell MacKenzie (Washington, DC)
Robert Mellor (Chatham, VA)
James Rieck (Baltimore, MD)
Jo Smail (Baltimore, MD)
Molly Springfield (Washington, DC)
Georgianne Stinnett (Richmond, VA)
Jason Zimmerman (Washington, DC)
The first place winner will be awarded $10,000; second place will be honored with $2,000 and third place will be awarded $1,000. A "young" artist whose birth date is after April 10, 1976 will also be awarded $1,000.
The Trawick Prize was established by local business owner Carol Trawick. Ms. Trawick has served as a community activist for more than 25 years in downtown Bethesda. She is the Chair of the Bethesda Arts & Entertainment District and past Chair of the Bethesda Urban Partnership. Ms. Trawick is the owner of an Information Technology company in Bethesda, Trawick & Associates.
Last year, Jiha Moon formerly from Annandale, VA, was awarded the 2005 "Best in Show" with $10,000; Dean Kessman of Washington, D.C. was named second place and was given $2,000; Denise Tassin of Baltimore, MD was bestowed third place and received $1,000 and the 2005 "Young Artist" award of $1,000 was given to Michele Kong of Baltimore, MD.
Auction
Last night was Food and Friends Chef's Best Dinner and Auction Event at the Washington Hilton. There were almost 5000 attendees... and the best restaurants in the city were featured there.
The main event came when during the Live Auction segment, Tim Tate's artwork raised almost $20,000 for Food and Friends.... more than twice as much as any other offering! Tim's piece was two of his Archway panel series.
The winning bidder was the owner of the Crew Club on 14th Street, but Tate also gave the second highest bidder two panels as well... doubling the dollar amount. This is his 6th year of donating to that cause.
Nepotista
"When it comes to nepotism, the best strategy is to avoid it."Mmmm... in the artworld, this is often quite impossible... I would advise: "When it comes to nepotism, the best strategy is to minimize it as much as possible."
- Jessica Dawson advising Jiha Moon here
In writing about art, selling art, curating art, awarding art grants, seeing art, talking about art, we're all nepotistas to some degree or other. Nearly every curator that we've ever hired to jury an exhibition for us, has brought some nepotism into it and nearly every writer that I've read has exhibited some degree of it.
Critics get to know artists, and art dealers, and curators on a nearly daily basis, and they too, being human, develop nepotism in some degree or other, and become nepotistas perhaps without meaning to do so, or perhaps while minimizing it.
Even advise-giving Dawson.
A few years ago, I asked some of the WaPo's leadership why Dawson never reviewed (the now closed) Fusebox.
I was told that Dawson had recused herself from reviewing Fusebox due to private reasons (I was told "friendship with the owners").
Thus Dawson (I assume) did the right thing with the Post's policy (one exists I assume) in writing/reviewing about friends... good for her (although unfair somewhat for Fusebox, although to make things fair for them, the WaPo then apparently had Blake Gopnik review them a few times while they were open).
But as reported here in 2004, she had no nepotista issue in writing that Fusebox is "sharp and savvy," and has "raised the bar for visual art in Washington," and that their openings are "events to see and be seen at" for the 2004 issue of Timeout DC. In the lead page for the galleries (p.189), she even lists Fusebox under a listing of five galleries selected as "the best galleries." And on page 194 she again highlights Fusebox in a special commentary section where the gallery is highlighted after the following introduction:
"While some DC galleries could be accused - justifiably - of playing it safe, the following stand out from the crowd with their interesting programming and sheer charisma."I'm not even that fussed that Dawson gave Fusebox some well-deserved comments and well-earned kudos on that issue of Timeout DC, but I am fussed that she's now giving Jiha Moon advise on nepotism instead of just reviewing the show.
In the event that you actually want to read a review of the show, then visit Thinking About Art and read Kirkland's, declared nepotism and all.
Odom and Banks (Continued)
The Odom and Banks controversy has a new voice in the mix, as Virginia Pilot columnist Kerry Dougherty opines on the subject.
Read her opinion and quite a few comments on the subject here.
Also, the Contemporary Art Center of Virginia, which runs the Boardwalk show that awarded $10,000 to Odom, has decided not to take away the cash prize from Odom. "We've now consulted with a number of Alabama and national folk art galleries and experts," said Cameron Kitchin, executive director of Virginia Beach's Contemporary Art Center of Virginia , which runs the Boardwalk show.
I talked to Mr. Kitchin a few days ago while I was in New Mexico, as he called me to explain the decision, and I appreciate his immediate involvement in this issue.
"We have full confidence that the specific piece that won best in show is by Doug Odom's hand and is uniquely Doug Odom's subject matter," Kitchin said on Friday.
I respect their decision process, which essentially "consulted with a number of Alabama and national folk art galleries and experts," to arrive at the decision that the piece that won the $10K was not a copy of any known Banks' painting.
This decision does not touch on the ethics of copying another artist's style and subject depiction, which is a superb topic for a future discussion panel, as this is the main "beef" that seems to be the main leftover (other than some legal issues between Banks and Odom) from this controversy.
"We have independent confirmation that these poodles did live on Doug's farm," Kitchin said. "Those dogs were never a subject matter in Michael Banks' work."See the winning artwork here.
Nothing to do with the decision itself, but I find this quote in the article a little disturbing:
"My feeling is, it's no big deal at all," said Ann Oppenhimer, president of the Folk Art Society of America, based in Richmond. "They're not giving the prize on ethics.According to the article, Odom "sold 20 to 25 pieces at the Boardwalk. His prices ranged up to $7,000."
"You don't like to see that kind of thing happen," Oppenhimer said. "But there are very few things that are original, when you get down to it."
Update: Bailey has this letter published in the Virginia Pilot.
Monday, June 26, 2006
Sunday, June 25, 2006
Art Panel at DCAC
Tonight DCAC is hosting a panel titled: "The role of art historians, curators and critics in the contemporary art scene". The panel starts at 7:30PM and it's free to the public.
Panelists include:
- Joshua Shannon, Assistant Professor of Contemporary Art History & Theory at the University of Maryland.
- Rex Weil, independent curator, artist and art critic covering DC area for Art News magazine.
- Judith Brodie, Curator of modern prints and drawings at the National Gallery of Art
- JW Mahoney, independent curator, artist and art critic covering DC area for Art in America magazine.
Saturday, June 24, 2006
Wanna go to an opening tonight?
Eric Finzi opens at Heineman Myers Contemporary Art in Bethesda tonight with a reception for the artist from 6-9PM.
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