2008

I just handed all my 2008 tax paperwork to my CPA and it doesn't look pretty.

Surprisingly though, sales of my own artwork reached an all time high for me. I had not realized this until this week.

In 2008 I had one solo show (of my paintings) and participated in about half a dozen art fairs and about half a dozen group shows.

I seem to do really well in art fairs, where my work has always and consistently sold well in art fairs (although 2009 started with a bummer art fair).

Bottom line: in 2008 I managed to sell nearly 80 drawings! Nearly a third of these were sold in one New York fair.

Most of these were recent drawings, but I also sold a few older pieces to a collector and even several art school works.

2009 started roughly, but I've got some more art fairs already lined up, have work hanging currently in two shows, but I still need to work on a few gallery shows.

Portraitism

With challenging economic times persisting, people are spending more time at home and are looking for affordable luxuries. Portraiture, especially portraits of children is "The New Status Symbol", according to Boston Home Magazine

Absolutearts.com report here and Boston Home Mag's portraits here.

Blue period

Representatives of the arts industries told the House Education and Labor Committee hearing Thursday that the repercussions of the recession go well beyond musicians having to put down their guitars and get "real" jobs. The nonprofit art and cultural industry alone supports 5.7 million jobs and generates $166 billion in economic activity every year, they said.

Read the AP report by Jim Abrams here.

And your art for free

Forbes estimates the personal wealth of Theodore N. Lerner at $2.5 billion, but why spend your own money on art when the taxpayers will commission it for you? The DC Government dead-panned that the baseball art belongs to DC and is only on loan to the Lerners, an assertion worthy of a Larry Neal Award for fiction. The sculpture is site-specific, so saying the art is on loan is like saying you don’t own the fillings in your teeth, you only rent them.

Read Licht on "DC Buys Bronze Bobbleheads for Billionaires" here.

Openness for everyone else but us....

A federal judge in Manhattan has spoken out about a claimant's decision to keep mum about the details of a recent restitution case involving the Museum of Modern Art and the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum.

Last month, the two museums agreed to a settlement under which they would continue to own two Picasso paintings in their collections and would pay the heirs of the works' original owner, Paul von Mendelssohn-Bartholdy, to settle the dispute.

The heirs demanded that the terms remain confidential, a decision the judge, Jed S. Rakoff, questioned when the settlement was announced, citing the museums' public roles and the gravity of the case.

Read the artinfo.com report here.

Baker Artist Award Winners

Congrats to all the Baker Award winners, which were announced yesterday evening in Baltimore.

Carl Grubbs, who is the jazz band director at St. Paul's School in Brooklandville, Hadieh Shafie, a multimedia artist who works as director of career services at the Maryland Institute College of Art, and John Ruppert, a sculptor and chairman of the department of art at the University of Maryland, College Park, were the three winners of the Mary Sawyers Baker awards. The winners were selected through a private juried process and will each receive $25,000.

Another seven artists were named winners of $1,000 "Baltimore's Choice" awards, which were selected by public online voting.

You can see all the award winners here.

When countries go bad...

Yale University has gone to court in a preemptive attempt to protect its claim to an 1888 Van Gogh painting in its collection, Business Week reports.

“The Night Café,” which entered the university collection in 1961 through a bequest from alumnus Stephen Carlton Clark, once belonged to the great Russian collector Ivan Morozov. Russia nationalized his holdings during the revolution and later sold the work.

According to Yale’s suit, Pierre Konowaloff, a Paris-based man purporting to be Morozov’s grandson, last year asserted through a lawyer that he owned the painting and sent a draft complaint of a federal suit. Konowaloff argues that the Soviet nationalization of property was illegal and that the painting is the rightful property of his great-grandfather and his estate.

Read the Artinfo.com report here.

Earlier when I discussed that fact that all the nationalized stolen Cuban artwork which has subsequently been sold by the Cuban dictatorship (mostly to French museums) would one day be subject to claims by the rightful owners, I completely forgot about Russia's earlier nationalizing theft of privately owned artwork which was then subsequently sold by the evil empire.

And in this wide open arena where governments left and right are suing institutions for the return of their national patrimonies, the writing is on the wall.

That's the way you do it...

Sotheby’s has cut CEO William F. Ruprecht’s salary for 2009 and eliminated his cash bonus for 2008 after a sharp fall in the house's profits...

Details here.

Mitch Cope's Amazing Project

Foreclosed house? No problem! Let an artist deal with it.

Read what Mitch Close is doing here.

Mellema on Imboden

Kevin Mellema reviews Connie Imboden at Heineman-Myers Contemporary. Read the review here.

International Arts Journalism Institute in the Visual Arts

From AU:

What: International Arts Journalism Institute in the Visual Arts sponsored by the National Endowment for the Arts and the U.S. State Department
When: Friday, June 12th through Friday, June 26th
Where: American University, Washington, D.C.
Deadline: April 10th, 2009

American University Museum at the Katzen Art Center is pleased to announce the first National Endowment for the Art’s International Arts Journalism Institute in the Visual Arts. This program will provide mid-career art critics and writers the opportunity to participate in a two-week intensive institute at American University in Washington, DC. The institute, which runs from Friday, June 12th through Friday, June 26th, will consist of writing workshops, lectures, and travel to major East Coast art venues.

Up to twenty-four writers will be selected, twelve from the United States and twelve from the Middle East, Northern Africa, Asia, and other countries to participate in the institute. The selection will be based on the individual’s experience in critiquing or reporting on the visual arts through a recognized media outlet. Applicants should provide a brief cover letter explaining their experience in the arts, a resume, and a published writing sample.

Participants will enjoy a two-week expense-paid trip to Washington, DC, including airfare, lodging, meals, writing workshops and regional travel to museums and galleries. Applications must be received no later than April 10th, 2009.

Please email or mail applications to Attn: Arts Journalism Institute: visualartsinstitute@american.edu

American University Museum
4400 Massachusetts Ave. NW
Washington, D.C. 20016-8031

Contact:

Jack Rasmussen, Director and Curator
American University Museum
4400 Massachusetts Ave., NW
Washington, DC 20016-8031
202-885-2489
visualartsinstitute@american.edu

Is that a great opportunity for art writers or what?

Opportunity for Artists

Deadline: April 11, 2009

The 2009 Rawls Museum Arts Juried Exhibition, open to artists in DC, VA, MD, NC and on view June 4 – July 11, 2009. Juried by John Pollard, who is the founder of Richmond’s ADA Gallery where he has been exhibiting emerging and mid-career artists since 2003.

For an entry form send a SASE to:

Rawls Museum Arts
22376 Linden Street
Courtland, VA 23837

Or download the entry from here.

Opportunity for Artists

Deadline: March 27, 2009 (postmark).

The Fine Arts League of Cary is seeking entries for its 15th Annual Juried Art Exhibition to be held from May 8th to June 27th, 2009 in Cary/Raleigh, NC. Show awards and purchase awards will total over $5,000. Entries can only be mailed via CD. The postmark deadline for the mail-in registration is March 27, 2009. I will be the juror for this show.

Full details and a printable prospectus are available
on the web here or call Kathryn Cook at 919-345-0681.

Billy Bass in the WaPo today

The Washington Post's Reliable Source picks up the story of the new McDonald's commercial and former DC area artist Thomas Edwards.

Read the WaPo story here.

Here's an idea for public art

Musician and composer Frank Zappa (1940-1993) was born in Baltimore, and spent boyhood years in a Park Heights Avenue row house and at nearby Edgewood Arsenal. His family moved to California in 1952, but Charm City plans to honor its native son with a statute from Lithuania, which will be placed somewhere in Fell’s Point.

Licht on "Zappa Returns to Baltimore, Via Vilnius." Read it here.

Mayor's Arts Awards

I'm all hitzed that I couldn't go to the Mayor's Arts Awards last night, but I got a report from someone who did go:

The opening performance was OTT!

Titled "The Drum Unites Us," a West African Dance Company started it going - then the percussion sounds were joined by the steel drum band, the African dancers moved aside as Korean Dance Company danced to the continuing beat, who then stepped aside as Irish Steppers took center stage, who then moved aside for the Balinese Universe dance studio, who moved aside for the Turkish Silk Road Dance Company, who stepped aside for the BeatYa Feet dances, then the City at Peace dancers (both onstage and in the audience aisles) and then the breakdancers and rappers also took stage. A constant building of more and more - all to the drum beat.

Nice jazz performances; The rest was all good - the reception was the Watergate, where one of the Commissioners decried "the lack of pull for the visual artists in DC."

Sounds like a great time and maybe it will motivate all you unmotivated nebish folks to attend next year!

DCist superwoman Heather Goss has a great report and pics here. She also has the damn best review line of the year so far (describing the multi-ethnic dancing: "It was It's A Small World on the best kind of crack, providing an energetic start to the evening."

New Drawings

I've always been fascinated by the New Testament story of The Christ in Gethsemane, and His passion amongst the olives, and His doubt and fear.

That theme has been explored by me through many drawings over the years. Below are three very minimalist intepretations from 2009. There are all very small... about 3 inches wide by six or seven inches tall.

The Christ in Gethsemane, charcoal on paper. Circa 2009
By F. Lennox Campello


The Christ in Gethsemane II, charcoal on paper. Circa 2009
By F. Lennox Campello


The Christ in Gethsemane III, charcoal on paper. Circa 2009
By F. Lennox Campello

At the next art fair cycles in New York, I plan to have a wall full of these tiny drawings... most of them are under a few inches in size (framed). I think that it would be interesting to see 30-40 tiny drawings all crammed in one wall.

I also need to find a gallery interested in showing this small (and more affordable) work, rather than my usual, larger sized, "normal" work.

Wanna go to a DC opening this Friday?

Christian Platt, Paintings, has an Opening Reception Friday, March 27, 6-8:30 pm at Susan Calloway Fine Arts

"Young and new to the art world, Christian Platt focuses on large-scale oil landscapes, often inspired by his time as a wrangler in the Montana and Wyoming wilderness and the countryside surrounding his Virginia home, as well as large-scale still lifes."

Images here.

VFMA acquires new Cecilia Beaux

The Virginia Museum of Fine Arts board of trustees have approved the acquisition of an 1888 oil on canvas portrait by American artist Cecilia Beaux, who was hailed at the turn of the 20th century as the “best woman painter in history.”

She is certainly one of my favorite painters, period.

The painting by Beaux (1855-1942) is a portrait of her fellow Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts alumni Alexander Harrison and measures 26 by 19-3/4 inches. An important transitional work, the portrait dates from Beaux’s formative period of study in Concarneau, an artist’s colony in Brittany, where she first began to lighten her palette and to paint outdoors.

According to Dr. Sylvia Yount, VMFA’s Louise B. and J. Harwood Cochrane Curator of American Art and an expert on Beaux’s work, the Philadelphia native was an internationally acclaimed figure painter and portraitist “who also happened to be the most successful woman artist working in turn-of-the-century America.”

Curators and dealers

As used as we all are to hear the whine from the negative perspective of the art dealer and museum curator symbiotic relationship, it is very refreshing to hear an excellent opinion married to a couple of good examples, but discussing when curators rely on art dealers and then give them zip credit.

Read Regina Hackett here.