Wanna be in a museum show?

Is this an asskicking blog or what?

I'm about to give all of you resume-builders an opportunity to be included in a museum show.

Not just any museum, but the museum that bewitched me -- when I was a kid in Brooklyn -- into loving art.

This March, the Brooklyn Museum, is inviting photographers to electronically submit [sorry about the split infinitive] digital images for a unique upcoming photography exhibition called Click! A Crowd-Curated Exhibition.

The first part of Click! is the submission process that ends this March 31st. Details can be found at this website.

Aren't you glad that you read this blog?

Click! takes its inspiration from the critically acclaimed book The Wisdom of Crowds, in which New Yorker business and financial columnist James Surowiecki asserts that a diverse crowd is often wiser at making decisions than expert individuals. The exhibition will explore that idea in the context of visual art, inviting visitors to an online forum to evaluate the artists’ submissions.

Those submissions chosen by the online audience will be in the Museum exhibition, opening June 27, 2008.

The public will choose an art exhibition? There must be something illegal here...

Something refreshing.

Start sending your photos by clicking on the widget above or go here.

Jerks of the Web

Ah! An explantion why people who are quiet weasels in real life turn into boisterous jerks online.

This article really describes a couple of art bloggers that I know... well, I really know one of them.

CityCenter's Public Art

CityCenter, is a joint venture of MGM MIRAGE and Dubai World, and it will be a vertical city that opens in the heart of the Las Vegas Strip between Bellagio and Monte Carlo resorts in late 2009. The more than $8 billion development combines approximately 2,650 private residences; two 400-room non-gaming boutique hotels; a dramatic 61-story, 4,000-room resort casino; and a 500,000-square-foot retail and entertainment district into a single urban core.

And today, MGM MIRAGE unveiled a $40 million Public Art Program for CityCenter.

Opening in late 2009, CityCenter will feature works by acclaimed artists including Maya Lin, Jenny Holzer, Nancy Rubins, Claes Oldenburg and Coosje van Bruggen, Frank Stella, Henry Moore and Richard Long, among others. Validating CityCenter’s status as a cultural destination of worldwide significance, the CityCenter Fine Art Program will feature numerous sculptures and fine art installations in both interior and exterior locations to create a dynamic and enriching fine art collection. The program is designed to become a benchmark for enlightened corporate involvement with the arts on a global level and will be one of the world’s largest and most ambitious corporate art programs. Additional pieces will be announced at a later date.

“CityCenter will be an international architectural achievement that integrates the talents of world-renowned artists, architects and designers in one development; it will be a landmark of global taste and style,” said Terry Lanni, Chairman and CEO of MGM MIRAGE. “The CityCenter Fine Art Program will be the first initiative of its kind to merge public and corporate interests on this grand scale, and we’re proud to deliver this prominent force in contemporary art and culture to Las Vegas.”

Read the NYT story here.

Update: I asked CityCenter if they had any local Las Vegas artists in the group of artists selected for public art; the answer was no.

The Shaping of Color Field

by Rosetta DeBerardinis

I departed the island of Baltimore last week to attend the preview of “Color as Field: American Painting 1950-1975,” the new exhibit at the Smithsonian American Art Museum.

After some lovely pastries and Dean and DeLuca coffee poured from boxes we ventured upstairs to its third floor gallery. Once you emerge from the elevator you become captivated by the large scale chroma-stained canvases which are so imposing that you feel child-like staring up at them. Signage on the walls with names we have all heard or seem before like: Frankenthaler, Louis, Olitski, Motherwell, Gottelib, Davis and Gilliam. But, this is not a block-buster exhibit for the masses intended to draw record numbers of crowds; it is a significant documentation of 39 works by the early pioneers of American art.

Due to limited government funding for museums and art institutions, there is now greater reliance upon garnering private donors to underwrite exhibits. This exhibit is organized by the American Federation of the Arts, the Henry Luce Foundation, Gene Davis Memorial Fund, Golden Artists Colors and several individual donors, and few of the works are from the Smithsonian’s own collection.

But, if this exhibit is an example of what can be done without the government, I say ‘thank-you’ now we can really have first-class art shows which are thought-provoking, scholarly and challenging. No, there is no audio-guide with snippets of history or narrative story-telling. This show is intended for those well-versed in the subject-matter, so if you are not, I suggest that you dust off an art history book or Google ‘ColorField’ to ensure that you won’t miss the importance of this historical exhibit.

And, if you negate the importance of the abstract expressionist and chant along with the masses “even my child could do this” then you need to purchase the easy reading color-illustrated exhibition catalogue, written by its guest curator Karen Willkin, a specialist in 20th century modernism.

The post-war Color Field painters abandoned the gestural strokes, the all-over painting and pouring inaugurated by Jackson Pollock and the abstract expressionists, and instead concentrated on color, spatial ambiguity and process. Their aim was to unify a colorful abstract image or shape on a large surface. This 1950s movement was more about color than form; however, both movements sought to reveal the unknown -not to report just on the visible.

Artist Helen Frankenthaler led the way by applying thinned oil pigment to stain the unprimed canvas. After visiting her studio in New York City in 1953, artists Kenneth Noland and Morris Louis (both then teaching in the District of Columbia) returned there to experiment with their newly found technique.

My favorite painting in the show is Frankenthaler’s large scale, ‘Off the White Square’ done in 1973 because it exemplifies the new power and presence of acrylic pigment -- which had just become available when she began using ten years earlier.

And, as they say "the rest is history," because America now had its second artistic movement, the Color Field school, which included Helen Frankenthaler, Kenneth Noland, Morris Louis, Walter Darby Bannard, Jack Bush, Gene Davis, Friedel Dzubus, Sam Francis, Jules Olitski and later Larry Poons, Frank Stella, Ronald Davis and Sam Gilliam. These are artists who elected to concentrate on pure contrasting hues of color rather than light versus dark. In the words of Frank Stella “what you see is what you see.” However the significance of this exhibit extends beyond what the viewer sees on these colorful canvases. It is a historical event documenting the difference, similarity and distinction between abstract expressionism and color field painting along with the progression of American art.

The exhibition is in three-parts: an introduction to the origins of Color Field painting, its pioneers, and its later practitioners who pushed its further. It begins with Rothko, and the Abstract Expressionists, then to Frankenthaler’s departure from Pollock and the color field artists who followed with a new abstract form based on expanses of radiant unmodulated hues by staining, painting and spraying. And it concludes with the later generation often linked to the influential art critic Clement Greenberg, who curated the 1964 exhibit “Post Painterly Abstraction” and is credited along with art historian Michael Fried for defining and establishing the framework for interpreting the art form known as field of color, later coined "Color Field."

This exhibition is the first major examination of color field painting, and the District of Columbia is the only East Coast city to host this landmark exhibition. After its debut there it will make its final stop at the First Center of Visual Arts in Nashville, Tenn. in June.

On exhibit thru May 26th, 2008 at the Smithsonian American Art Museum, Eighth and F Streets, N.W., Washington, D.C. Hours: 11:30 a.m. to 7 p.m. daily (202) 633-1000\ (202) 633-7970 (recorded museum information).

Art Collector Feels "Victimized" After Selling Arbus Photos

From Artinfo:

An art collector says he feels "victimized" after selling a collection of previously unknown Diane Arbus photographs for $3,500, far below their value, the Associated Press reports.

Bayo Ogunsanya, who primarily collects African American art, bought a trunk full of unclaimed photographs at a Bronx storage facility in 2002 and sold some of them to Robert Langmuir, who returned a week later asking to purchase more and offering to give Ogunsanya more money if the photographs turned out to be "worth more than you and I think they are."

It was only later that Ogunsanya learned from a New York Times article that the photos were by Arbus and would go on display in a Los Angeles Gallery in February and be auctioned next month at Phillips de Pury & Company. Ogunsanya, who claims Langmuir knew the whole time that the photos were Arbus's, took his case to federal court in Brooklyn on Wednesday, asking the court to block or change the terms of the sale and award him unspecified damages. The lawsuit says the photographs are likely worth hundreds of thousands of dollars.

I suspect that if Langmuir is a professional (art dealer or art trader of some sort), then Ogunsanya may be covered under what's sometimes known as the "Widow's Law" in some states.

This law, as I understand it, tries to protect people from being cheated by professionals when selling collectibles, art, etc.

So if someone comes to me to sell me some artwork, and I recognize a bunch of Morris Louis' paintings in the stacks, I can't legally cheat the seller by offering them a few hundred bucks for the lot.

I'm not sure if the law applies when neither party has any idea of the value of the objects. In other words, if Langmuir "knew the whole time" that they were Arbus' photos and what their value really was, then he may be on the wrong side of the law if he's some sort of dealer - I'm not sure if the law applies if he's just a savvy collector. But if Langmuir had no idea what the photos were valued at, and then subsequently found out their real value - then I suspect that he is in the clear -- but if once he found out the value, then he came back to rip off Ogunsanya of the remaining Arbus photos, then he is probably in the wrong side of the law.

Pixelating America

Who says Mike Licht doesn't post art stories anymore? Read this.

Wanna go to a DC opening tonight?

We're being assured that the artist opening tonight at the Randall Scott Gallery in DC is the real Cara Ober.

"Painting as a mode of thinking" is the way Holland Cotter described the landscapes of Poussin in a recent New York Times review. He likened Poussin's artistic practice to a certain kind of poetry in which "antique references, modern speculation and sensual delirium" check and fuel the import of each component. A viewer might do well to keep this conflicted discursiveness in mind when looking at the paintings of Cara Ober. Her art can look deceptively inviting, almost reassuring in its Hallmark Hall greeting card sort of way, as if the meaning of her jumbled references to old-time dictionary illustrations, sentimental silhouettes, wallpaper patterns and middle class sense and sensibility were simply meant to give us pleasure, the concatenation of images and words an apotheosis of middlebrow taste somewhat like the effusions of Jeff Koons, another notable graduate of the Maryland Institute College of Art. But you would be mistaken to think so.

Perhaps like Ober you too are a product of suburban America, perhaps like her you too feel conflicted about the comfortable sources of your pleasures, how often they are rooted in a familiar environment, the taste of chocolate cake, a submissive pet, a doting mother, a non-threatening mate. Perhaps her older work made it easy for you to feel some such generational kinship but the new paintings are darker in color, more subtly threatening in their selection of quotes and definitions, more aggressive in their critique. They will remind you that you are not like Cara Ober.

-- excerpt from "New Paintings and a Wall by Cara Ober" -an essay by Dr. Michael Salcman

The opening is tonight, 7-9PM.

The Five Senses

Over the many years that I have been curating, creating, discussing and writing about art, I never cease to be surprised at the constantly changing and always surprising quality that is human creativity.

When the Target Gallery asked me to curate "The Five Senses," I must admit that I was a little concerned about the sort of work that I would eventually review for selection. The harsh brainwashing of the post-modernist mafia is a hard thing to avoid, even if you sometimes try to rebel against it.

But leave it to the creativity and intelligence of the artists submitting entries to not only surprise me, but also to delight me and open my eyes to a whole new genre of creativity, new media, fresh ideas and enviable talent from all over the nation.

David Bausman (Texas). Ideas, Sterlig Silver & Mixed Media, c.2005

All the jurying was done in the blind, and I never knew the artists' names until after the selections were made.

I was floored by the sheer diversity of interpretations of the theme, including a lot of three dimensional entries, which are usually represented by a small number, in a juried call for artists such as this one.

Not this show! There was a surprising number of 3D pieces in this call and a significant number in the selected pieces.

J. Lewis Takahashi (New Jersey). Senses - Taste - Watercolor c.2007

Not to say that the 2Ds were not represented; after all, J. Lewis Takahashi's gorgeous watercolors and Thomas Schlotterback's superb charcoal drawing make a very strong presence for the wall works.

Sun Kyoun Kim (Illinois). Triad II, Sterling Silver, c.2007

But as I write these words, I can't wait to see and get my hands on Sun Kyoung Kim's "Triad II" or "Restriction I." Or see or walk around Anjali Srinivasan's "(Re)Flexion" and Adam Bradley's "Cherubs," or wear and use Gary Schott's "Thought Stimulators."

This exhibition is a triumph of the human mind and talent over those who want to reduce the creation of art to just ideas or wall text about ideas, and it has been my honor and pleasure to have been a part of it.

See some of the selected artists here.

The exhibition is up now and through April 6, 2008, and the opening reception (free and open to the public) is Thursday, March 13, 6-8pm and I will give a gallery talk on that night at 7PM and present the awards.

See ya there!

Opportunity for photographers

The Baltimore Museum of Art has invited 19 photographers to respond to the exhibition "Looking through the Lens" with their own work.

The 19 were chosen by by artist Peter Bruun, Urbanite magazine creative director Alex Castro, and photographer/BMA Trustee Connie Imboden, the participating artists are: Beth Barbush, Jennifer Bishop, Laura Burns, Marshall Clarke, Cory Donovan, Peggy Fox, J.M. Giordano, Camille Gustus-Quijano, Regina DeLuise, Ellis Marsalis, Dan Meyers, Christopher Myers, Ken Royster, Jacqueline Schlossman, Sofia Silva, Lynn Silverman, Michelle Woodward, Erik Whipple, and Jack Wilgus.

Their images will be on view in the Looking Now Digital Gallery at the BMA from March 16–June 8, and also as part of a special feature in the April issue of Baltimore’s Urbanite magazine.

But on April 23 - June 8, the Digital Gallery expands with images by teens in the Youthlight after-school program. Founded in 2001 by photographer Marshall Clarke, Youthlight is committed to engaging young people in using photography as a means of self-expression.

And then other photographers can join Looking Now by visiting Looking through the Lens, creating your own digital images inspired by the exhibition, and uploading them to BMA beginning in mid-March. The best of the images submitted online will be on view at the BMA in the Looking Now Digital Gallery. April 23–June 8, 2008.

Submission inquiries may be directed to looking@artbma.org.

B&W

One of the posts that I lost in the last two weeks was an announcement for the opening of "black and white and... all over," the group show of 19 Greater DC area black and white photographers curated by fellow artsblogger J.T Kirkland for H&F Fine Arts.

I'm hearing good things about this exhibition, and from the images on JT's site, I really like the way that the show was hung - it looks really good.

It's a shame that when Lou Jacobson left the Washington City Paper, no one there has picked up the slack in focusing reviews on photography shows, as there are several good photography shows going on the DC area this month.

Airborne


And heading home from beautiful Arizona. As most of you know, my desktop died a couple of weeks ago, and a few days later my laptop was stolen, and then I came out West for a week.

Between all of that, I have lost a ton of pre-prepared postings and I am at least 500 emails behind, and I'm still struggling a little with the cool, new tiny laptop.

Jerome Art Galleries

Jerome, Arizona sits straddling the side of a mountain about a mile high from sea level and less than 30 miles from its more famous cousin Sedona.

"America's most vertical city" -- I am told -- is home to about 400 people, but once boasted 16,000 inhabitants and a brothel madam who was Arizona's richest woman.

Although the whores are long gone, today the town still manages to attract a few million tourists a year, not only for the spectacular views that it affords from nearly every vantage point in this tiny and beautiful town, but also because of a budding gallery scene that although seemimgly having fairly established roots, it only seems to be blossoming out recently with a significant number of art galleries and venues and a rather successful monthly art walk on the first Saturday of the month. With 30 galleries and artists' studios participating in the art walk, it reflects the huge impact of the fine arts in a town of 400.

Most of Jerome's art galleries seem to fit the Southwest style of galleries that I discussed earlier in reference to Sedona. However, and very surprising to me, Jerome's art spaces seem more individual and original -- in most cases -- than Sedona's cookie cutter model of galleries.

There are several cooperatives that I observed, most noticeably the Jerome Artists Cooperative, where the hilarious (and smart) watercolors of Dave Wilder were on exhibit on that day that I visited. Full of irony and delivered with superb technical expertise, Wilder flexes well-developed observational skills that challenge the genre of "cowboy art" in a new refreshing manner.

The Spirit Art Gallery, although an independent commercial art gallery, seems to be run like a coop as well, with work by 30 artists on display at once, with some very good talent among them. I liked the feisty owner, who really believes in her artists and is a breath of fresh air for gallery owners.

My Mind's Art Gallery, which features the work of its owner, Ukrainian painter Joanna Bregon, a surrealist artist who has found a home in this unusual little town, also stands out from the cookie cutter cluttered gallery model.

It was refreshing to see diversity in art and rugged individuality in each art space, regardless of how one feels about the quality of the art itself, in some cases.

And then, while walking through the various galleries and talking to some of the owners and artists, it dawned on me that the Jerome galleries and shops is what I had expected to see in Sedona: unique, one-of-a-kind shops, art venues and art galleries.

I also discovered that nearly everyone that I talked to in this tiny town where everyone seems to know everyone else, seems to have a grudge against either the land developers and the expansion of homes in nearby areas (and competition for water) and/or against the Jerome city fathers for a variety of reasons, most dealing with construction issues.

Finally I trekked down to the town's former High School, an ancient multi-story set of buildings that has been converted into artists' studios and workshops - 20 of them.

There the work of Michael MacDonald and Derryl Day really stood out, especially some of Day's older portraiture works, which were exquisite color pencil pieces full of personality and grace, as well as tremendous technical skill. But the key here, with an exception here and there, is that these were all artists in the overall, rounded, sense of the adjective -- not just "Southwest art" artists; it was refreshing and interesting.

As small as Jerome is, it's clear that the town's colorful past, coupled with its amazing location and vistas, and more recently married to a creative artistic community and over-protective city fathers, all act as an irresistible magnet to the hordes of tourists that visit it every year.

It's also clear that there's something special about this place; it can be felt in the air, in its people and in its streets, and the dealer in me wonders if this special spot would not be an ideal place for some sort of very specific and focused art fair - a mini model of my "new art fair model."

Sedona and Jerome are like kissing cousins of the Arizona tourist draw. I think that together, they can also become complimentary partners for an art draw of its own.

DCist Exposed

Even from far away Arizona I just wanted make sure that you all know that the DCist Exposed Photography Show opens tonight in DC!

The show is at Civilian Art Projects at 406 7th Street NW in Penn Quarter in DC -- a few blocks from the Chinatown metro, and the reception is from 7 to 9 p.m. and free. DCist Exposed received picks in all three Washington Post event guides, as well as the Washingtonian and other publications, and I bet that this year's show will be even better than last year's terrific exhibition.

Do not miss this opening and someone please email me some images of the opening crowds.

Sedona Art Scene Part III

Yesterday I used the example of Sedona's huge Exposure Gallery to discuss what I call the Southwest gallery model -- a gallery packed to the gills with art in a riot of color and fear of empty space -- as opposed to the more standard gallery model of a minimalist white cube for a gallery.

There are a lot of art venues in the Sedona area, nearly all of them, with one notable exception, follow this Southwest model. Most of the better spaces are listed in the Sedona Art Gallery Association website.

Of these, Kinion Fine Arts seems to offer a blend of the two gallery models. They recently moved from the Hozho Center (located at 431 Hwy 179 and home to several galleries) to uptown Sedona, relocating the gallery to a former bank building, safe room and all. The Kinions have divided the gallery into two rooms; at the entrance the Southwest model is in place, but the bank's vault is used for solo shows apparently hung in the cleaner, less cluttered style of the white cube. They're also one of the few art spaces in town where not everything is Southwest art centric.

A new gallery just up a few steps from Kinion Fine Arts, located at Hyatt Pinion Point, is the very beautiful space of the Vickers Collection (there are three of these galleries in total and the one in Sedona is called VC Fine Arts), opened just a year ago and by far the only gallery in the area that fits the cleaner white cube model.

Vickers uses the white cube model, and also offers the most diverse set of artists, not just a heavy-handed focus on Southwest art (as most Sedona galleries do, driven by the tourist art market).

It will be interesting to see if Vickers can survive as the sole Sedona gallery (at least that I've seen) that offers a diverse set of artwork; the type of art that could easily be seen in New York, or Philly or DC.

At VC I quite liked the bronze sculptures of Bill Starke, a refreshing change of pace from all the bronzes of horses, bears, javalinas, Indians, deer and cowboys that inundate most of this beautiful town's galleries.

I also liked Chris Nelson's smart and intelligent reverse paintings on plexi, which upon further examination are more than just paintings, since the artist also routes the verso of the plexi so that the textured reverse plexi interacts with the acrylic paint to actually create grooves and channels that on the front of the work create smart landscapes. As interesting as this work is, this artist has to be careful that he doesn't fall into a repetitive pattern in his work.

Since I have been in the advice-giving mood, an artist that would be a perfect fir and would actually sell like gangbusters all throughout the Southwest are the amazing storm paintings of the Washington DC area's Amy Marx, who recently had her first solo in New York and whose breath-taking, hyper realism captures massive storms and weather patterns like no artist that I have ever seen.

Another East Coast artist who would be an instant hit in the Southwest is Alexandria's Susan Makara, whose beautiful stacked stones series sell as soon as she is finished with them from her studio in Alexandria's Torpedo factory.

Still in uptown, the Sedona Art Center rounds up a very good artists' run membership gallery of local artists.

There are also quite a few galleries located in a faux Mexican village called Tlaquepaque; after two trips to Sedona, I still can't pronounce it. From there you can cross Oak Creek by foot and visit a whole bunch more galleries on Hwy 179, although the ongoing construction on 179 seems to be really hurting the gallery business on that road.

Later: A big surprise! why nearby Jerome has more interesting and diverse galleries than Sedona does.

Sedona Art Scene Part 2

When you drive up Highway 179 into Sedona, one of the first galleries that you come across is the huge Exposures Gallery, which is located on the right side of 179 as one approaches the city.

Over 20,000 square feet, not including the outside sculpture gardens (I assume) make this the largest art gallery in the state, and probably one of the largest in the nation.

Exposures is a perfect example of what makes most Southwestern art galleries so different from most other fine art galleries in the world; galleries which follow the white cube example of white walls and minimalist hanging styles, coupled with total lack of information about prices, etc.

Not so in the Southwest gallery model, and Exposures is a perfect example of this model for Southwest galleries.

Upon entering the huge spaces, the East Coast gallery sensibility is immediately assaulted by a riot of colors and by a fear of empty space that yields a huge gallery space filled to the brim with art, photography, sculpture, crafts and jewelry.

This is 21st century salon style presentation married to the joy of colors that is the Southwest.

There are probably a few thousand pieces of art hanging and displayed in this gargantuan space. In fact, so much artwork, and so much variety, that the snobbery of the art world would immediately tend to dismiss this gallery as another "art store" filled with "wall decor."

Not so fast.

There are plenty of art galleries in Sedona that offer wall decor, and the same in the Southwest, and for that matter all over the nation.

Don't be fooled by the sheer scale and invasion of the senses that Exposure offers. This is a very successful galleries which offers some very good artists, some so so artists and some mediocre artists. In other words, just like any other reputable art gallery, but definitely not a cheesy art store. This is a very good Southwestern gallery working flawlessly on that model.

Exposures' success is clearly evident not only in its size, but in the small army of people that it employs, as well as its history, which essentially repeats the usual gallery story: art-loving couple moves to Sedona, open a small gallery; they do well and open a huge one.

And because Sedona's art buying market is comprised mostly of visitors, this gallery has to operate on the model of exhibiting everything that it has to offer all at once.

It works for them.

So once we get past the fact that this overcrowded gallery space has found its formula for success, and we begin to look at the artwork itself, as I stated before, we find the same mix of great, good, average and mediocre that one finds in any gallery in the world because art truly is in the eyes of the beholder -- or in this case the husband and wife team that picks the artists that they choose to represent and sell.

And sell they do...

On exhibit are works by more than 100 artists; yep, 100... and prices, I was informed, range from $29 to $290,000.

The catchy price range seems to have done wonders for both the artists and the owners.

Not everything is about money and sales; but money and sales make most artists, and definitely most gallery owners happy.

About the artwork itself...

Nearly all of it shares a flawless technical skill and delivery that would make most postmodernists elitists raise their noses a few inches higher. As an admirer of technical skill, I have learned to respect technical skill, but also have learned to then look past it and see content, ideas, context and intelligence in the work.

But before I get to the few artists that stood out for me, I must note that the one thing that, in spite of over 100 artists, the gallery lacked was monochromatic or black and white works in this wildly colored universe of art. It could really use a few drawings here and there to break up the dominance of color and painting. But I am biased.

As far as I could see there were only two artists working in drawing. Of the two, the two delicate small graphite drawings by Charles Frizzell stood out like little orphans in an ocean of color.

The charcoal and watercolor pieces by an artist named Yuroz also could mostly be qualified as drawing, but the works themselves were rather forgettable, as Yuroz seems to be channelling several of Picasso's periods -- including a rather mediocre stab at cubism -- in his paintings and drawings. There is too much Picasso in Yuroz, but there is also too much of Yuroz in Exposures, which in economic terms means that someone must be buying lots of his work. I didn't like any of it.

Let me tell you what I did like.

There was some very good photography by Scott Peck, and yet I personally test all flower photography to the spectacular work of Andrzej Pluta, or Joyce Tenneson, or Amy Lamb. In fact if Peck's work is doing well in Exposures, then the art dealer in me is sure that Tenneson, Pluta and Lamb would do even better at Exposures.

Upon entering any business in Arizona that sells imagery, one is bound to find photographs of the desert rocks and formations. By the time that you visit a dozen galleries, one is sick and tired of desert photography.

And yet, one of the most memorable artists in Exposures is a photographer named Martii, whose spectacular desert shots, coupled with superb presentations, make his or her photography one of the best finds in the gallery. And in writing this, I think that another photographer whose work would do well here, would be the split reverse image digitally manipulated split desert photographs by John DeFabbio, who works out of the Washington, DC area. For years DeFabbio has been trekking around the world photographing nearly everything that he sees, then digitally mirroring each half of the image to discover amazing new images in the manipulated work.

But back to Exposures.

The best work in this amazing gallery are beautiful abstract pieces by a Brooklyn-born artist named Eric Lee, one of the rare non-representational artists in the space. Lee creates wonderful reverse paintings in glass that are standouts of skill and delivery. They are fresh and beautiful and add a calming effect to the gallery's riot of color.

There are two galleries in Sedona claiming to have been voted the best gallery in Sedona. I'm not sure who the voters were, but of the two, Exposures is by far the best and certainly one of the most amazing art spaces in the entire Southwest.

Trashy Art

Artist Robert Rauschenberg has filed lawsuits against a Florida artist and art gallery that give new meaning to the phrase "one man's trash is another man's treasure."

Read the story here.

AZ also has the familiar pattern

The pattern is familiar: Artists move into blighted urban areas to rent affordable spaces where they can live, create and show their work. The art attracts visitors, who in turn attract cafes and other small businesses. Property values rise, developers take notice and soon the artists are priced out of a community they helped create.

It's a perennial paradox, but it's one that gallery owners and public officials are working to reconcile as they make plans for a diverse downtown where art has a permanent place.

"We have the best relationship now than we've had in the past 20 years with the city of Phoenix," says artist and activist Beatrice Moore, who owns a studio on Grand Avenue and rents several spaces to other artists.

Read the Arizona Republic story here.

Sedona Art Scene - Part 1

While there's no doubt on the planet that Sedona, Arizona is one of the most beautiful places on the planet, as I discovered while there last year and again this week, it is also one of the most spiritual magnets to a variety of religions and beliefs, including the significant number of people attracted to Sedona as a result of it's "energy Vortexes."

Let there be no doubt that this is an area of profound beauty and full of a palpable sense of energy and power. I loved it and will be back many times, as there are dozens and dozens of trails and vistas to explore.

But on this second trip, I wanted to also focus some time and comments on the Sedona art scene, a "scene" with some national footprint, regardless of where you stand on the planetary scale of the art world. in fact, within a few minutes of anyone discussing that they're going to Sedona, someone will immediately pop in and describe the city's great art scene.

And so, let me approach these views with the prejudiced eyes of the artsy Easterner, accustomed to white cube galleries, minimally presented with austere framing, white matting, and where even title and price labels are often eschewed in preference of a discrete price list on the gallerist's white or light wood postmodern design table.

Let start with Sedona art galleries.

But first, extrapolating from to the city's website, the city probably has around 12,000 people, about 90% of them non-Hispanic whites, with a median household income roughly $100,000 less than Potomac, Maryland and paradoxically with a median house price about $100,000 more than Potomac's pricey homes.

It's the first of many paradoxes about this gorgeous place.

Depending on who you believe, Sodona also gets between four and five million visitors a year.

The Sedona Visitors Guide tells these millions of visitors that Sedona "not too long ago had 300 residents, now has 300 artists and more than 40 galleries." We also learn from the guide that Sedona averages one gallery per 300 residents, and for every dollar spent on art, the art buyers spend $12 on other Sedona stuff. The guide also claims that statistics show that approximately 33% of the city's visitors are attracted there by the art, and that these art aficionados thus spend between $200,000 to one million dollars in various Sedona businesses each day. We thus can extrapolate that around $16,666 to $83,333 dollars are spent each day on art in this small town.

One issue appears to be clear: it's the tourists who buy art, not so much the locals (does that sound familiar?). This makes sense, after all, how much art can 12,000 residents buy from 40 galleries?

"Locals don't buy any art," told me a former Sedona gallerist, who prior to opening a gallery in Sedona had been a dealer in Chicago. "There are a lot of retired people here [the median age is around 55] and although there are some very large multi-million dollar homes, there are also a lot of modular homes [a fancy way to described a souped-up trailer]."

To the prejudiced and minimalist Easterner eye, the riot of color, subjects and presentation that characterizes most Southwestern art is an assault to long-held visual sensibilities created by the black and white world of the East Coast and Left Coast artworlds and its European and Latin American brethren.

I am shocked to discover that perhaps there's something of an elitist in all of us, as the preconditioning of being an artist, an art critic and an art dealer raised in all those aspects, and mostly along the Eastern states, prejudices my eyes to what I've referred previously as "coyote art."

My better half, who many years ago interned in Santa Fe with the legendary Gerald Peters Gallery (and Peters is credited by many as energizing the interest in Southwestern art and placing Santa Fe and the Southwest in general on the art scene), tries to educate me somewhat as to the different sensibilities between what she labels "an Easterner, with an East Coast vision of what a gallery should look like, looking at a Southwestern space."

It will take time, but then again, at one point in his life Duncan Phillips hated Impressionism and then eventually was seduced by it and became the American champion for it.

On the other hand, Wisconsin farm girl Georgia O'Keefe, even in her Southwest years always kept her austere black and white world where colors were generally reserved for her paintings.

So I proceed with as open as a mind I can have, maybe somewhere between Phillips' eventual enthusiasm and O'Keefe's steadfast minimalism in personal tastes.

There are a lot of spaces in and around Sedona that sell artwork. I'm not really sure if there are 40 galleries, unless one includes a lot of spaces that sell a lot of Native American and Mexican crafts.

Sedona itself is sort of divided into two areas, and as one comes to it from Highway 179, Uptown Sedona is to the right and the other Sedona to the left. Most art spaces are either located on 179 itself or Uptown Sedona.

The first set of galleries one comes across on 179 are located on a shopping area to the right as one enters the city, with a spectacular view (from the shops) of the Sedona rocks and the city itself.

We'll go there first...

82/100

Is what the 2005 Campello Pinot Grigio received; not bad for a $6 bottle of wine.

Romano on the "New Art Fair" model

Eric Romano is the producer of the highly successful PULSE art fairs, and he read my ideas on a new art fair model and adds some thoughts on the subject:

Hi Lenny,

I just had a look at the blog and would kindly give you my thoughts… although, unfortunately, I don’t think they are very insightful.

There are a huge number of factors involved in creating a successful art fair, mostly tangible and some intangible. The key to the success of Basel, Frieze, Basel Miami, ARCO (a bit different) and the Armory lies in the draw of an international group of collectors that travel to each show.

These are the “major collectors” that the galleries love so much, which also includes curators. The majority of work sold at the big fairs, and fairs like ours, is from this population, which is why all the other fairs have sprung up around them.

The model that you are proposing, with large institutional support, would resemble ARCO, which is partially funded by the Madrid regional government and attracts over 200,000 visitors.

ARCO is a regional fair, if you look at Spain as a whole, but mostly attracts a local audience.

They do, however, pay for and fly in a group of over 200 collectors from around the world which helps push sales. FIAC is another example of a strong regional fair that mainly attracts Parisians.

I would look at this as a regional fair, for the reasons you sited, Miami is in December and New York is, well New York.

As a regional fair, it would have to pull on the local collectors and moneyed set... as you pointed out.

A huge fair, with institutional backing and government backing, does offer a wide range of opportunities to create buzz and multiple programming... i.e. performance art, lectures, an architecturally designed space, installations, curated video sections etc...

This can, if done well, create a community happening or event that transcends a traditional art fair and become the must see event for the entire community that creates a true dialog between art and the public in an atmosphere that is more open and dynamic than a museum. This is what happens at ARCO.

As with anything else, it would all depend on the people organizing the fair, their vision and their ability to work with the community, the government, and the museum.

All the best,

Eric