JS Adams' AOM Top 10 List

Artist JS (Jim) Adams sends in his AOM list of his favorite artists and makes the point that he "respectfully excludes several long-time favorites and peers whom are well documented on other's lists (Brooks, Tattelman, Tate, Seesow, and Miner)" and adds that he is also purchasing one of James Calder's photographs and a piece from Louise Kennelly.

James Calder, photography
Alan Callander, video
Kathryn Cornelius, installation
Linda Hesh, mixed media + photography
Louise Kennelly, painting
Syl Mathis, glass
Nicholas Syracuse, photography
Bridget Vath, phobic fashion
Jeff Wilson, painting
Dennis Yankow, mixed media + photography

Tonight is the first Friday of December and thus the extended hours for the Dupont Circle area galleries. Meet the artists, see new shows, have a glass of wine and buy some art.

Openings from 6-8 PM generally. If you make the gallery rounds, do not miss Erik Sandberg's current show at Conner Contemporary. Sandberg is one of the best painters in our area and this show is my top pick for the month. Read the Michael O'Sullivan review of the show here.

And this weekend is the last two days for Artomatic. Most of the artists will be there tomorrow, and if you want a great tour, the Triangle Artists Group (Metro DC's gay artists collective) will be hosting a site tour of its members "along with other LGBT and queer artists who are participating in Artomatic 2004" on Saturday.

Meet the TAG tour guides tomorrow (Saturday, Dec. 4) in the AOM Lobby for guided tours at 2:00 and 3:00 p.m.

Also on Saturday is the Funky Furniture Auction. On Saturday, December 4th, 2004 at 9pm, all of the Funky Furniture works will be auctioned in a must-attend party/auction to be staged at the Funky Furniture display area at AOM. Admission to the cocktail pre-auction reception is $20 per couple, which also gets you a bidding badge.

ANABA makes a good point!

Sometimes it takes someone far from the eye of the hurricane to see clearly that there's calm in the center (that almost sounded like something Dan Rather would say... yuk!).

Martin Bromirski makes an excellent point about AOM, lists and me in his excellent ANABA art BLOG.

So, more artists should email me their AOM lists!

When I started the AOM Top 10 List thing, I invited anyone and everyone to send me their list; so far that has caused a significant (and astounding) response from gallery owners, art critics, art collectors, art curators, etc., but only a few artists have sent in their list.

Only a few days left... the offer is still open!

Artomatic 2004 Review

A slightly different version of the below review will be published by the Crier Media newspapers, which also syndicates it. If it follows the usual pattern, it will also be then picked up by a few Latin American newspapers, translated and published in Spanish.

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Artomatic Energymatic Daggermatic

Art critics, like most writers, usually get paid by the word, sometimes by the article, and occasionally by an infinitesimal percentage of whatever profits their writing generates. And most art critics and writers visit a gallery show or museum exhibition, get a few handouts and spend about half an hour studying the works on the wall before heading home or to the office to pound the word processor’s keys and earn their buck-a-word for the review.

You can’t do that with Art-O-Matic, the huge, almost every two years, open visual arts extravaganza that this year hosted over 600 visual artists and another 400 performance artists at the laberynthic former convent building that last housed the Children’s Museum on 3rd and H Street, NE.

The idea behind Art-O-Matic is simple: find a large, empty building somewhere in the city; work with the building owners, and then allow any artist who wants to show their work help with staging the show and with some of the financial needs. This year, AOM artists paid a $60 entry fee plus worked a few hours assisting with the show.

And this year around 600 visual artists brought their art to the public.

In order to write a proper, ethical review of AOM, a writer must spend hours walking five floors of art, jam-packed into hundreds of rooms, bathrooms, closets and stairs. And I think that this is one of the main reasons that most art critics love to hate this show. It overwhelms them with visual offerings and forces them to develop a "glance and judge" attitude towards the artwork. It’s a lot easier to carpet bomb a huge show like this than to do a surgical strike.

Add on top of that an outdated, but "alive and kicking" elitist attitude towards an open show, where anyone and everyone who calls him or herself an artist can exhibit, sans the sanitizing and all-knowing eye of the latest trendy curator, and you have a perfect formula for dismissing a show, without really looking at it.

This quaint and elitist attitude towards art is not new or even modern. It was the same attitude that caused the emergence of the salons of the 19th century, where only artists that the academic intelligentsia deemed good enough were exhibited. As every art student who almost flunked art history knows, towards the latter half of that century, the artists who had been rejected from the salons (because they didn’t fit the formula of good art) organized their own Salon Des Refuses, sort of a 19th century Parisian Art-O-Matic.

And a lot, in fact, most of the work in the Salon Des Refuses was quite bad, but amongst the dreck were also pearls like Manet's Le Dejeuner sur 'Herbe (Luncheon in the Grass), Monet's Impression: Sunrise, (and we all know what art "ism" that title gave birth to) and an odd and memorable looking portrait of a young lady in white (The White Girl, Symphony in White, No. 1) by an American upstart by the name of James McNeill Whistler.

Everyone who was anyone in the art world hated and dismissed this anti-salon exhibition; except for the only "anyone" who actually counted: art history.

But then somewhere in the next century, the salons and their formulas returned. Only their name and their display styles had changed. They were now called Biennials, Biennales, Bienales, Documentas and their settings were in museums, entire cities or pristine white cubes around the world.

Only their reasoning and misguided logic remained constant: "Only we know what is good art."

And that is why these modern salonists and their acolytes will never respect, like, or understand Art-O-Matic: they recall that the Salons des Refuses almost broke their control over art; it won’t happen again.

And like the poet Marti wrote: "I know the monster well, for I have lived in its entrails." You see, over the last two decades I have been the juror, curator, decision-maker for hundreds of shows. And as a freelance art critic I have written and evaluated hundreds of artists and shows. I have been a minute gear in the world-wide machinations to keep control of what is art and never let a new Salons des Refuses wrest control again.

OK, OK, I know that am going overboard here; but... do you get the point?

But I am also an artist, and I like the concept of Art-O-Matic.

And not just because of the miles of artwork on display, much of which is mind numbing bad art; in fact, so bad that it is sometimes almost good in its exorbitant mediocrity. The main reason that I like Art-O-Matic is the palpable amount of artistic energy that it delivers to Washington, DC every couple of years. It is as if some invisible visual art battery in this ignored art scene comes to the forefront and gets recharged with brilliant white light (made as we all know, of all colors in the spectrum), and 50,000 people who generally would not set foot in a gallery or museum come and see art and artists and absorb the positive energy that only creative minds can generously give away.

So I enter my fourth Art-O-Matic with several preconceived ideas in my very subjective agenda:

(a) It’s going to take several visits and many hours to write my fourth review of Art-O-Matic in as many shows.

(b) There’s going to be a lot of dreck in the show. But art is in the eyes of the beholder; my dreck could be your pearl.

(c) I’m going to find several pearls in the show

(d) I’m going to re-charge my visual arts battery

(e) Our gallery will pick up some new artists from this show

On visit one, during the press preview, glass sculptor Tim Tate (Disclaimer: whom we represent and whom we "discovered" at a past Art-O-Matic) whizzes a group of us through the five floors of the show. It still takes three hours or so, but I have taken notes. Five visits and more than twenty hours later, I feel comfortable to start writing about the show.

A lot of the artists in the show are well known to me, and so I begin to discover "new" ones – at least new to me. Judy Jashinsky, who is one of the firebrand organizers who keeps this (and past) Art-O-Matics running, grabs me and asks me if I’ve seen Mark Jenkins’s pubic hair tapestries.

And Jenkins is one of the first memorable discoveries in this show. Tucked away in a corner space, Jenkins has created two noteworthy entries into the show. First in everyone’s lips are his photographic explorations of close-ups of pubic hair (loupe included in the installation) that through the magic of digital manipulation become interesting designs of elegant abstracted qualities. A second Jenkins emerges from his crowded little room: the tape sculptures.

Jenkins uses common transparent packing tape (yards and yards of it) to create superbly crafted and visually attractive figurative sculptures, as well as the odd, unusual organic shaped one. Through documentary photography, we see what happens when Jenkins places these plastic figures in a public venue. A passing man stares incredulously at a plastic man inside a dumpster; or a beach jogger is surprised by an alien looking tape creature that the sea has washed ashore.

Iver Olson is another talented discovery for me. He gets the award for the best porn in the show, although his display is also peppered with some otherwise just plain sensual photo-collages. It is almost as if there were two Olsons in the show: a really torrid, sensual photographer, and a brilliantly inventive pornographer.

In one of his photos, Olson has a woman with her hand buried inside the vagina of a second woman, who is sitting on a couch, seemingly bored, while her friend is searching inside her vagina, with (as an artist friend of mine put it) a "did a leave my keys in there?" sort of look. Somehow Olson has transformed the hardcore act of lesbian fisting into an almost funny scene of lustless abandon. Other good porn in the show is offered by Eduardo Rodriguez, Alexis Bine and Rudy K.

Another discovery is Ira Tattelman’s installation titled "They taught me to wash away my desires." I don’t know if it is because the building was once a convent, but there is certainly a strange, palpable energy in some parts of the building; people like Stephen King feed on this sort of energy and produce brilliant books; it is clear that Ira Tattelman also absorbed and channeled this energy into his installation.

"They taught me to wash away my desires" is inside a smallish bathroom furnished with a shower, a tub and some archaic 19th-century type bathroom stations (such as an enema station). Tattelman has installed a small pump in one of the stations that keeps re-circulating brownish, brackish water and add a watery sound to the room. To the right, inside and around the dirty tub is what at first sight appears to be a dismembered human body (they're actually some sort of artificial legs).

Put together the Stephen Kingesque feel of the room, the moist sound effects, the outdated chrome and dirty tile bath stations, and the human parts, and you have an installation that would give Hannibal Lechter a nightmare. It’s brilliant and somebody better put police ankle trackers on Tattelman now.

A couple more artists who deserve to be mentioned in the Hannibal Lechter art list are the very good and macabre sculptures by Stephon Senegal: this is a young artist to keep an eye on; in my opinion possibly the best sculpture in the entire show. Some other pieces by very good artists in this new trend of Lechterism are "Joroko" and also the installation "Sun Ray" by retro-recycling master Ray Jacobs.

M. Rion Hoffman really impressed me with her photography negative boxes installed along one of the main hallways. Hoffman’s boxes are delicate and have that ability to bring the viewer in for an intimate, close-up exploration of whatever story this talented artist wants to deliver. However, her large photo-collages, displayed next to her boxes, appear brutish and heavy handed by comparison, although part of me kept being re-directed from them to her brilliant boxes.

Matt Dunn is a mother load of photographic talent with a built-in magnet to attract, discover, capture on silver gelatin film, and then show us, the really interesting, throat-clearing substrata of human society that makes Diane Arbus’ photographs look like Sears portraits. This is a master portraitist in his element.

In the glass room, Washington Glass School directors Tim Tate and Erwin Timmers have created the most professional looking set of rooms in the entire building and provided the means to discover a couple of new talents in that beautiful genre. Another fact that surfaces very quickly is that the Washington Glass School is certainly stamping its own imprimatur, its own "school brand" in a sense, upon many of our area’s young glass artists. I particularly liked the figurative "man" vessels of Michael Janis, where Janis takes Tate’s seminal idea of narrative biographical wall panels and marries it with Tate’s apothecaries (nine of which were acquired by the Renwick Alliance) to deliver a fresh, new set of ideas in glass.

In these rooms I also liked Syl Mathis, who reminds us that the true beauty of glass lies mainly in its simplicity. Mathis delivers a series of pieces exploring the "boat" theme in glass. I preferred the simpler, more elegant forms by Mathis over some of the more elaborate pieces, perhaps made a bit distracting by their complex support stands and crafty materials.

Allison B. Miner is a very talented painter, and at the last Art-O-Matic, where I first discovered her small, in-your-face paintings, I singled her out as one of the best painters in that show. Miner is still one of the best painters in this show, and her talent with the brush and composition is clearly evident to the most casual observer. I do however, think that it is time for Miner to move on and push her enviable painting skills beyond the tight, close-up routine that she has come dangerously close to boxing herself in. This is a very good painter at the beginning of her career and I am sure that we are but seeing but a tiny bit of what Miner can and will deliver.

Joseph Barbaccia is another artist whom I have been observing for the last few years and this year his crayon self-portrait – literally made out of hundreds and hundreds of crayons in a postmodern pointillist style – easily qualifies as one of the best pieces of art in the whole AOM.

Barbaccia is hard to pin down as a painter, sculptor, uh... crayonist? He explores and pushes art in all dimensions.

Staying within two dimensions, and doing a magnificent job of it are three enviably talented painters: Margaret Dowell, Michal Hunter and Jeffry Cudlin. All of these artists have that spectacular technical mastery of the brush that it is so easily dismissed by people who have never tried to mix cerulean blue with Payne’s gray and ended up with mud. Dowell’s paintings show not only extraordinary technical skills, but also a hungry sense of desire and intelligent understanding of her subjects – who are often transgender and cross dressing personages around our area.

Michal Hunter is also a technical virtuoso of the brush, with only one painting in the entire show; tucked away so far and so difficult to find, that had I not run into Hunter while she was on hallway monitor duty, I would have missed it completely. I am glad that I didn’t, as it is a very powerful work by a woman who is slowly re-affirming her once solid place in the Washington, DC art scene.

Jeffry Cudlin surprised me by delivering some very strong compositional works that are really excuses for Cudlin to use a representational subject to offer works such as "Author, Author," that are really more about the intelligent employment of color and shapes and composition. I write that he surprised me because I am not usually a big fan of these sorts of "interior" works. However, because the paintings are all about shape, color and composition, I found myself admiring them for those points, rather than for their subject matter.

Creating a new place for himself is an illustrator named Scott Brooks, who in this new Art-O-Matic incarnation is like a strange, macabre John Currin, but can paint and draw a lot better than Currin ever learned to. A lot of people were talking about Brooks' disturbing images; this is usually a sign of success for any visual artist. Both the police and art collectors need to keep an eye on this talented artist.

But quite possibly the most talked about (well, at least the most listened to) pieces in the show are the two robotic installations by Thomas Edwards.

Located on the main hallway of the fourth floor, Edwards first greets the passerby with an installation of several of those mechanical talking fish that move their heads and sing songs. He has changed the original recordings and instead of a Christmas carol, the fish now beg you to stop eating their eggs or complain that they’re dying, etc. It is funny and inventive. Edwards’ second piece is a motion sensing robotic head that follows you along a wall track and peppers you with irritating questions like "where did you get your hair done?"

Edwards’ installations are intelligent creative and they fit well right into the Hollywoodism tradition of past Art-O-Matics.

There is a lot of channeling of well-known artists in this AOM. Two artists stand out: Mark Stark channels Dan Flavin and Erin Hunter continues to somewhat channel Erik Sandberg.

I also enjoyed Bridget Vath’s very inventive use of Kevlar to design and construct dresses and other clothing apparel; I suspect that Vath could start a very successful line of Kevlar clothing with good markets in Baghdad, Beirut, Bogotá, Atlanta and most of the Balkans.

The funniest piece in the show, other than Thomas Edwards’ annoying talking fish is also one of the most famous paintings in the world.

I am referring to Kayti Didriksen’s now infamous portrait of Bush and Chaney titled "Man of Leisure: King George," where Didriksen has regurgitated Manet’s famous painting Olympia and has Vice President Chaney serving an oil well to a nude Dubya.

This image, a few weeks ago, at the height of the Funky Furniture controversy with the City Museum, was the most downloaded Internet image in the world.

It is a terribly funny, badly painted and highly successful work. Didriksen not only captures Bush’s likeness perfectly but also delivers an interesting expression (that’s perfect for the subject) in the much abused President (abused by a lot of AOM artists that is) and also offers a hilarious VP Chaney with a neck that seems inflamed by gout.

As with past AOM’s, a lot of artists explore the nude human figure in both paintings and photographs. This is a subject not usually seen in Washington area galleries, and I can't recall the last time that I saw an exhibition of nudes in any of our area’s museums. I noted Peggy McNutt, Shannon Chester (especially well done is "No. 10, Chair 2"), Adrienne Mills, Chris Keely, Dana Ellyn Kaufman and Candace Keegan.

Of these, Kaufman and Keegan both use their own bodies to deliver interesting ideas and suggestions. In Kaufman’s case, extremely acidic, caustic and pointed commentaries with provocative titles married to insane figurative paintings. In Keegan’s case, she pushes a lot of moist buttons in our psyche by playing with stereotypical Hustlerian depictions of women: See Keegan suggestively sucking on her necklace; see Keegan in pigtails offer her breasts to the viewer. However, in the end what we do see are two strong women who use their art intelligently and use the taboo nude to converse elegantly with the viewer.

There is a lot of forgettable abstraction at AOM. Two artists who stand out from the masses (and happen to be sisters) are Andrea Cybik and Jan Sherfy. Their work explores colors and action and also stands out by their very professional presentation.

In summary, I’ve been to every single Art-O-Matic ever staged, and I am in the minority opinion that they’ve improved each time, and each time they give us a most precious gift: the energy that only several hundred creative minds working together can deliver. I hope Art-O-Matic grows to become a national level open show and then grow some more and become a worldwide showcase for the world’s largest open international art exhibition and a new dagger to the heart of the 21st century salons.

Thursday WaPo reviews

Jessica Dawson reviews Hemphill Fine Arts' new floorplan in George's new beautiful space on 14th Street and is also disturbed by Chan Chao's nude photographs currently on at Numark.

I wasn't too surprised that when Jessica first stepped into Chao's exhibition, she "wanted to step right back out" [because]... "Twenty just-over-life-size portraits of naked women ring the gallery's walls. Yet the mood isn't sexy. Or playful. It's utterly vulnerable and uncomfortable. For you and me, for sure, and even more so for Chao's subjects."

I write that I wasn't too surprised because both Dawson and her predecessor in the "Galleries" column appear to me to be rather uncomfortable with nudity. I could be wrong, I guess, but it is something that I've noticed in their demeanor and their writing over the years.

I was also surprised that Jessica writes that Chao "has applied the same clinical, pseudo-journalistic approach he used on the pro-democracy guerrillas of Burma -- those pictures were a hit at the 2002 Whitney Biennial -- to naked women, many of whom are the artist's friends or associates. Despite Chao's attempts at evenhandedness, or perhaps because of them, the results feel exploitative and manipulative."

This is in fact backwards! Those familiar with Chao's photographs before he turned his camera to the pro-democracy guerrillas of Burma, know that prior to that he used to focus on the nude figure, and in fact applied the "same clinical, pseudo-journalistic approach" that he used with his earlier nudes to the pro-democracy guerrillas of Burma, not the other way around.

Chao abandoned the nude for a few years, returned to his native Burma and photographed the pro-democracy guerrillas of Burma. It was a big hit with curators all over the nation, landed him a spot on the 2002 Whitney Biennial and national acclaim. I personally thought those photographs were boring and repetitive; I have, on the other hand, always liked and admired his nude portraits and I think that his current Numark show is spectacular!

Chao has just returned to the nude now; that's all. And I think that Dawson is just uncomfortable around nudes.

I could be wrong. For a different (male) perspective on this show, read Louis Jacobson at the WCP.

P.S. Blake Gopnik also reviews Iraq and China: Ceramics, Trade and Innovation at the Arthur M. Sackler Gallery of the Smithsonian's National Museum of Asian Art.

Why none of ours?

The December/Jan issue of Budget Living magazine has a nice spread on artist Mark Bennett's LA pad. The article mentions his hardworking DC art dealer Conner Contemporary and highlights how his Damien Hirst silk screen just coincidently happens to match his raw-silk sofa that he got for $200 in a Long Beach thrift store. Also shows outsider artist John Patrick MacKenzie's word-play piece that goes nicely with Bennett's sitcom-centric surroundings.

It would be nice if the WaPo (either Style or the Post's Magazine) or Washingtonian magazine, could run more feature articles like this about our area artists and collectors living with their art. Furthermore, it would be nice if the Post would identify the artwork (they never seem to do that in the captions) in any of their glossy features about other locals in their pages.

Charles Saatchi takes on Blake Gopnik

The father of YBA art and one of the world's best-known art collectors is Charles Saatchi.

And the Art Newspaper has recently interviewed Saatchi with questions submitted via email by people from all over the world.

From what DC Art News readers info'd me as they sent emails to the Art Newspaper a few weeks ago through the announcement in this posting, at least two of the questions that Saatchi chose to answer came from DC Art News readers. They are:

Question: Did you personally burn, or did you contract with a professional arsonist to burn, your warehouse filled with your art?

Saatchi: It wasn’t terrifically amusing the first time dull people came up with this. Now it’s the 100th time.

Question: Blake Gopnik, the Chief Art Critic for the Washington Post has stated that "painting is dead and has been dead for 40 years. If you want to be considered a serious contemporary artist, the only thing that you should be doing is video or manipulated photography." Do you agree or disagree and why?

Saatchi: It’s true that contemporary painting responds to the work of video makers and photographers. But it's also true that contemporary painting is influenced by music, writing, MTV, Picasso, Hollywood, newspapers, Old Masters.

But, unlike many of the art world heavy hitters and deep thinkers, I don’t believe painting is middle-class and bourgeois, incapable of saying anything meaningful anymore, too impotent to hold much sway. For me, and for people with good eyes who actually enjoy looking at art, nothing is as uplifting as standing before a great painting whether it was painted in 1505 or last Tuesday.

Ouch! Read all of the questions and answers here.

The Thursday Art Review Starts Tomorrow

Since the Washington Post has decided to reduce its gallery coverage by 50%, starting tomorrow DC Art News will start a weekly Thursday review, in an BLOGish attempt to fill part of the void left by the Post's [we hope] temporary decision to publish the "Galleries" column only twice a month (instead of weekly, as it has been for years).

Thus, I am opening DC Art News to anyone who'd like to email me a review of a visual art show in our area. I reserve full editorial rights.

Art critics, opinionated art fans and art-critic-wannabes: Email me your review!

Tomorrow I will have my review (at last!) of Artomartic 2004.

Philip Barlow's Top 10 Artomatic List

Philip Barlow is a well-known DC art collector, arts activist, a great supporter of our area artists and art scene, and nearly a curator. He is one of the most vocal supporters of Art-O-Matic and after many trips to AOM, he sends in his top 10 list. Barlow passes that he did not consider artists whose work he has collected and most of the artists on his list are artist who are unfamiliar to him (prior to AOM)

1. Elizabeth Lundberg Morrisette
2. Kathryn Cornelius
3. Dylan Scholinski
4. Mary Beth Ramsey
5. Mona El Bayoumi
6. Nader Hadjebi
7. Robert Redding
8. Megan Rains
9. Jeff Wolfram
10. Darren Smith

J. W. Mahoney's Open Letter to Blake Gopnik

J. W. Mahoney is well-known to anyone in the DMV who knows anything about Washington art and artists. James recently retired from the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden and is a widely respected and published art critic, teacher and artist.

Mahoney is also the regional arts editor for Art in America magazine. He is also a well-known artist, arts juror, curator, art professor, and one of the most influential visual arts voices in our area; his installation at the current Artomatic has already been the subject of tremendous (and violent) viewer reaction (go see it).

And James sends the following Open Letter to Blake Gopnik:

Aw Blake, why not a little amateur dentistry every once in a while? Someone might drill a hole in your head and a little light might shine in. Yeah, violently spiteful language, but "five floors of mediocrity jammed into shabby rooms in an indiscriminate show that does nothing to advance the cause of serious art?" What's the "cause of serious art," Blake? You've never been a real artist, so that would have to be a guess on your part. Unless you're a "failed" artist, which I'm not - nor is any artist here. I'm an art critic, too, and I know what "untrained" art looks like, and Art-o-matic is loaded with all kinds of such madness, openness, and awfulness. And sometimes, if you look, real grace.

In 1978, Walter Hopps, then adjunct curator at the National Collection of Fine Arts, "curated" a show at Washington's now-defunct Museum of Temporary Art entitled "36 Hours," during which artists could bring in anything (of a certain size) during a 36-hour period and Walter would find a place to hang it. Good, bad, or ugly. I was proud to have been in that show, as I am to be in this one. Why? Look at how "indiscriminate" it all is, how generally free of the kinds of comfortably gifted, commercially sensitive, critically "savvy" (your word, never mine) art that most galleries and museums necessarily have to exhibit in order to maintain their identities - work I often respect and write about, as you do. Alternative spaces, as creatively as they operate, can show only a few dozen artists a year. Art-o-matic circumvents every aesthetic filter, respects no critical power, and opens its doors anyway.

What final virtue exists in a circus like Art-o-matic? Art is made in order to make concrete the deep abstraction that is the self. Each artist here, regardless of the depths of their relation to the discourse of art history, has a story and a unique identity that emerges on these walls. In enormous vulnerability. To be able to stand alongside the occasionally talentless courage, manic generosity, and raw eccentricity of my fellow artists is a real honor. Because what art is about isn't safe.

What you write is journalism, Blake, not art criticism. Your writing is quite often toxic, and maybe Washington’s just not your town. Think about it. You say Ter Borch is better than Vermeer? Don't make me laugh.

J. W. Mahoney

Bravo Mr. Mahoney! Bravo, Bravo, Bravo!!!

Teaser for tomorrow's DCARTNEWS

Tomorrow I will publish an open letter from a nationally published and respected art critic in response to Blake Gopnik's rootcanalization of Artomatic.

Y'all come back now...

Elyse Harrison's Top 10 Artomatic List

Elyse Harrison is the owner of Gallery Neptune in Bethesda and one of the area's hardest working artists and arts activists. Harrison not only walked Artomatic and sends in her top 10 list, but she has further decided to offer three of the artists (and possibly a fourth) in her list a show at her gallery. She will feature Jean Sheckler Beebe and Joyce Zipperer during October of next year and Scott Brooks will also be showing at Neptune in September 2005.

Scott Brooks
Joyce Zipperer
Jean Sheckler Beebe
Mat Sesow
Linda Hesh
Bridget Vath
Christopher Edmunds
Robert Weiner
Kirk Waldroff
Michael Ross

New Style editor at the WaPo

The "Galleries" column that is being reduced to twice a month is published in the Style section of the Washington Post. The Assistant Managing Editor for the Style section is Gene Robinson (who by the way is also the author of this terrific book).

Today it was announced by the Post that Deborah Heard will become Assistant Managing Editor for Style, succeeding Gene Robinson, on January 1, 2005. She has been with the Post for twenty years and a Deputy Assistant Managing Editor at Style since 1995.

DC Art News sends our congratulations to Ms. Heard.

I suspect that once John Pancake, the Post's Arts Editor returns in mid-January 2005, it will be Heard and Pancake making the decision as to what will happen to the "Galleries" column.

We should all immediately let Heard hear our voices (nice pun uh?) demanding that "Galleries" return to a weekly column status and that the Post further expand its anemic gallery coverage. Email her here.

Want an art job at Art Basel Miami Beach?

One of the Cuban artists whom we represent and hope to bring to a Washington, DC area audience in the near future is Cuban artist Tania Bruguera.

And the coming Art Basel Miami Beach brings a performance opportunity to work with Tania.

Eight to ten individuals are needed to perform during Art Basel for a performance piece by this renowned Cuban artist. The role involves walking around Art Basel in Miami Beach selling a Cuban newspaper. Individuals should speak Spanish. There will be an informational meeting held on Tuesday, November 30th at 6pm by the Miami Beach Convention Center, Entrance C. A small honorarium will be offered per day. If you are interested, call 773-230-7263 to get more details. If you cannot attend the meeting, please call for more information.

Dates
Wednesday, December 1st – 5pm-10pm
Thursday, December 2nd – 5pm-10pm
Friday, December 3rd –5pm-10pm
Saturday, December 4th – 5pm-10pm

You do not have to be available for each session, but for a minimum of two sessions.

As a pioneer installation and performance artist, Tania Bruguera exemplifies the alternative voices in Cuba who work from the artistic edge. Born in 1968, she earned her undergraduate degree at the Instituto Superior de Arte in Havana and her MFA at The School of the Art Institute of Chicago. In 1998, Bruguera was selected as a Guggenheim fellow and in 2000, she received the Prince Claus Award.

Bruguera has participated in numerous international exhibitions and biennials. Her work has been exhibited in several museums and collections around the world. Recently, she founded the Arte de Conducta (behavior art) department at the Instituto Superior de Arte in Havana, the first performance art program at the university level in Latin America.

The book that saved my [art] life

Tom Wolfe, author, man-in-white, and social observer, as DCist points out, is in town to lecture and sign copies of his latest book.

It is however, Wolfe's 1975 book The Painted Word, the one that I consider the most influential book on art, nepotism, networking, manipulation and 20th century art history (OK, OK art observations), that I have ever read.

If you want to understand the true beginnings of what we now call "contemporary art" and the seminal birth of the elitist attitudes of many intelligent members of the high art apparatnik, then read this book.

"The painter," Wolfe writes, "had to dedicate himself to the quirky god Avant-Garde. He had to keep one devout eye peeled for the new edge on the blade of the wedge of the head on the latest pick thrust of the newest exploratory probe of this fall's avant-garde Breakthrough of the Century.... At the same time he had to keep his other eye cocked to see if anyone in le monde was watching."

I read it when I first started Art School and it saved my Art Life and it cemented the foundations of what has become my opinions, judgements and attitudes towards art.

Learn a lesson from NY Times readers

A while back I reported that the WaPo has decided to cut its galleries coverage by half - at least until January 2005, when a final decision will be made. I also suggested that readers write letters to the paper's editor asking Downie to cancel that decision (if he is even aware of it).

A while back, the New York Times decided to end its cultural listings section; not end or reduce their arts coverage, but just their cultural listings.

Daniel Okrent writes in the NY Times:

It landed on my desk a few weeks ago with an echoing thump that could have awakened Brooks Atkinson. On the cover it said "Save the Listings: Restore the 'Arts & Leisure Guide' to the Sunday New York Times." Inside, 615 pages carried 5,000 Internet-gathered signatures, many of them accompanied by bits of testimony variously beseeching, enraged or tearful.

Just a few weeks earlier, The Times had tossed the venerable columns of agate type that had filled so many pages of the Arts & Leisure section for so long, with as many as 300 cultural events acknowledged, however briefly, in a single edition.

Okrent then admits that:

Editors reacted to the petition, I soon learned, the way editors almost always react when readers rise against a long-planned, well-intended innovation: a little dumbfounded, a little defensive, a little dismissive.

And Okrent discusses editorial surprise at how upset readers were:

In this case, the editors had helped more than enough to earn the readers' disapproval. At a time when most American newspapers are slashing arts coverage (according to a study conducted by the National Arts Journalism Project at Columbia, from 1998 to 2003 the space given to cultural coverage in major American papers dropped by roughly 25 percent), The Times had gone in the opposite direction. The revamped cultural report now included more than seven additional pages per week. Twenty staff positions were created to produce the new content and improve the old. Full-time reporters had been put on the architecture, classical music and theater beats, and additional reporters will soon supplement the art, movie and television groups. Critics have been newly assigned to experimental arts, the Internet, and "nonart museums and exhibitions" (there must be a better phrase than that), and some lustrous new hires - notably Manohla Dargis on movies and Charles Isherwood on theater - have brought an added gleam to existing positions.

But he notes that still "all that the readers seemed to notice was what was gone." He adds:

There's an unfortunate tendency in the newspaper business to disparage a petition like this one as an "organized" effort, as if only random, disconnected cries of pain from despairing readers should be heeded. I've also heard this particular protest dismissed as "commercially inspired" by self-interested arts presenters and promoters who are worried that the box office will suffer, and have disingenuously conspired to rouse the masses.

I guess that would be me...

Result of the complaints:

Here's the good news, Listings Protesters of America: uncharacteristically for an institution that is slow to change and usually inflexible once it has done so, the editors are prepared to alter their course.

Read the whole NYT article here, and then read this and write the WaPo a letter.

Gopnik, Smith, Chelsea and Artomatic

How can all these issues be related you ask? Read and absorb:

My most recent walk through AOM, triggered by Chris Shott's article on the after effects and ripples of Blake Gopnik's rootcanalization of AOM, revealed a whole set of new works, comments and anti-Gopnik energy in the building. I still maintain that AOM artists should send Gopnik thank you notes, as his brutal review is the best gift that Gopnik could have delivered to AOM: it united a lot of voices, created a lot of interest in the show, and I am sure that it translated into a lot more people visiting AOM.

Roberta Smith, writing in the New York Times this Sunday has a very interesting piece on the Chelsification of art. Smith discusses that the 230 plus galleries now crammed into Chelsea "for art-world professionals, it is the place they love to loathe."

Degrees of separation: When John Pancake, the Washington Post's Arts Editor was hunting for a Chief Art Critic a while back, he first offered the job to Smith. She declined, but recommended Blake Gopnik, who at the time was writing for a Canadian newspaper.

Back to Smith's article. She writes:

"As a result of this explosion, the inevitable anti-Chelsea backlash has been on the rise, too. The rap against Chelsea is that it is too big, too commercial, too slick, too conservative and too homogenous, a monolith of art commerce tricked out in look-alike white boxes and shot through with kitsch. This litany is recited by visitors from Los Angeles and Europe, by dealers with galleries in other parts of Manhattan or in Brooklyn and often by Chelsea dealers themselves. As the Lower East Side gallerist Michele Maccarone put it recently in an interview: 'The Chelseafication of the art world has created a consensus of mediocrity and frivolousness.'"

Degrees of separation, part two: But is Gopnik advocating more towards the Chelsification of DC art when he writes?

"As things stand, too many local artists, as well as a few of our dealers, get attention they wouldn't get in any city where they faced some decent, savvy competition."

And as we know, Blake has also written eloquently and positively about Chelsea galleries (he has never written about DC area galleries) and submits that:

"This year the [Chelsea] scene seems to have grown, if that's possible. It now takes two full days, morning to night, to visit just the best-known Chelsea galleries. But for the first time that I can remember, doing the autumn rounds felt mostly worthwhile. There was real variety on view -- of medium, subject matter, approach, scale. More important, there were a few artists and works that didn't fit into convenient pigeonholes. There were shows that left questions hanging in the air."

Degrees of separation, part three: I know I'm stretching this, but isn't that same challenge (time required to visit 230 galleries, diversity and quality of artwork offered, etc.) some of the same issues Gopnik denigrates in his AOM piece. If one takes the time, then at AOM you will find "real variety on view -- of medium, subject matter, approach, scale. More important, there were a few artists and works that didn't fit into convenient pigeonholes."

One big, insurmountable problem with AOM in Blake's mindset: It is located in Washington, DC; not New York.

I for one, would love some "decent, savvy competition" (whatever "savvy" means). I still think that the best thing for art galleries is more art galleries. And although the Greater Washington area is one of the wealthiest areas in the world, it is incredibly hard for an art gallery to establish a foothold, develop a collector base and survive in our area.

Part of the blame is the fact that (unlike New York), galleries get very little coverage in our local press. I am still astounded as to how many Washingtonians come into Canal Square every day and say "I didn't know there were any galleries here."

And the link between decent media coverage and growth and recognition has been established and proven. The Washington Post has exceptional coverage of our area's many theatres; even theatres in Olney get great coverage! As a result, our area has now one of the most vibrant theatre scenes in the nation, probably second only to New York's and challenging Chicago's.

Meanwhile, the Post plans to cut their gallery coverage in half.

Tim Tate's Top 10 Artomatic List

Tim Tate (represented by us) is the Director and co-founder of the Washington Glass School, the 2003 Mayor's Arts Awards Outstanding Emerging Artist of the Year, and is one of this year's Out Magazine 100 Most Remarkable People of the Year. Tate has also been a fixture at Art-O-Matic for many years (in fact, we "discovered" him a couple of Art-O-Matics ago), and has walked this current version of AOM at least 20 times. Here's his top 10 non-glass artists list:

Thomas Edwards
Ira Tattleman
Dylan Scholinski
Mark Stark
Sondra Arkin
Sheep Jones
Philip Kohn
John Bata
Scott Brooks
Chris Edmunds

Krystyna Wasserman's Top AOM Artists' List

Krystyna Wasserman is the Director of the Library and Research Center at the National Museum of Women In The Arts. Her abbreviated list (she was unable to walk through the whole five floors of AOM):

Ruth Bolduan
Mansoora Hassan
Bonnie Lee Holland
Judy Jashinsky
Mark Jenkins
Joyce Zipperer

Milena Kalinovska Top 10 Artomatic List

Milena Kalinovska is the Programs Manager for the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, and she made a concentrated effort to try to pick artists who were not in other people's "Top 10 Lists." In the end, some did cross over from her colleage's list mostly!

Art Enables
Anne Benolken
Greg Minah
Linda Hesh and Ami Wilber
Dale Hunt
Mark Jenkins
"Poets Room"
Ming-Yi Sung
Kelly Towles
The Washington Glass School

Kristen Hileman's Top 10 Artomatic List

Kristen Hileman is the Assistant Curator of Contemporary Art at the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden. She sends in her Top 10 AOM list:

Artomatic “Poster-A-Day” Designers
Scott Brooks
Richard Dana
Linda Hesh and Ami Wilbur
Mark Jenkins
Mudishi Maternity Project
Pat McGeehan
Ming-Yi Sung
Kelly Towles
Denise Wolff

Donna Robusto's Top 10 AOM artists

Donna Robusto is the owner and director of the Ozmosis Gallery in Bethesda and she recently walked Artomatic and sends in her top ten picks:

Kelly Towles
Tiik Pollet
Jackie Greeves
John M. Adams
Rosana Azar
Aaron Quinn Brophy
Anna Shakeeva
John N. Grunwell
Matt W. Sesow
Matt R. Hollis

DC BLOGs on AOM

City Desk: The Progressive Review on Artomatic. Read it here and here.

Conspiracy of Sound on Artomatic. Read it here.

Art of the Possible on Artomatic. Read it here.

DC Musica Viva on Artomatic. Read it here.

Photo Net on Artomatic. Read it here.

And... the Art-O-Matic artists on Artomatic. Read it here.

Dealing with the WaPo

Today is the day that the Post is supposed to cover our area galleries in the Style section. And yet there's nothing. You better get used to it.

As reported here, the Style section has decided to cut its "Galleries" column to twice a month, rather than every Thursday.

And yet (and these are the kind of things that make no sense to me), there's a pretty good piece by a freelancer named Andy Grundberg on Six Centuries of Prints and Drawings: Recent Acquisitions at the National Gallery of Art. Grundberg is the Chairman of the Photo Department at the Corcoran and certainly quite qualified to augment either the museum or gallery review scene at the Post.

So the Post has decided to reduce their already measly gallery coverage in half because one of its two gallery art critic freelancers has quit; rather than just seek the services of another freelancer or give the assignment to people already in their freelance art stables, such as Grundberg apparently is!

Oh yeah... there's also piece in Arts Beat about art by prisoners on exhibit at a Lutheran Church somewhere.

Makes my head hurt.

What can our visual arts community do? It is so obvious that we're dealing with a mindset at the newspaper that is not very concerned with our area's galleries, artists and other visual art spaces that do not happen to be large museums. At least not in the same coverage proportions to what the Post already does for theater, music, books, TV, etc.

Their cultural apathy seems strictly dedicated to our area's galleries and artists.

I am told that the WaPo takes every letter received on an issue and multiplies it by 1500 readers who feel the same way, but who do not take the time and effort to write an old-fashioned letter.

So if you feel (like I do) that it is completely unacceptable for the Washington Post to only publish the "Galleries" column twice a month, even on a temporary basis (can you imagine the uproar if they decided to review only two movies a month? Or two restaurants? Or two theatre plays? Or two concerts? Or two books? D'ya get the point!!!)... then write the paper's editor a letter (a proper letter, not an email; and please be respectful, intelligent and civil) and let him know:

Leonard Downie
Editor
Washington Post
1150 15th Street, NW
Washington, DC 20071

Here is an example of a letter that I wrote to the Post's editor in 1999 bitching about their galleries' measly coverage and making some suggestions (one of them - the mini reviews - was eventually implemented and O'Sullivan has drastically improved gallery coverage in his Weekend On Exhibit column) to improve their coverage. Sad to think that the coverage back then was twice of what it is now (both the "Galleries" and the "Arts Beat" columns used to be published every Thursday back then)!

Chris Shott in the current issue of the WCP on Blake Gopnik:

MUSEFUL CRITIQUE

For all his ranting about "bad" art projects in the District this past year, Washington Post critic Blake Gopnik hasn’t actually done much to stop them. In fact, the Oxford University–educated art historian has done just the opposite.

To wit: Last spring, Gopnik ripped the D.C. Commission on the Arts and Humanities’ "exciting public art project," PandaMania. In fact, he likened the task of painting blank panda statues to filling in a coloring book. "It would take a really skilled contemporary artist to turn a coloring book into something worth an art lover’s time," Gopnik wrote in a May 30 Post critique. "There probably aren’t more than a half-dozen artists in this city who could do it."

Oh, but Bethesda, Md., painter Marsha Stein thought she could find a few. So she formally challenged Gopnik to hand-pick a team of artists to compete against hers. Each team would paint a blank two-foot cube, with the public voting on the best one.

Gopnik politely declined the challenge. But that didn’t stop Stein: Her project has since evolved into a multiteam competition—albeit sans cubes—that D.C. filmmaker Nigel Parkinson is shooting for a documentary. Or maybe a reality-TV show.

"He just pushes people’s buttons," Stein says of Gopnik. "He does my job for me. He couldn’t have fueled this competition any better than by writing that article."

More recently, Gopnik issued a scathing critique of Artomatic 2004, the exhibition of works by some 600 area artists now showing in the former Capital Children’s Museum. In a Nov. 11 Post piece, he called the show "the second-worst display of art I’ve ever seen. The only one to beat it out, by the thinnest of split hairs, was the 2002 Artomatic, which was worse only by virtue of being even bigger and in an even more atrocious space."

"Artomatic isn’t only good for nothing," Gopnik concluded. "It’s bad for art that matters."

Again, artists responded. For starters, there’s The Official Artomatic 2004 Boo Blake Wall, an installation papered with angry letters from Artomatic exhibitors and dotted with Travis Miller– designed stickers that read: "Blake isn’t only good for nothing. He’s bad for art that matters." And sculptor Mark Jenkins has posted a phony news story reporting Gopnik’s kidnapping by "human figures made of packaging tape."

The wall is also splashed with red paint, some of which drips down into a plastic bag taped to the ground. "Somebody said it looks like bullet holes and blood," notes Artomatic executive-committee member Jim Tretick.

A less ominous homage to Gopnik appears at Artomatic’s Overlook Bar: A case of warm beer wrapped in white paper and labeled "One vintage case of Icehouse from Artomatic 2002: The worst beer from the worst show."

"That case of beer has been sitting in my basement for two years," says Tretick. "We were saving it for a special occasion."

Right beside the beer is a brand-new Clue game wrapped in a plastic bag for Gopnik. And the artists aren’t done yet. McLean, Va.–based graphic designer Jesse Thomas is now putting the finishes touches on a new collage inspired by Gopnik.

The tributes to Gopnik come as news to the critic. "I didn’t know about any of the Artomatic responses," he writes via e-mail. Gopnik’s own response? Something in Latin about judges and matters of taste: "De gustibus non...I guess."

Article copyright Washington City Paper.

The other day I walked into a Whole Foods supermarket to buy some olives and some Manchego cheese. As I strolled by Whole Foods' fantastic deli, I noticed that in this store they had signs in both English and Spanish.

I almost died laughing when I saw how the Thanksgiving turkey special had been translated! In English, the word "turkey" is the same for the country that spans Europe and the Middle East and for the Thanksgiving bird.

But in Spanish, the word for the country Turkey is Turquia, and the word for the bird is "pavo."

Guess what this store was selling as their Thanksgiving bird? Turquia! What a bunch of turkeys...

Happy Thanksgiving!

Corcoran Screws Up (Again): Twice in One Go

As I mentioned last night, there's another mess at the Corcoran, this time dealing with their ill advised (and now cancelled) decision to host "An Evening at the Cuban Interests Section."

Both sides of this issue astonish me: (a) that the Corcoran decided to host this event in the first place and then (b) that they bowed to indirect governmental pressure to cancel it.

Today's Post article by Jacqueline Trescott discusses that the Corcoran decided to postpone the event under some indirect pressure from the State Department.

I hope that they postpone it until that brutal, racist, and homophobic bastard who oppresses that poor island with a bloody boot is six feet underground.

This is a dictatorship that sends librarians to jail for twenty years for the crime of having Orwell's 1984 in their possession.

A homophobic regime that sends gay Cubans to jail for four years for the crime of being gay.

A merciless regime where anyone who tests positive for AIDS is immediately locked away in Los Cocos.

Jails that have been off limits to the International Red Cross since 1989.

No doubt that the Corcoran really blew it in even thinking about this idea as an event in the first place. According to Trescott's article, Margaret Bergen, chief communications officer for the Corcoran says that the Corcoran sponsors 130 public programs a year and about a dozen are of them held at embassies. She adds that the discussions don't discount politics, but politics aren't the primary focus, Bergen adds that "We are trying to have a dialogue about art."

You don't "dialogue about art" with dictators who crush and destroy artists in their own homeland. If anything, you try to reach the artists and dialogue with them directly. I can guarantee to the Corcoran that the Cuban Interests Section will not assist them with that.

Now that I got that off my chest...

Now I am disturbed by the fact that they blinked when the State Department put a little pressure on them.

Sorry guys: Now you're damned if you do and damned if you don't. That's what happens when you make stupid decisions in the first place and then lack the cojones to stand up to pressure.

Washington Post to cut in half its gallery coverage

Today I called the Style desk at the WaPo and discovered that the Washington Post intends to reduce their already measly gallery coverage to only twice a month. This is a reduction from their one weekly column: "Galleries," which is published on most Thursdays, a day which according to the Style section's banner, is supposed to be a day focused on "Galleries and Art News."

Yeah...

"Galleries" has been written for the last few years by freelance writer Jessica Dawson (that's right... Jessica is not an employee of the Post, but a freelancer assigned that column). The task of writing a weekly column to review area shows is not an easy one, and it takes a lot of time, effort and driving around to see a lot of gallery shows in order to pick one or two a week. So Jessica wanted some time off, and thus the Post hired Glenn Dixon a few weeks ago.

The idea was for Jessica and Glenn to share the column and each write a review every two weeks and thus cover the gallery scene with a review a week. Measly coverage in comparison to the Post's excellent and in-depth coverage of our area's theater, music, clubs, dance and other performace art... but better than nothing.

But then something happened, and Dixon and the Post had a dispute and Dixon quit.

And now, someone at the Post has made the decision to cut down the column to just twice a month. I don't know if this is a temporary decision or not. I have emailed Gene Robinson (editor of Style) and Chip Crews (temporary Arts Editor while John Pancake, the Post's Arts Editor, is away on a teaching gig).

I am hoping that this is a temporary situation while the Post finds another freelancer to augment Dawson's biweekly coverage. I cannot, even in my darkest Post-bitching mood, fathom that the Post's editor would think that it is OK to write two columns a month to cover the nearly 100 new visual art shows that our area's galleries and artists offer each month.

Let's keep our collective fingers crossed. More on this issue as I find out more.

UPDATE: Chip Crews (who is the Post's acting Arts Editor) tells me that the decision about the "Galleries" column "may change at some point but there's no timetable. Our arts editor, John Pancake, is on sabbatical until mid-January, and it's highly unlikely any permanent action will be taken before then." I volunteered my services, but it was declined until Pancake returns to make a decision.

Michael O'Sullivan's Artomatic List

If anyone truly knows Washington art spaces, art scene and artists, it is Washington Post art critic Michael O'Sullivan. And in addition to his review of AOM, he submits the following list and notes about his top choices for this year's Art-O-Matic:

Michael O'Sullivan's Artomatic List

Best installations: Ira Tattelman/Kathryn Cornelius
Best Abstract Paintings: John Adams/Louise Kennelly
Best Portraiture: Allison Miner/Ian Jehle
Best Serendipitous Pairing: Kelly Towles/Dale Hunt
Best Thematic Spaces: Eye Candy/Girlz Club/Washington Glass School
Best Photography: Matt Dunn/Dennis Yankow (aka Dns Ynko)
Best Sculpture: Liz Duarte/Betsy Packard
Best Found-Object Sculpture: Elizabeth Lundberg Morisette/Joroko
Most Searing Use of Autobiography: Dylan Scholinski

And a couple of Bests (some of whom I [O'Sullivan] mentioned in my article) that aren't on anyone else's list:

Lynn Putney
Gregory Ferrand
Ben Claassen
Jen Dixon
Dave Savage
Kevin Irvin

...and finally, a special thanks to Brash, the poet who goes around writing
diamond-hard little poems in response to Artomatic artists, and then taping
them to the walls.

Rob Goodspeed's Artomatic Top List

Rob Goodspeed is one of the hardworking editors of DCist and he has his Artomatic 2004 Artists of Note List here and he lists:

Charlie Jones
Gregory Ferrand
Carol Spils
Michele Banks
J. Steve Strawn
Kevin T. Irvin
Dana Ellyn Kauffman
Sepideh Majd
Thomas Edwards

One of the best DC-centric sites on the web is DCist, and Rob Godspeed has DCist's take on Artomatic including a great image (to the left) of Mark Jenkins' brilliant tape sculptures approaching the Washington Post's building "asking for Blake Gopnik."

Gopnik must be feeling like Clement Greenberg in having fueled such an artist's response; too bad it was 180 degrees off from Greenberg's.

Read the spoof Jenkins take on the Gopnik tape men sculptures here.

Bravo Jenkins!

P.S. And Jenkins is in my Top 10 List!

There's some weird stuff going on at the Corcoran because of their ill advised plan to stage "An Evening at the Cuban Interests Section."

There should be story in the Washington Post about this in the next few days.

Some good shows to go see...

Amy Marx at The Sumner
The Sumner Museum presents paintings by Amy Marx through December 31. The Show is entitled "On Earth As It Is". The Sumner is located at 1201 17th St at M st NW. Hours are M-F 10-5 and Saturdays 10-4. Phone number is 202.442.6060. Amy Marx is a jeweler and a painter, and at least with her paintings, she is obsessed with weather. And her paintings of weather patterns, storms, clouds, tornadoes, etc. are absolutely stunning! She has painted herself into a unique niche, where she is mistress of her domain.

Erik Sandberg at Conner
This guy is one of my favorite area artists, and I could choke him for leaving us, but still admire his brilliant talent, dark mind and Boschian creativity. His latest show at Conner Contemporary runs through December 23, 2004. A catalogue will be available. For further information call Leigh at 202.588.8750, or email her at info@connercontemporary.com.

Chan Chao at Numark
I am glad that Chao has returned to his nude work, as I wasn't a big fan of the work that got him into the Whitney Biennial. The return to his earlier-type work is right on time! An artist book, Echo, accompanies the show. The exhibition at Numark Gallery goes on through December 18, 2004.

Elyse Harrison at Neptune
Harrison has been a critical spark around our area for many years, both as an artist and also as an arts activist. Her latest work is on exhibition at Gallery Neptune until December 4, 2004. More info at 301.718.0809.

Anonymous at WPA/C
The WPA/C concept of ANONYMOUS returns with an opening preview reception on Thursday, Dec. 9, 6:30-8:30pm and the first day to purchase artwork is Friday, Dec. 10, 6-8pm.

This is a second installment of this popular show concept featuring all new artists and curators. 100 artists create two feet by two feet works of art to be sold for $500 each. Buyers will not know the artist until the work has been purchased. No works will be sold at the preview reception and only one piece is allowed per patron. Curated by: John Aaron, K.B. Basseches, Mary Del Popolo, Djakarta, Chawky Frenn, David Jung, Prescott Moore Lassman, Anne Marchand, Marie Ringwald and Alan Simensky.

Location: 1027 33rd Street, NW (Georgetown)
Times: Thursday & Friday 12pm-8pm
Saturday & Sunday 12pm-6pm

Janis Goodman at District Fine Arts
"Ebb and Flow," recent paintings and drawings by Washingtonian Janis Goodman, (who teaches at the Corcoran) explores the universal theme of constancy. Goodman's new series is devoted to water and its insistent repetition, even as the rest of the world is in flux. Her intelligent renderings of water capture the artist's intense devotion to observation and meditation. "Ebb and Flow" will be on view at District Fine Arts from through December 11, 2004.

A $500,000 Art Commission!

Deadline: December 17, 2004

The recently established McCormick Museum Foundation in Chicago will design, build and operate a museum dedicated to America's freedoms, with a special emphasis on First Amendment rights, and the civic responsibilities that accompany those rights.

As a major component of this museum, the foundation will commission a defining work of art that will be selected through an open, international, two-stage competition.

This piece will serve as the centerpiece of the museum and will be permanently located in the museum's two-story rotunda. The budget for the completed work of art is more than $500,000. Please visit the McCormick Museum Foundation's website for more information. Or write to:

McCormick Museum Foundation
435 North Michigan Avenue
Suite 754
Chicago, IL 60611

Louisiana and Indiana Calls for Public Art

Six Exterior Niches Commission $64,000 - Louisiana
Entry Deadline: November 26, 2004

The Percent for Art Program for the state of Louisiana, administered through the Louisiana Division of the Arts (LDOA) announces two public art projects at two sites at the LaSalle Building, Baton Rouge, Louisiana. They are seeking an artist to create site specific works to fit within six existing niches in the building façade of the LaSalle Building located in downtown Baton Rouge. There are three niches above the East entrance to the building, and three niches above the North entrance. Each niche is 5'4" x 5'4", with a uniform top to bottom 12" depth. The sides are 6" deep with a 6" side step. The artist is asked to address each niche, but is not required to do so in the same fashion. For example, one niche may be completely filled with an artwork, while another niche may be occupied by a smaller work. The artist's budget for the commission is $64,000.00, and includes all costs such as travel, material, fabrication and installation, as well as engineering and conservation consultations. Artists are encouraged to visit the site before submitting their application. The physical address is 617 North Third Street. The pieces must be permanent in nature, and require very little long-term maintenance. All appropriate media will be considered for this commission. The fabrication of the artwork will be done off-site by the artist. The artist is also responsible for installing the work in the niches. The Call for Artists as well as images of the building and grounds are accessible for view on the Louisiana Division of the Arts website under the Percent for Art link.

Interior Wall Commission (29' x 10') $30,000
Entry Deadline: November 26, 2004.

The Percent for Art Program for the state of Louisiana, administered through the Louisiana Division of the Arts (LDOA) announces two public art projects at two sites at the LaSalle Building, Baton Rouge, Louisiana. Seeking an artist to create a site-specific permanent indoor wall piece for the main wall of the café in the LaSalle Building located at 617 North Third Street in downtown Baton Rouge. Because the café has many windows facing Third Street, this piece will be viewable from both the inside and the outside of the café. The total space available for the piece is 29' x 10', but the artist may designate smaller dimensions of the finished work or works. The artist's budget for the commission is $30,000.00, and includes all costs such as travel, material, fabrication, installation, as well as engineering and conservation consultation costs. The work must be permanent in nature, and require very little long-term maintenance. All appropriate media will be considered for this commission (not limited to 2-D). However, 3-D applicants should keep in mind that the wall was not constructed to bear an exceptional amount of weight. Artists are encouraged to visit the site before submitting their application. The fabrication of the work will be done off-site by the artist. The artist will be responsible for installing the work(s) on the wall when completed.The Call for Artists as well as images of the building and grounds are accessible for view on the Louisiana Division of the Arts website under the Percent for Art link.

Indianapolis Airport Authority, Indianapolis, Indiana.
Deadline: December 30, 2004

The Indianapolis Airport Authority, with Blackburn Architects, invites artists to submit their qualifications for design and design/fabrication opportunities at the New Indianapolis Airport. Projects include architectural enhancements and integrated, free-standing or hanging works of art. Artists should submit their qualifications under the RFQ for consideration for future opportunities. Finalists will receive RFPs and will be compensated for any proposal submissions. More than 7 million passengers traveled through the airport last year. The intent of the projects is to combine with services and design to create the most pleasant traveling experience possible. The artwork will also further the city's goals for cultural development and public art. The deadline for receipt of qualification packages is December 30, 2004. To download the RFQ in PDF format visit www.newindianapolisairport.com. For more information call (317) 875-5500 x230.

Software that Authenticates Art

(Thanks AJ). A new set of software tools, developed by a Dartmouth College team seems to be able to "fingerprint" the style of a painter's work and thus be able to detect fakes and imitations.

"There are properties in an artist's pen and brush strokes that aren't visible to the human eye, but that are there nonetheless. And we can find them, through mathematical, statistical analysis," said Dartmouth computer science professor Hany Farid, who developed the algorithms, along with math professor Daniel Rockmore and graduate student Siwei Lyu."

The article warns that:

"Museum curators and statisticians caution that the Dartmouth group's techniques have only begun to be tested. Using algorithms to back up scholars' suspicions is one thing; uncovering a fraud with just a computer, that's completely different. And in the art world, no scientific method is considered as sure as the eye of a seasoned connoisseur.

"This is very unusual," said Nadine Orenstein, the curator of the drawings and prints department at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. "We're all a bit skeptical."

Other artworld comments were just as skeptical:

"I’m highly skeptical of using the computer for this kind of approach," said Laurence Kanter, curator in charge of the Robert Lehman collection at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City. "It’s very possible that a program like that could be exploited to great advantage, but I still need to be persuaded."

I suspect that they're all a bit scared actually, because they're about to (a) lose the gig of having the power to be able to authenticate something just by being a "seasoned connoisseur" and (b) about to (possibly) have an avalanche of their past "authenticated works" be reported as fakes.