Vote
Channel 9's A-List is a local contest where the public votes and determine the Washington D.C. area's best local businesses. More than 900 businesses within the DC area have been nominated so far.
So far only four art galleries and one wall decor venue have been nominated. See them here.
Anyone can nominate a gallery here. Unless you are part of the state of Louisiana or city of Chicago multiple-voting dispensations, please only vote once.
I'll let you know which gallery gathers the most votes once the public decides (provided that some secret Channel 9 vote doesn't change the tally).
Monday, August 07, 2006
Sunday, August 06, 2006
Statuary Controversy
I couple of days ago I was listening to WTOP News, which like all other radio and TV stations in our area (with the posssible exception of WAMU) rarely if ever, reports on anything dealing with the visual arts, although they do an excellent job delivering free publicity and reports for movies, concerts and theatre. Like nearly all of our main media outlets, WTOP probably believes that their listening public does not care about our area gallery shows as much as they do about who is playing next at Blues Alley.
Anyway, they had a story on a controversy surrounding the Statuary Hall sculpture selection process to add two new sculptures of prominent Washingtonians that could be displayed in the United States Capitol's Statuary Hall, where every state in the Union is represented by two statues of prominent people from the state's past. The District of Columbia is not represented by anyone, and so the DC public was apparently invited to vote as to which prominent Washingtonians should be added to the collection.
Residents cast around 3,000 votes based on the following criteria: "The person must have a record of distinguished service to the city; must be a U.S. citizen; and must be deceased."
Frederick Douglass, the former slave-turned-newspaper publisher received the most votes (311) and musician Duke Ellington (238 votes) came in second. Both men were also on a list of recommendations made by the D.C. Commission on the Arts and Humanities steering committee.
This is where the controversy apparently starts.
According to WTOP News:
A selection committee created by the D.C. Commission on the Arts and Humanities made their own recommendations, and the commission had the final say in the selection.And
Minutes from a May 2006 meeting reveal the commissioners were unanimous in the first choice of Frederick Douglass, the former slave-turned-newspaper publisher.But...
...the minutes from the May meeting show the commissioners could not decide on the second choice, and delayed the vote for one month.It will be interesting to see which two Washingtonians actually end up in the Hall, and even more interesting to see (in the event that one of them is L'Enfant), what he looks like, since as far as we know, and if I recall correctly, there's some controversy as to what he truly looked like.
Prior to adjourning, commissioner Gail Berry West made a motion to add Pierre L'Enfant to the list of finalists.
L'Enfant came in 10th in the public voting, with 107 votes -- well behind Duke Ellington, Thurgood Marshall and Benjamin Banneker, but 16 votes ahead Mayor Washington.
When the commission reconvened in June, they made a rare move of taking the remaining votes by secret ballot.
Commission Chair Dorothy McSweeny told WTOP she couldn't recall the last time the commission voted in secret, but added she supported the move.
Mayor Tony Williams has said he was "disappointed" with the selection of L'Enfant. In a written statement, Williams' spokesperson Vince Morris tells WTOP:
The mayor has already made it clear that L'Enfant was not his top choice. While it's important for boards and commissions to operate independently, the mayor also likes to see decisions made that reflect popular opinion.
Another problem with the L'Enfant choice is his nationality. One of the requirements to be selected was U.S. citizenship. Technically, the French-born L'Enfant was not a U.S. citizen.
Friday, August 04, 2006
Friday!
Nu... so it's Friday and it's not broiling out there, and there are some truly good gallery shows that we can enjoy between 6-8PM tonight. For a good recommendation, DCist's Heather Goss has a good sampling here.
This Friday will be remembered as the one gallery Friday to explore new talent, and this is as good as it gets for beginning collectors to gather their sheckels and if they see something that they like either at Conner, Irvine and Project 4, to snap it, as they all have shows focusing on either recent art school grads, current students or MFA grads.
I've been driving up and down I-95 like a million times this last few weeks looking for a house around Swarthmore, PA, and I think that I may have finally found one or two that I sorta like, while managing to avoid the fact that most houses in that town are usually 95 years (or more) old, and I'm not a very good DIY type.
Meanwhile my Maryland house is for sale, and I've just reduced it today by $50K so that it's a great deal and will hopefully sell quickly! The realtor made me take down a lot of the artwork from the walls, as it "makes the house look bigger." She wanted it all down, but I refused, as I think that it makes the home look more appealing! Buy the house here
Go see some galleries tonight!
See ya there!
Thursday, August 03, 2006
Penis artist
While I was over at Reuters checking out the Mark Jenkins story, I came across this "artist" who paints with his penis.
I suspect that dickilism (or as it is called in the UK: willyism) may be simply the latest ridiculous effort created in order to stand out in an art world often dominated by gimmick. It worked for Chris Offili, Damien Hirst and many others... so why not for Pricasso (whose real name is Tim Patch).
And in case you were wondering... yes, there's already a guy who paints with his asshole.
Update: And in case you were wondering part two... yes the a guy who paints with his asshole once exhibited in Washington, DC (many years ago) - It was painting (geez) titled "Rectal Realism" and the piece was in fact a portrait of Andy Warhol.
Ahhh... the good ole days...
Tapedude in Reuters
The news agency Reuters has a really cool video story about DC's own tapedude artist Mark Jenkins.
See it here.
Mark Jenkins continues to gather spectacular international coverage and attention to his work, granted from a street art perspective (and an unique one at that), and yet our local museum curators seem to be asleep at the wheel and driving right past him at the same time that he's the subject of major magazine coverage in Europe and now this story.
Wake up!
Art Dealers of the World: Unite!
Well... at least the ones that are DC art dealers around the 14th Street area.
The CP's Nell Boeschenstein has an excellent story on a movement by six art dealers around the 14th Street area to gather some momentum and start some sort of organization.
There is currently an Art Dealers Association of Greater Washington, but as Nell Boeschenstein points out, it might as well not exist.
I know that Bethesda art dealers (well, the ones that are real art dealers anyway) are also thinking of gathering together under their own art dealers' organization, due to the same concerns expressed by the dealers quoted in Nell Boeschenstein's story.
And the Dupont Circle area dealers are probably thinking the same thing, as the Art Dealers Association of Greater Washington has been pretty moribund for the last few years.
Opportunity for Maryland Artists
The Baltimore Museum of Art in collaboration with the Maryland State Arts Council just announced siteMaryland, a month-long juried exhibition of art by leading contemporary artists living and working in Maryland. Details here.
Designed to change venues yearly, this year’s project (opening October 1) will take as its site the grounds of the museum, where artists are invited to rethink and reinvent the exterior spaces of the facility.
Adjacent to the Johns Hopkins University campus, the BMA boasts a blend of contemporary and neoclassical architecture, a renowned sculpture garden, and a dramatic stepped entrance along Art Museum Drive.
Applicants are encouraged to visit the museum and develop ideas for the site.
Submissions must include a written description of the concept and images of recent work. Awards ranging from $1,000 to $2,500 will be granted as needed for materials.
Applications must be received no later than August 18, 2006.
Please mail your submissions and a SASE to:
siteMaryland
Baltimore Museum of Art
10 Art Museum Drive
Baltimore, MD 21218
Or e-mail siteMaryland@artbma.org for more details.
Another MFA Show tomorrow!
So in addition to the great opportunities tomorrow at Conner and at Irvine to see some fresh work by recent graduates and current art students, Project 4 also has 15 Minutes opening tomorrow, and the five artists featured are recent MFA recipients from schools throughout the Mid Atlantic region working in paint, charcoal and printmaking.
Opening Reception is August 4, 2006 - 6:00 - 8:30 pm and the artists are Phillip Adams, Marc Alain, Luisa Greenfield, Ivanny Pagan and Jonathan Trundle.
Wednesday, August 02, 2006
Congratulations
To DC area artist Victor Ekpuk (now living in Holland), who will be having his first solo show in Holland at Gallery 23 in Amsterdam.
Artists Wanted For Barracks Row Festival
Barracks Row Main Street is looking for artists to sell their creations at Barracks Row Fest, which will be held on Saturday, September 16th from 11:00-5:00 p.m. in the 400-700 blocks of 8th Street, SE.
The street festival attracted 6,000 people last year, and they hope to attract even more this time. If you would like to participate, you can download a vendor application at www.barracksrow.org or email mainstreet@barracksrow.org.
Barracks Row is located next to the Eastern Market Metro station.
Exhibit Opportunity for Emerging Artists
ARCH Development Corp. and the Honfleur Gallery, a new art gallery located in historic Anacostia, are looking to exhibit emerging artists in the Washington D.C., Metropolitan area.
The gallery is still under construction, but ARCH is planning the 2007 opening exhibition and putting together an artist group for the season. To learn more about the gallery visit the ARCH website for details at www.archdc.org and click on the arts tab.
Tuesday, August 01, 2006
Lunacy
A recent memo by Luis A. Luna, Assistant Administrator, Office of Administration and Resources Management announced a decision to install a temporary screen to cover up several historical murals on the 5th floor of the Ariel Rios building in Washington, DC. These murals were created under a 1934 U.S. Treasury art commissioning program, and have apparently been the subject of complaints over the years, and were once previously covered up during the Clinton Administration, before being apparently exhibited again during the current administration, before being hidden from view once more.
The murals which will be once again covered up, and which have titles such as "French Explorers and Indians," "Torture by Stake," "The Red Man Takes the Mochila," etc. depict a diverse set of panoramas ranging from spectacular scenes of the often violent interaction between the American West's native nations and the new settlers, to artistic recreation of historical meetings between European explorers and native Americans.
While it is perhaps understandable that the imagery on some of these murals may be objectionable to some workers or visitors -- perhaps embarrassing to some due to the nudity in some of the murals, and perhaps offensive to others due to its depiction of native Americans, and maybe even more objectionable due to the violence depicted in many of them -- in my opinion it would be even more objectionable to a majority of us to have these historical murals covered up or destroyed.
I object.
A nation that chooses to ignore or whitewash its past, is a nation without a historical memory and without a cultural footprint.
Nearly the entire world was aghast when the Taliban destroyed the gigantic Buddha sculptures that were offensive to that repressive regime, and we all condemned the demolition as a vile and barbaric act of cultural ignorance and artistic destruction. And yet here we are almost somewhat ready to do the same in principle to an integral, if not proud, part of our historical and artistic past.
Art is perhaps the only vehicle that we have left that crosses all cultural barriers and creates bridges and memories for mankind. Visual art, especially representational historical visual art, has created for our nation an important cultural footprint and a significant record of our past. As such it cannot and must not be now censored or destroyed, lest we forget it.
I have had many opportunities to sit on the advisory board of the Washington, DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities, and in that process I have helped to fund many of the contemporary murals that now adorn our nation's capital. In that experience, I have no doubt in my mind that there is no arts commission or city in our nation that would remotely consider funding these 1930s vintage murals in 2006, much less in a public building. That is just the nature of where we were in 1930 as a people and where we are now.
But it is my hope that decades from now, if someone finds any of the murals that we have funded in the last few years for our nation's capital objectionable, that our future Americans will have more conviction and more common sense and more guts to stand fast rather than to immediately take the politically-correct and knee-jerk reaction to "cover" them up, or consider removing them.
Keep the murals as they are.
Monday, July 31, 2006
Airborne today and heading home to the news that the world's longest reigning dictator may be getting ready to face the music!
Friday, July 28, 2006
Introductions
Friday is shaping out to be the key day of the year to go see what new talent two of our savviest gallerists out there have discovered in the way of new talent.
"Introductions 2" at Irvine Contemporary also opens the same night as Conner's Academy exhibition. "Introductions 2" features eleven recent graduates from MICA, Corcoran, American University and VCU.
Irvine's reception is also Friday Aug 4 6-8. This is a great night to see new talent at both Conner and Irvine.
Academy
Academy 2006, the 6th annual BFA/MFA invitational hosted by Conner Contemporary (and one of those recurring shows that should never be missed), opens next Friday, August 4th from 6-8pm.
This is an opportunity to see the best and brightest of our area's schools, as handpicked by one of our top gallerists.
Thursday, July 27, 2006
Ads
I don't ever recall seeing a TV ad for a museum exhibition in Washington, DC. Perhaps it is because our region is such a magnet for tourists, and a lot of the foor traffic that visits our museums are, uh, visitors to the area -- that museums feel that there's no need for TV ads.
But just saw some new TV ads here in Colorado:
The Denver Art Museum wants to spread the word about the upcoming opening of its Frederic C. Hamilton Building. The major expansion was designed by world-renowned architect Daniel Libeskind and has been under construction for more than four years.Read the Denver Post story here.
The ads, designed by the Integer Group Denver, urge consumers to check out the new $90.5 million building, as well as what's inside.
Wednesday, July 26, 2006
Congrats!
To Argentine-born artist and DC area resident Mirta Kupferminc, who has been distinguished with the Silver Medal at the 12th International Biennal Print and Drawing Exhibition, R.O.C. in Taipei.
The International Jury selected Mirta´s print entitled “Thirty thousands and one” from about 4,000 artworks received from the whole world. The selected work was done by the artist in remembrance of the 30,000 disappeared people during the military dictatorship that happened thirty years ago in Argentina.
Tuesday, July 25, 2006
Monday, July 24, 2006
Stolen sculpture
A few days ago, one of the local radio stations had a story about how thieves are stealing railroad tracks and other metal objects and then sell it as scrap metal. They do this because the price of most metals has skyrocketed in the last few years.
Sometime between July 7 - 13, 2006, artist Judith Richelieu had a bronze sculpture stolen from an exhibition held at the second floor of the Atrium at 1650 Tysons Blvd.
The bronze was called Fallen Flower, 1994. It is 15 x 20 x 21, and since the price of metal is so high, I wonder if sculptors everywhere ought to be warned that there have been thefts in other parts of the country of railroad tracks, plaques, and maybe now a work of art.
I'll have an image of the stolen sculpture as soon as I get it later today.
Sunday, July 23, 2006
Tapedude in the WaPo
Adriane Quinlan has a really good article on DC's own tapedude Mark Jenkins.
Read a rare profile of a DC area artist (now achieving fame all over the place by the way) here.
Friday, July 21, 2006
More murals bite the dust
Apparently the Ariel Rios Building murals are not the only ones in extremis.
According to this story by Diane Haithman in the Left Coast Times:
"On Thursday, attorneys representing artist Kent Twitchell filed a claim against the U.S. Department of Labor in connection with Twitchell's large-scale mural "Ed Ruscha Monument" — a six-story portrait of fellow artist Ruscha on a building owned by the federal agency — being painted over in early June. Twitchell said he received no notice, as required by law, that the paint-over would take place.Read the entire article here.
Within the past few days, two more downtown murals, Frank Romero's "Going to the Olympics" and Willie Herrón's "Luchas del Mundo" (Struggles of the World) were partly covered with mud-colored paint, an apparent error by a Caltrans work crew cleaning up graffiti.
A Caltrans spokeswoman described the covering as a mistake and said plans are in place to remove the paint next week. Because of a protective coating, she said, the removal process will not affect the artwork."
However, Bill Lasarow at LAMurals.org states that the partial painting-over of Frank Romero’s celebratory "Going to the Olympics" mural was done "in order to save it from graffiti taggers" - not on purpose to destroy it, and that in fact the covering up was apparently scheduled and part of the process and Romero is going to work on the mural some more!
New painting term
In the CP, Capps reviews E3: Painters at Transformer and describes one of the artists' works as:
"...And Passacantando’s untitled clusterfuck of color doesn’t seem to have gained much from all the criticism—it’s static through and through, despite its technical merits."And let me be the first one to congratulate the Texan in coining a new way to describe a painting, as Googling "clusterfuck of color" reveals that no one else on the planet has apparently ever used that art term before; and I like it!
Art history legend has it than when Greenberg came to DC in the late 50s (or was it early 60s?) to give a lecture, he stated that "painting should be thin." After that statement settled in, apparently some DC area artists actually broke out their caliphers and started measuring the thickness of their paint above the canvas. Eventually, according to Wolfe, the Washington Color School was partially borne out of that statement.
I'm keeping my fingers crossed that even as I write this, someone is considering clusterfuckism in art.
Update: An alert DC Art News reader detects that although clusterfuck of color is unique, when it is Googled at "cluster fuck of color," these entries are logged by Google's ever busy robot spiders.
Wanna go to a closing and an opening tomorrow night?
Then come to Adams Morgan on Saturday night from from 7 to 10 p.m. and go to the closing reception for "Focusing On The District" at Studio One Eight gallery.
This photography show showcases scenes from various parts of the city.
Studio One Eight is located at 2452 18th St. NW. (directly above Julia's Empanadas - mmm).
If instead you wanna head down to the beach in Norfolk, then DC artist Andrew Wodzianski opens in Norfolk for a solo exhibit. Old Dominion University Gallery hosts "Coulrophobia and Other New Paintings." Twenty nine paintings on display with thirteen new ones being unveiled. Opening reception on Saturday, July 22 at 7pm and the show goes through Aug. 22, 2006.
Thursday, July 20, 2006
Me in the CP
Nell Boeschenstein has a cool story about my recent changes in today's CP.
Read the article here.
She also writes about the Ariel Rios murals. More on that later...
Wall Mountables at DCAC
Around this town, anytime that you have an open show (meaning a show without a juror or curator), the critics tend to immediately savage it. This seems to be a predictable critical analysis somewhat unique to our area's visual arts and artists as viewed by most of our area critics.
Once a year, the District of Columbia Arts Center (DCAC), through a show called "Wall Mountables," allows any and all artists to hang anything they want, so long as it fits within a two square foot space. It's usually one of my favorite shows and a terrific opportunity for artists to exhibit and sell their work.
DCAC will be accepting and allowing artists to hang their work Wed - Fri. July 26-28, 2006 - On Wed. from 3-8PM and on Friday from 3-6PM. Spaces are available on a first-come basis and each 2x2 ft space is $10 and current DCAC members get one space free!
Details here.
Also at DCAC
Next Sunday DCAC has their last Summer Art Forum in the DCAC theater, July 23rd at 7:30pm: "Making, Showing, and Collecting Video Art." Panelists include: Jefferson Pinder, Kathryn Cornelius, Djakarta, Philip Barlow and Brandon Morse.
For more information on the Art Forum visit this website.
Vox Populi
There are only four days left to see "Home Free," an exhibition of the Philadelphia artists collective Vox Populi at DCAC.
The WaPo's Chief Art Critic Blake Gopnik, in a rare look at an area gallery show wrote about the exhibition:
"One piece manages to take a standard contemporary trick and get it absolutely right.... A video called 'Cocked,' by Matthew Suib."Hurry!
Update: Warren commenting in Thinking About Art writes:
This video, or one just like it, was in the Radius 250 show in Richmond last year.
3 Years ago Michael Oatman, an artist based in Troy NY, did one pulling together all the time-travel sequences in movies.
Both were cool to look at, but I think you're correct to ask why Gopnik thinks that even though it's a "contemporary trick" (I read that as "cliché"), it's worth writing about.
Its funny, I believe he thinks he's really on the cutting edge with his knee-jerk support of video. Like he's cool or something because of it, and all the taunts make him more rigid.
Wednesday, July 19, 2006
Flashpoint Fracass
DCist reports on a private party at Flashpoint which ended with some artwork being destroyed.
Read it here.
Ariel Rios Building Murals
A few days ago I posted about a memo by Luis A. Luna, Assistant Administrator, Office of Administration and Resources Management, who announced a decision to install a temporary screen in two days. The screen will cover up five historical murals (out of 25 in the building) on the 5th floor of the Ariel Rios building in Washington, DC. These murals were created under a 1934 U.S. Treasury art commissioning program.
I'm still mulling about how to express my opinion on this issue... meanwhile here are a couple of the murals; click on them for a larger view.
Ariel Rios Murals
A few days ago I posted about a memo by Luis A. Luna, Assistant Administrator, Office of Administration and Resources Management, who announced a decision to install a temporary screen in two days. The screen will cover up five historical murals (out of 25 in the building) on the 5th floor of the Ariel Rios building in Washington, DC. These murals were created under a 1934 U.S. Treasury art commissioning program.
The six murals which will be covered up, and which have titles such as "French Explorers and Indians," "Torture by Stake," "The Red Man Takes the Mochila," etc. depict a diverse set of panoramas ranging from spectacular scenes of the often violent interaction between the American West’s native nations and the new settlers, to artistic recreation of historical meetings between European explorers and native Americans.
While it is perhaps understandable that the imagery on some of these murals may be objectionable to some workers or visitors -- perhaps embarrassing to some due to the nudity in some of the murals, and perhaps offensive to others due to its depiction of native Americans, and maybe even more objectionable due to the violence depicted in many of them -- in my opinion it would be even more objectionable to a majority of us to have these historical murals covered up or destroyed.
A nation that chooses to ignore or whitewash its past, is a nation without a historical memory and without a cultural footprint.
Nearly the entire world was aghast when the Taliban destroyed the gigantic Buddha sculptures that were offensive to that repressive regime, and we all condemned the demolition as a vile and barbaric act of cultural ignorance and artistic destruction. And yet here we are almost ready to do the same to an integral, if not proud, part of our historical and artistic past.
Art is perhaps the only vehicle that we have left that crosses all cultural barriers and creates bridges and memories for mankind. Visual art, especially representational historical visual art, has created for our nation an important cultural footprint and a significant record of our past. As such it cannot and must not be now censored or destroyed, lest we forget it.
I have had many opportunities to sit on the advisory board of the DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities, and in that process I have help to fund many of the contemporary murals that now adorn our nation’s capital. In that position, I have no doubt in my mind that there is no arts commission or city in our nation that would remotely consider funding these 1930s murals in 2006, much less in a public building. That is just the nature of where we were in 1930 as a people and where we are now.
But it is my hope that decades from now, if someone finds any of the murals that we have funded in the last few years for our nation’s capital objectionable, that our future Americans will have more conviction and more common sense and more guts to stand fast rather than to immediately take the politically-correct and knee-jerk reaction to "cover" them up, or consider removing them.
Keep the murals as they are.
Tuesday, July 18, 2006
Congrats!
To Min Jung Kim from Chantilly High School, who is The League of Reston Artists (LRA) award recipient of its 2006 Art Scholarship Award in the amount of $1,000.
Conversions
The Ellipse Arts Center and the Washington Project for the Arts\Corcoran have teamed up to present "Conversions," which is an exhibition "exploring spatial interpretations juried from three distinct points of view."
The opening reception is tomorrow, July 19, 7 – 9 pm and the show runs through September 29, 2006. It was curated by artist Sam Gilliam, Dennis O’Neil (director of the Hand Print Workshop and printmaking professor at the Corcoran College of Art + Design), and Ubercollectors Heather & Tony Podesta.
They selected works by Renee Butler, Kathryn Cornelius, Susan Eder/Craig Dennis, M. Sedestrom Guthrie, Lisa Kellner, Michelle Kong, Tomas Rivas, Tai Hwa Goh, Joan Sarah Wexler, Ami Martin Wilber and Amy Glengary Yang.
Monday, July 17, 2006
Art Enables
Art Enables is a not-for-profit arts studio for persons with developmental and/or mental disabilities. They work with artists from throughout the region - DC, MD, and VA.
On July 22nd, they are hosting their first-ever regional art event, a one day juried exhibition of outsider/folk/visionary artwork produced in 14 programs located in DC, Baltimore, and the region.
The exhibition features the work of over 60 artists, most of whom have not been exhibited before.
Although Art Enables is the host for the exibition, the show includes work created by outsider artists through a diverse group os organizations, such as Miriam’s Kitchen, Prisons Foundation, Smith Farm for the Healing Arts, Create! For Seniors, Anchor Mental Health, Art for the People, Studio Downstairs, Mitch Snyder Arts and Education Center, Life Skills, Arc of Baltimore, St. Luke’s House, ARTiculate of WVSA arts connection, and Arts for the Aging.
The juried show, on July 22, 2006, is at MOCA DC in the heart of Georgetown. It is a one-day event, 11 am to 8 pm (reception from 6 pm to 8 pm). The exhibit and gala are free and open to the public.
Phantom Floor
Phantom Floor is a new exhibition opening this coming Thursday, July 20, 2006 from 6-9pm (show runs through August 11, 2006) at Salve Regina Gallery, Catholic University, 620 Michigan Ave. NE, Dept. of Art, Salve Regina Hall. Red Line Metro, Brookland/CUA stop.
The exhibition is curated by Lea-Ann Bigelow, and according to the news release, the exhibition explores the following:
"In the shifting territory between the real and the (imag)ined, the material and the ephemeral, the defined and the unbounded, the self and the other – there dwells the phantom.
For their existence, phantoms draw deeply on individuals’ desire to conjure, project and believe-in alternate and ofttimes contested truths based on their singular, personal experiences.
With Phantom Floor, guest curator Lea-Ann Bigelow brings together the bold new work of three young Washington-area artists – Phoebe Esmon, Tomás Rivas and Karen Joan Topping – in a collective engagement with the liminal and powerfully evocative notion of the phantom.
Through site-specific installations, sculpture and mixed media compositions, the artists excavate, (re)interpret and unleash a host of histories and memories - of places, of people, of things – in a strategic haunting of the gallery, and in so doing remind us of the willful defiance of established truths that fuels artistic creation itself."
Sunday, July 16, 2006
Saturday, July 15, 2006
Who's he calling an idiot?
Jackie Trescott has an interesting interview and profile with the Corcoran's new director: Paul Greenhalgh.
Pronounced Green-halggg, or maybe Green-HA-elgg; no wait: Green-halsh! In what language does "halg" sound like "halsh" anyway... silly Brits.
Anyway, it sounds like Greenhalgh is taking the Corcoran by the horns and doing a superb job so far - this appears to be a man who knows that he needs to clean up house, fix it up and then re-establish it as one of America's great art venues. So far it seems like his hiring was the right thing and the right choice.
And I like Greenhalgh's firmness in his words and beliefs.
And I wonder if he is responding to the Blake Gopnik recommendation that the Corcoran become a museum of photography when he says:
"The idea that you would brand yourself with one message is, of course, the idiot's approach to museums," he says. "Museums are complicated places. There is no reason we can't be the edgiest institution and the most experimental over a period of years."Now, that's what I call a response... if he's responding... ehr.. to the photography idea... that is.
Last night
Great opening at my last show with Fraser Gallery. Thanks to all of you who came by to say "goodbye" and "hello" in my new incarnation sans Fraser.
NBC 4 was there filming the opening and discussing my next moves and the history of DC Art News, etc. They also interviewed the fair Katie Tuss, who will be one of the writers helping me expand DC Art News.
There were also a couple of newspaper writers, a few gallerists (I finally met face to face with Nevin Kelly), some curators, a museum director and tons of artists and friends. Thanks to all of you for coming.
Brisk sales, including both pieces by Amy Lin, who is very hot right now - my advice: Buy Lin now before she skyrockets. Lin is currently in at least two more shows around town and selling well everywhere. And she should sign up with a gallery soon.
Best in show winner was a new artist (new to me anyway): Taryn Wells from Medfield, Mass. Powerful, powerful skilled drawings that convey not only exceptional techical skill but also that immensely hard ability to deliver a powerful message via a visual image.
Both of Wells' pieces also sold as soon as the show opened, and I see bright things in the future of this artist.
Award winners:
Best in Show: Taryn Wells
First Place: Andrew Decaen
Second Place: Joseph Hamilton
Third Place: Jenny Davis
Hon. Mention: Anna Conti
Hon Mention: Roland Delcol
Hon. Mention: Angela Grey
Friday, July 14, 2006
This is the kind of lunacy that makes me wanna...
From: Luis A. LunaThis will be the subject of a rant from me later on... below is "The Red Man Takes the Mochila."
Assistant Administrator, Office of Administration and Resources Management
To: All EPA Employees
As you may know, on March 15, 2005, GSA initiated the Section 106 consultation process, under the National Historic Preservation Act, regarding the current setting of the historic murals in the headquarters Ariel Rios North and South buildings. GSA established a consulting group and developed a Web site to solicit comments from interested parties: www.gsa.gov/arielriosmurals.
An executive summary of these comments is now posted on the Web site.
The next steps of this process include GSA identifying a panel of experts that will meet in mid-October to provide them with a higher level of information and input on the murals. EPA employees, members of the Native American community and other interested parties will be invited to participate. At the completion of the forum, the recorded dialogue will be made available to the general public and a final round of public comments will be taken. Based on the information derived by the forum and the public comments, GSA is expected to make its final determination regarding the murals by January 31, 2007.
In the meantime, GSA has completed the design of a temporary screen that will be placed in front of the murals on the 5th floor of the Ariel Rios building. The screen is expected to be ready for installation no later than July 21, 2006.
Thursday, July 13, 2006
DCist Love
She's cute, she's very funny on her own personal blog and she's developed really quickly into a damned good art writer and critic as well, and Heather Goss sends DC Art News some Internet love and some really good advice on an area that has really been the subject of a lot of thinking for me: Keeping my focus on the Greater DC area constant and prevent it from thinning when I start sniffing around Philly and Baltimore and all that's between.
Read it here.
Then come by tomorrow to the Fraser Gallery between 6-9PM and say hello, goodbye and hello again.
Corcoran Opening
Packed house last night at the Corcoran's private opening for "redefined: Modern and Contemporary Art from the Collection."
Ran into the legendary Lida Moser and we had a nice walk-though of the exhibit, which provides an opportunity to see many of the museum’s most important works from the 1950s to the present.
If I have time I will return and do a better (and slower) walkthrough of the show, but on a first look, I think that this massive Ida Applebroog steals the exhibitions, and the Cornell boxes are always amazing (as usual).
I was also taken by this large oil by Kim Dingle, which reminded me of the recent work of local painter Rachel Waldron (who was at the Corcoran last night).
Art for Life
They will feature the live/silent auction format again this year allowing them to accommodate a larger number of works of art from artists, as well as keep our guests engaged in the auction throughout the night.
This is one of my favorite art auctions and a major fundraiser for the Whitman-Walker Clinic.
I really encourage artists to donate work to this auction.
Hurry! The deadline to register is today!
To donate art for the auction go here or contact:
Martha N. Miers
Associate Director of Special Events
Whitman-Walker Clinic
1407 S Street NW
Washington, DC 20009
202.797.3529 (o)
202.797.3560 (f)
www.wwc.org
Wednesday, July 12, 2006
Artwork for Dulles
The airport is looking for some proposals to add artwork to some of the Dulles Metrorail stations.
Deadline is August 4, 2006 and the prospectus can be downloaded here.
Chalk4Peace
Chalk4Peace is a young person's global art project planned for Sept. 16-17, 2006 with the goal to have one million young artists of all ages using sidewalk chalk to create their visions and messages of Peace.
To create a Chalk4Peace event in your neighborhood. Contact: John Aaron, Director or visit www.chalk4peace.org, or call 703-528-4800 to find out more about how you and your community can be part of the project.
The Franz and Virginia Bader Fund
Deadline: September 15, 2006
The Franz and Virginia Bader Fund welcomes applications from visual artists aged 40 years or older, who live within 150 miles of Washington, D.C. and can demonstrate that they have the potential to benefit as artists from a grant.
The Franz and Virginia Bader Fund does not, however, accept applications from filmmakers, video artists, and performance artists. In 2005 the Franz and Virginia Bader Fund awarded three grants of $15,000 each.
The deadline for applications is September 15, 2006. Application forms may be downloaded from the fund's web site: www.baderfund.org or may be requested by sending an email to grants@baderfund.org or by calling 202-288-4608.
Tuesday, July 11, 2006
This will be my last one
As a result of several personal decisions, the show that will open next Friday, July 14, 2006,(and which I juried) at the Fraser Gallery will be my last one associated with the gallery.
When Catriona and I opened the first Fraser Gallery in Georgetown in 1996, we did so with a well-defined focus and backed by the financial empire of Mr. Visa and Mrs. MasterCard. We also did it without stealing another gallery's mailing list to start with (in fact we did not have a mailing list at all!) and with a working list of what to do - number one on that list was (and is): "pay the artist first."
In spite of the tremendous apathy that our local media shows all art galleries, and the dreadful state of art collecting and support to local artists exhibited by our general public, the gallery did very well over the years, and in 2002 we opened a second, larger gallery in Bethesda. For the next four years we operated two art galleries concurrently, in a whirlwind of work and exhibitions. Earlier this year we closed the original gallery in Georgetown and concentrated our efforts on the Bethesda location.
The gallery continues to do well, and this year has so far been our best year ever, already surpassing comparisons with 2005, which has been our best year to date. Fraser Gallery remains one of the key independently owned commercial visual art galleries in our region and will be so for many years to come.
The show which opens Friday, and which I juried, is our annual juried competition, the first of which I also juried in 1996. Following this exhibition, I will no longer be associated personally or legally with the gallery, which will be continued to be directed (and now solely owned) by the talented and hardworking Catriona Fraser.
I am making this decision as a result of several key personal items, one of which is the fact that within the next couple of months I will commence a major shift in location, which will see me partially re-locate to the area in or around Swarthmore, Pennsylvania, a couple of hours north of here.
I am NOT "leaving" the DC area. In fact my tentative plans call for me working physically (and living) in the DC area most weekdays, and spending weekends and some weeks in Swarthmore.
This will leave me with some much needed time in my hands to do a couple of projects, one of which should be of interest to all readers of DC Art News.
(a) As some of you know, I have been receiving a handful of offers for the DC Art News "concept" to go national in the sense of associating the blog with a national entity and expand its coverage and concept to a national audience. I have resisted doing this for obvious reasons: lack of time.
And while I will not transform DC Art News into a national "art news" blog, with the help of two additional writers, who will help me add more content to the blog (content that I will edit and they will do the work to make it bloggable), I will expand DC Art News to cover more of the geographical area that I will be "living" in, and thus sometime soon I will start covering and calling it "Mid-Atlantic Art News."
More on this later.
(b) I will spend the next year investigating and deciding on how to re-invent myself as a private art dealer. This may end up with a new physical gallery space somewhere yet to be decided, but certainly will soon definately include both an online presence and a private presence representing several artists in art fairs around the nation and perhaps Europe along the Douz & Mille model and/or the Curator's Office model.
(c) I will finally (hopefully) have to some time in my hands to finish a couple of long-delayed book projects. The first is a guide to DC area art galleries and museums, for which I have been under contract to produce for now over a year. Tentatively titled "Art Around the Capital," the guide will list all visual art spaces around the DC area as well as details about the space, its artists, etc. More on that later as well. The second is my long-delayed art history book on the art of the Pictish Nations of pre-Celtic Scotland.
(d) I will also devote more time and effort to my own artwork.
And thus this Friday's opening will be my farewell show at Fraser Gallery, and I hope to see as many of you there as possible. The opening will feature the work of the following artists:
Collin Asmus, Boston, MA
Marina Bare, Salisbury, NC
Lisa Brotman, Bethesda, MD
Robert Cantor, Annandale, VA
Mary Chiaramonte, Broadway, VA
Anna Conti, San Francisco, CA
Jenny Davis, Hughesville, MD
Andrew Decaen, Orlando, FL
Roland Delcol, Knokke, Belgium
Linda Frost, Santa Monica, CA
Angela Grey, Cleveland, OH
James Halloran, Arlington, VA
Joseph Hamilton, Landover, MD
Amy Lin, Fairfax, VA
Gabrielle Mayer, Louisville, KY
Sharon Moody, McLean, VA
Nancy Reinke, Alexandria, VA
Peter Van Riper, Washington, DC
Paul Ryan, Baltimore, MD
Hannah Ueno-Olsen, Hammonton, NJ
Taryn Wells, Medfield, MA
The opening is this coming Friday from 6-9PM and will (of course) have loads of sangria and the terrific art of the above artists. Come by and say hello and farewell and hello again.
See ya there!
New Art Space
Opening on July 14, 2006 from 6:00 pm to 8:00 pm, Hillyer Art Space presents Scratching the Surface: a Survey of Artists in the Washington Region, the first show in their series of Washington Region Programs.
It will remain on view through August 24, 2006 and aims to bring recognition to a variety of artists living and working in the Washington region. The exhibition is dedicated to the memory of Kevin MacDonald, a well-known and much loved artist who worked in the DC area and who died recently.
The new art venue assembled a committee of some of the most prominent visual artists in the region to identify colleagues and other lesser exposed artists working in a variety of medium such as sculpture, screen prints, ceramics, painting, ink on paper, mixed media etc. for inclusion in the show. Scratching the Surface will feature works by Jiha Moon, Erin Root, Jody Bergstresser, Dan Dudrow, Zachary Jackson, Amy Lin, Mai Kojima, Jeffrey Meizlik, Conrad Meyers II, John Trevino, and Steven F. Kijek
The panel responsible for the selection of these artists is made up of some of the region’s most celebrated and respected artists, including: Bill Christenberry, Manon Cleary, John Dreyfuss, David Driskell, Bill Dunlap, Helen Frederick, Carol Brown Goldberg, Pat Goslee, Rebecca Kamen, Quentin Mosley, Dennis O’Neil, Wendy Ross, John Ruppert, Foon Sham, Renee Stout, Lou Stovall, Duncan Tebow, Mindy Weisel, and Frank Wright.
Me in American Weekly
American Weekly with a really cool article on The Real (Art) World exhibition at AU and a cool pic of yours truly.
Read it here.
Monday, July 10, 2006
Exploit and Click
Wish I had thought of the above title, but instead read this interesting article by Jim Lewis at Slate.
Sunday, July 09, 2006
Saturday, July 08, 2006
Arts Beat
Rachel Beckman, who is the new writer for the Arts Beat column writes a superb profile of area artist Eric Finzi, who's currently exhibiting at Heineman-Myers.
Boozer
I'll be damned if I didn't learn a thing or two from this great CP profile on area artist Margaret Boozer.
Not only do I think that Boozer is one of the key, really key, artists in our area... but also someone who's gonna leave a deep footprint on contemporary art, and also one of the most generous and kind spirits around.
Kudos to Capps and the CP for a really good profile on one of our top leading artists.
Friday, July 07, 2006
Funny thing about the Weekend online sessions
It seems to me that the Weekend staff is ignoring any art-related questions that they get via their online sessions.
I know this because some of you email me afterwards telling me that they asked questions and were ignored. A reader sends the following:
So I submitted a darn good comment to the Weekend Online thing...I don't know, so my open question to Joyce Jones, editor of the Weekend section: "Are you suppressing/ignoring art related questions now?"
1) about saying they are experts in art but when they introduced O'Sullivan they only talk about his interview of some actor/comedian, and
2) about how the NY Times somehow is able to publish lots of art articles every week even though NYC has much more food/theatre/music/etc than DC... how in the world can the Times possibly allocate such space to art??? :)
They ignored the comment and focused almost solely on water parks for 3 year olds... are they suppressing the inquiries about art coverage now?
Artists Roundtable at AAC
Artists Roundtable: The MFA Graduate Experience in 2006
Date: Thursday, July 13, 2006, 7 PM
Location: Arlington Arts Center, 3550 Wilson Blvd, Arlington, VA
More Info: 703. 248.6800 or www.arlingtonartscenter.org
Cost: Free. Reservations not required, but are appreciated.
On July 13, several artists in the Center's current New Art Examined: Work by 2006 MFA Graduates in the Mid-Atlantic States discuss their work, the current academic environment, and the experience of entering the commercial art world when the market is hot. Exhibiting artists received degrees from VCU, Maryland Institute, College of Art, Carnegie Mellon, and Penn State, among others. AAC curator Carol Lukitsch will moderate the discussion, and audience participation is encouraged. If you’ve attended an AAC roundtable before, you know how interesting the dialogue can get.
The Artists’ Roundtable is free, but reservations are appreciated to ensure adequate seating. For more information, call 703.248.6800 or info@arlingtonartscenter.org.
Weekend Online
The Weekend staff will be online answering your questions today at 11AM. Ask them why they have two to three times more theatre and movie coverage than visual arts, and why they publish many freelancers (a good thing) who cover everything but the visual arts (a bad thing), which is only covered by Michael O'Sullivan.
Details here.
Thursday, July 06, 2006
Job in the arts
Closing date is July 11, 2006
The Hirshhorn is looking for a new Director of Communications & Marketing. They seek an outstanding professional to lead their full-service communications and marketing department.
For a more detailed position description and application instructions please visit www.si.edu/ohr, Announcement number 06WJ-6180 and closing date is July 11, 2006.
Salary: $91,407.00 - $118,828.00.
Mail:
Smithsonian Institution Office of Human Resources
PO Box 50638
Washington DC 20091
Fax: 202 275 1114
Hand deliver or Fedex:
750 Ninth Street NW
Suite 6100
Washington DC 20560
Art In Embassies Program
Established by the United States Department of State in 1964, the Art In Embassies Program is a global museum that exhibits original works of art by U.S. citizens in the public rooms of approximately 180 American diplomatic residences worldwide.
To submit images to their staff for consideration in upcoming exhibitions please e-mail .jpg or .gif images of your works no larger than 50k in size, to: artinembassies@state.gov. Website here. Submissions accepted on a ongoing basis.
Financial Assistance
Deadline is ongoing.
This program assists artists financially in completion of MFA and Ph.D. programs. Grants of up to $5,000 are awarded to individual artists. Deadline is ongoing. For information, contact:
The College Art Association Fellowship Program
275 7th Ave.
New York, NY 10001
(212) 691-1051
Opportunity for Photographers
Deadline: July 15, 2006
The W. Eugene Smith Fund is an annual grant awarded to a photographer whose work follows the tradition of W. Eugene Smith's work as a photographic essayist. A grant in the amount of $30,000 is offered. For more information, contact:
The Howard Chapnick Grant
W. Eugene Smith Fund, Inc.
c/o International Center of Photography
1133 Avenue of the Americas
New York, NY 10036
Wednesday, July 05, 2006
Art Fair in DC
Last April I mentioned about a possible Art Fair coming to DC.
The organizers were sniffing around the various DC galleries and met with various art dealers to see what the level of interest for organizing a major art fair in the nation's capital area was.
Well, the nation's first major art fair is coming this April 27-30, 2007 at the Convention Center.
Applications can be downloaded here.
Sister, Sister
Reston, VA 20190) July 9th, with a reception from 2-4pm.
This is not only a celebration of the bond of sisters creating art, but also a showcase of two exceptionally talented abstract painters.
By the way, go early, as these sisters sell a lot of their work.
Tuesday, July 04, 2006
Friday, June 30, 2006
Why Gopnik is so wrong
Last Sunday, the WaPo's chief art critic, Blake Gopnik penned an article titled Portraiture's Harsh Lessons - Contest Offers Unintended Primer On Do's & Don'ts.
In the article (read it here), this erudite and intelligent man steps outside of his art critic hat to dwell in the dangerous waters of "I know better than you" land and dispenses wildly wrong opinions from the powerful pulpit of the pages of the WaPo.
The National Portrait Gallery is not an art gallery, begins Gopnik, and Blake Gopnik may be an eminently talented art writer, but he is not, and will never be, a gallerist (or at least a successful one anyway).
Gopnik screams (it's bolded, which in onlinespeak is just below for caps for "screaming") Don't think high realism equals art.
I would submit that today one can safely say: "Don't think that __________ equals art," and no one would blink. Let's try some:
1. Don't think that putting a little sculpture in a jar of piss equals art.
2. Don't think that smearing feces on a painting equals art.
3. Don't think that a portrait photograph equals art.
4.
5. Blah, blah, blah equals art.
But then he proceeds to poison the reader's well for fellow art critic Dave Hickey, by actually attacking Hickey in a semi-personal way as Gopnik writes: that Hickey is "famously skeptical about a lot of contemporary art, does his best to boost the exhibition in his catalogue essay (mostly with fiercely backhanded compliments, as when he praises its ignorance of all the current painting he actually likes)."
I think that Hickey's sin may be simply that he disagrees with Gopnik's views. But what Gopnik does not reveal or account for is that he is equally famously skeptical about anything that involves a brush and a canvas.
And this is also evidenced by his previous many anti-realism (and anti-painting) comments in his reviews and articles, and by his now infamous lecture delivered at the Corcoran during his first few months in his new job at the WaPo, in which Gopnik declared that "painting was dead" (yawn) and (in response to a question from the audience, that to the best of my recollection asked something along the lines of "Since you don't seem to like painting, or sculpture, or drawing, or photography, then what should a contemporary artist be doing today?") to which Gopnik answered "video and manipulated photography."
The museum curator who was sitting next to me, leaned over and whispered: "Blake doesn't like pictures."
Gopnik next writes: "For some reason (okay, so let's blame Salvador Dali) "modern" art has come to be equated in many people's minds with the wildly fantastical."
Uh?
Who thinks this? A couple of wasted Google hours can't seem to find any sort of trend where people equate modern art with the wildly fantastical. In fact other than Matthew Barney's now slightly yawnish work, I can't seem to find a wildly fantastical signature to modern art, although I am sure that there are some there, but a trend?
In fact, as a gallerist who deals with both the general public, the collecting public, and members of the arts intelligentsia, I would submit that many "people" on the front lines of the public scene still tend to equate modern art to the sort of stuff that Picasso and Braque and those guys were doing at the beginning and middle of the last century.
In fact the only "trend" that I seemed to find, is the boring and cyclical trend that painting is hot again, and realism is what seems to be riding the crest of that repeating wave, somewhat deflating Gopnik's first point.
Gopnik writes: "The idea that there is something bold about showing ugliness in a portrait instead of beauty has a history at least five centuries old."
OK, so he's right with this point; we agree here, although the fact that it has been done for five centuries doesn't mean that it is bad.
Gopnik writes:
If a portrait wants to prove it's more than empty flattery, it had better go much further than just throwing in some wrinkles -- as Doug Auld does in a close-up of a burn victim named Shayla, whose black skin is a tight mask of scars. It's one of the only pictures in the exhibition that need their links to the grand tradition of painted portraiture: By making a monumental oil painting of a badly disfigured face, Auld evokes the absence of such faces from the art of the past -- and from the larger social consciousness that past represents.I'm not sure if the above is a "do" or a "don't"?
On top of that, the simple freak-show voyeurism implicit in this painting is so vexed, it's compelling. Shayla seems proud to present her damaged self to us in a portrait; should we also be proud of staring at it?
Gopnik writes:
"Titian signed his pictures on their fronts. So did Rembrandt and Manet. That was back when marking the active presence of the artist meant something. Now a signature just seems like empty advertising. Some clear marking on a picture's back is all posterity -- and the market -- demands of any artist. A picture's front should be so great that a signature would only mar it. In this competition, however, artists' names are flourished everywhere. (It yields a new axiom we might call Outwin Boochever's Law: The duller the picture, the more flamboyantly it's likely to be signed.)"He is sort of half right here, but in the half that he is wrong, he shows an amazing ignorance of the power of the signature in art.
As those of you who have been the victims of any of the shows that I have curated, then you know that one of my major pet peeves with artists are the artists who put a huge, or misplaced signature on the front of the work, often marring it. I have actually rejected otherwise decent work from competitions (and sent the feedback to the artists) because I thought that their massive signature destroyed the essence of the work.
But Gopnik is saying (I think) that artists should never sign their work on the front.
When he states that "Some clear marking on a picture's back is all posterity -- and the market -- demands of any artist" he is somewhat wrong (especially with "the market" part, as the huge differences between what a front-signed Picasso brings when compared to an unsigned Picasso (the ones that he gave to one of his wives) and a rear-signed Picasso.
As a gallerist, it has been my experience that collectors not only want a signature, but in fact, if smart enough, they demand it. More often than not, the ones who demand it, want it on the front.
My advice to artists, based on my experience as a gallerist and curator and collector, would be very different from Gopnik.
(1) All artwork should be signed somewhere.
(2) Avoid flamboyant signatures on the front. Knock yourself out on the rear of the piece, but make sure that the signature doesn't "bleed" through the front, as I have seen happen in some photos and also in some paintings.
(3) Nearly all abstract work should be signed on the back (on verso in auction house speak).
(4) You will run into collectors who want a signature on the front. There's a significant psychological connection between art and signatures that Gopnik misses.
(5) In those works where the signature does not affect the composition or "mar" the work, then it's perfectly fine to sign it modestly somewhere where it will not affect the work - the classical area is lower right margin, or if you have a "gallery dressed" painting, sign it on the side.
(6) If you can't figure out where to sign the piece, see rule (1).
A child's toy can outdo oil paints.
No it can't.
Only in the "traditional" eyes of art critics who still wave the fifty-year-old Greenbergian mission to try to kill painting. Face it: it won't happen!
A child's toy to do art is more often than not a gimmick to catch the eye of an art critic trying desperately to always be edgy rather than be objective; it worked in this case.
Save sentiment for greeting cards.
OK, so we agree again. Except for the lines that state: "Art teachers everywhere call these "girl-in-a-room pictures." They try to wean students off them by junior year." As a former art student (University of Washington School of Art graduate), I had never had this experience in my four years in art school, but just in case I called and/or emailed a dozen or so art teachers in the last day or two to see if they knew what the "girl-in-a-room pictures" statement meant - so far the answers have been somewhat amusing (one person thought that they may be John Currin look-alikes), but as far as my very un-scientific poll, there seems to be no "girl-in-a-room pictures" syndrome affecting art schools and no "weaning" of anything other than (in some schools anyway), any technical skill that a student may actually bring to the school as a freshman.
Portrait art shouldn't have to be complacent art.
This last point in Gopnik's list of mostly wrong advice is simply based on (and a re-statement of) this particular art critic's deeply held traditional art criticism belief that art must (it MUST) say something new in order to be good.
So when an artist like Gerhardt Richter comes along and pokes all these traditional art critic beliefs ("painting is dead," "art must say something new in order to be good," etc.) in the eye with his complete disregard of these flawed art criticism axioms, it throws traditional art critics like Gopnik, unable to adapt to a modern art world (where the art, not the critic, nor the criticism, is what carries the day in the end) to a position where:
(a) they can't rip a Richter apart.
(b) they rip the little guys.
"It's the sense of adventure and consuming creative ambition that is missing from this show and that is there, at least as an overarching mission, in most serious contemporary work."No sir, it's not missing, perhaps you can't see it, because when you came to see this show, your eyes were already shut from your anachronistic beliefs about serious contemporary work.
_____________________
The Outwin Boochever 2006 Portrait Competition Exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery, runs through Feb. 18, 2006. See the portraits here.
Thursday, June 29, 2006
The Real (Art) World Opens Tonight
A few days ago I was invited to talk to the student curators participating in Jack Rasmussen’s innovative curator class at American University.
At the same time that I met, talked to and then spoke to the class, I was fortunate enough to not only get inside the focus and purpose of the five student curators, but also received an early peek at the installation process of the show itself, which opens with a gallery talk tonight, Thursday, June 29 at 5PM, immediately followed by an opening party from 6-8PM.
The exhibition, with the most modern youthful title (somewhat borrowed I imagine from MTV’s "Real World" series) of "The Real (Art) World: 5 Curators. 5 Artists. 1 Museum," has the fore mentioned cast of five students in their first curating assignment; the students are: Bernard Birnbaum, Nicole Ferdinando, Meg Ferris, Roxana Martin and Daniela Rutigliano.
The assignment's starting point was somewhat the same for all the students: review artist submissions and proposals and slides sent to the Katzen since it opened its doors a while back, and select an artist for each curator to showcase in the exhibition.
Birnbaum selected Dave D’Orio, Ferdinando selected Marie Ringwald, Ferris selected Jiha Moon (who seems to be everywhere at once these days), Martin picked Genna Watson and Rutigliano picked Ariel Goldberg.
Of the above artists, I was very familiar with Ringwald (a Trawick Prize finalist and an artist whom I included in Seven) and Jiha Moon (a Trawick Prize winner); the others were all new to me.
Meg Ferris passed the first test of my "why did you select blankety blank?" question, as she answered that she had selected Moon based on her visual impressions of Moon’s elegant work and her statement about her work.
When I saw the work, Ferris had already hung it on the wall, and was preparing to add some wall text. We spoke for a while about “textitis,” that fatal disease of most postmodern minimalist art, where the text is often more interesting than the artwork itself, and Ferris seemed to agree that in Moon’s case the artwork should be allowed to carry the exhibition’s focus, rather than text about Moon’s art.
I also asked her about conservation issues, as Moon uses a variety of inks and pigments to create her deceptively complex works, and the longevity of artwork is something that art dealers often worry about, but seems to be generally ignored by museum curators (unless they are acquiring the work for the museum).
Roxana Martin was busily working on the massive task of installing Genna Watson’s larger than life sculptures, and she was next on my walk-through the exhibit. "I selected Watson because her work spoke to me as soon as I saw it," stated Marin, who clearly identified with Watson’s discernible attempt to deliver a set of powerful messages through her large, organic sculptures.
In the center of the lower floor gallery, Watson has a superb spot for her work, and this exhibition should bring her work much well-deserved visibility.
Martin and I then discussed art and artists who create work specifically aimed at a museum audience (rather than a gallery audience).
In this case, by the sheer size of the sculptures, and their “display needs,” it is clear to me that the artist is aiming to have her work displayed in large public spaces, rather than the more intimate scale of most commercial art galleries.
This was of interest to Martin, who I think had not seen the work from that point of view. It is a thought (I think) that rarely crosses the mind of museum curators.
Next I talked to Nicole Ferdinando, and confessed to her that when I first stepped into the Katzen, even though I am very familiar with Marie Ringwald’s work, I initially thought that the work that first faced me was that of area sculptor Janos Enyedi, a reasonable mistake considering that the work that I am referring to is clearly within the family of faux metal wall constructions of barns and metal sheds that Enyedi has been making for years.
However, as soon as I noticed several of Ringwald’s better-known freestanding sculptures (also sheds in this case) – and was corrected by Rasmussen – I realized that the work was a natural progression for Ringwald’s shared obsession (with Enyedi) for constructed structures. I was also pleased to see the four red pieces that I had selected and exhibited at Seven be part of this show, and shared this curatorial selection with Ferdinando.
I also managed to discover some new (new to me that is) set of elegant prints by this talented artists, and these were my favorite from her diverse canon of works selected by this young curator.
We then all sat down and discussed the whole environment of curating a show, and some of the points that I had earlier pinpointed with Ferris, Martin and Ferdinando resurfaced.
Like her fellow curators, Bernard Birnbaum and Daniela Rutigliano shared an acute interest in the work of the artist that they selected, although is Rutigliano’s case I got a sense that she was previously familiar with the artist that she selected, Ariel Goldberg, and Goldberg’s photography.
It was very clear to me that what Rasmussen is doing with this class is having an important and lasting effect on these students, and I would dare say a profound footprint on both their artistic development and appreciation of art, and the complicated web of multi-layered work that goes into assembling an exhibition.
This is an important test for these students, and an event more significant development in the art curriculum of American University; this new ingredient that Rasmussen has added to the complicated soup of being the director and curator of this magnificent art museum will continue to grow and develop, and I think will provide an excellent breeding ground not only for new, budding curators, but also for new artists, perhaps for the first time showcased in a museum environment.
Keep them cooking Jack!
"The Real (Art) World: 5 Curators. 5 Artists. 1 Museum" opens tonight with a reception for the curators and the artists at the Katzen Arts Center. The exhibition runs through August 20, 2006.
Wednesday, June 28, 2006
Standing Stones
I am somewhat of a longtime aficionado of standing stones sites and stone circles, and a new one has been found in the Amazon.
See it here, and see the amazing images from Scotland here.
It was in large part as a result of those photographs and what happened to some of them, that the Fraser Gallery was started in 1996.
Wanna go to an opening tonight?
Artists David Hubbard and jodi are having an opening for a new exhibit located at 901 E Street NW (entrance on 9th Street, NW). The opening is presented by Zenith Gallery for Cambridge Management.
The reception to meet the artists is June 28, 5-8pm and the exhibition runs through July 28, 2006.
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