Bethesda Art Walk tomorrow

Friday is the Bethesda Art Walk with openings and late hours and a free walking tour to over a dozen Bethesda art galleries and art venues in artsy Bethesda, Maryland, part of the Sovier Socialist Republic of Montgomery.

My picks?

Beauty and the Beast, Ceramic Vessels and Sculpture by Liz Lescault and new work by gallery artists at Waverly Street Gallery. The Reception is Friday, May 9, 6-9PM.


And Lisa Montag Brotman at Neptune!

Go buy some artwork.

Wanna go to a DC opening tonight?

Make at trip to the Pepco Edison Gallery at 9th and G in DC for the Illustrators Club of DC: 14th Juried Exhibition.

Opening Reception: Thursday, May 8, 6:00 to 8:30 pm. The Exhibition goes through June 27. The gallery is at 702 8th Street, NW, Washington, DC Phone: 202.872.3396 (between G and H Streets at Gallery Place Metro).

Corcoran cancels party

Dear Art Anonymous Participants,

Thank you so much for helping the Corcoran College of Art + Design with Art Anonymous. Each of your amazing pieces has been installed in Gallery 31 and the space looks absolutely fantastic. If you haven’t had the opportunity to come by and see the Gallery, please make certain you do. We cannot tell you how much we appreciate your donations and your generosity.

As you know, we had planned to hold a party after the Art Anonymous sale on May 10. Unfortunately unforeseen circumstances mean we have had to cancel the party and are now holding the sale only. The event has been switched and will be open to current ticket holders only from 6 to 8 p.m. on Saturday night. Proceeds from the sale will still be dedicated to the College’s BFA Scholarship Fund.

Again, please know how grateful we are for your support of Art Anonymous. As a token of our thanks, we do hope that you will join us for the Exhibition Preview Evening for Richard Avedon: Portraits of Power, to be held on Wednesday, September 10. Please accept our apologies for canceling the party at the last moment. If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to get in touch with us at (202) 639-1753.

Thank you again for your support of the Corcoran College of Art + Design.

Best regards,

Corcoran Membership

Update: The Corcoran follows up with this email:

Dear Art Anonymous Participants,

We would like to take this chance to explain the situation further and extend a special invitation to all of you (in addition to the Avedon preview) for all of your dedication and support of the Corcoran during Art Anonymous.

Please understand that since the party after the Art Anonymous sale has now been canceled, we no longer have the space to hold participants other than the already registered ticket holders. We do understand that we offered all participating artists complimentary entry into this event. However, we had an overwhelming response to this offer, and without the extra room, Gallery 31 is too small to hold all potential attendees.

What we would like to offer all artists however, is the chance to join us from 4pm – 5pm sharp in Gallery 31 to mingle with each other, share some wine, and get a preview of the show before the works go on sale (these works are also up now, and can be viewed in our Gallery 31 until 9pm tonight, and from 10am – 5pm tomorrow and Saturday).

We look forward to hosting all of you at 4pm this Saturday in our Gallery 31 (please remember to use the New York Avenue entrance). If you had a guest accompanying you to the 6pm sale, they may still come to the sale, or we can refund their ticket and they may join you from 4pm – 5pm this Saturday. Just have them call (202) 639-1753 to get their refund. Please also note that the registration for the sale from 6pm – 8pm is now closed, and no walk-ins will be allowed.

Thank you again for your support of the Corcoran College of Art + Design, and please accept our invitation for the artist-only sneak preview.

If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to get in touch with us at (202) 639-1753.

With much appreciation,

Corcoran Membership

Step two

A while back I told you about my new commercial ventures in the Philly area and my ideas about how to proceed.

That "venture" was nothing but a website back then... but thanks to a great 2007 as far as sales of my own artwork, step two is now ready for implementation and I will now participate in some art fairs and try to sell some of the art by the artists whose work I believe in and try to really promote here...

Wondrous people like Tim Tate, Marienela de la Hoz, Sandra Ramos (and a huge assortment of other Cubans) and all the good folks here.

Using the "war chest" of Samolians from sales of my own work, I have saved enough work to pay for the exhorbitant fees for three major art fairs, plus insurance, plus shipping, plus hotels, etc.

Plus pushing them to collectors on this blog! Thank God that my instincts have been dead on! Not just focused on "my" artists but all others on my "buy now list," most of which I don't represent.

But... I should have bought more Tim Tate and more Marienela, and more Amy Lin, and more Scott Brooks!

Anyway... here's my next art venture in its present form.

Step three: Enough $$$ to pay rent for a year in advance and open a new Philly space!

Comments invited!

MFA Show in Philly

Rebekah Templeton Contemporary Art in Philly will have Dirt Made My Lunch, a group exhibition guest curated by Todd Keyser. The exhibition highlights the work of Philadelphia’s first year Master of Fine Arts students featuring Erin M. Riley, Kurt Freyer, Michael Treffehn, and Robert Scobey.

Robert Scobey, Miss February, 2008
Dirt Made My Lunch opens on Thursday, May 8, 2008 with an opening reception from 6-9 pm. The exhibition includes video, textile weaving, photography, sculpture and installation. The show closes on Saturday, June 21, 2008.

Over at Bethesda's Neptune Gallery

AOM Panels

The Pink Line Project will be presenting a series of panel discussions to educate the emerging and experienced art collector at the soon to open a Art-O-Matic. Click on the image below for details.


I have been asked to participat on a panel which will be held on Wednesday, May 21 at 7 pm in the 7th Floor Education Room. It is the "Information Overload: Finding Reliable and Useful Information About Art Collecting."

It will be moderated by DC ubercollector Dr. Fred Ognibene and will include JW Mahoney, Sharon Burton, Martin Irvine and yours truly.

See ya there!

Gallery critic and Washington City Paper part ways

I was very surprised to find out about a few minutes ago that Washington City Paper galleries critic Kriston Capps and the WCP have parted ways in what sounds (from Capps' side of the story) a very silly issue.

Something doesn't make sense here, but I'm sure that regardless of why (in Jeffry Cudlin's words) "the City Paper has given him the boot," Capps will continue to write for plenty of other outlets. He is an erudite, word-savvy, opinionated and educated writer and a budding curator.

Bailey on the subject here.

Cudlin on the same subject here.

The Surgeon and I



Dr. C. Everett Koop and I at a recent art panel in Baltimore. He's in his 90s; I want to look that good when I'm in my 70s! Photo by Keith Weller.

(In)Between Opening Video

A quick video of the opening night for the (In)Between exhibition at Philadelphia's Wexler Gallery.

Job in the arts in a beach town

Delaware's Rehoboth Art League is looking for a new Executive Director. This is a membership-based arts organization and exhibition center; the ED is to "provide overall leadership, direction, and management of the Rehoboth Art League's projects, programs and operations, including staff, volunteers, finances, curatorial, educational and outreach activities, membership, fundraising, and grant writing." Requires ten plus years management experience, ability to building strong community relationships, success in developing and implementing funding strategies.

The mission of the Art League is to provide arts education, promote and enccourage artists,maintain and enhance permanent collection. Founded in 1938, the Art League is on an historic three acre campus featuring an 18th century farmhouse. Rehoboth is a terrific beach town with fine restaurants and a vigorous art community. Email resume and cover letter to mhelms@coachwise.com.

Wanna go to a Tyson's Corner Opening on Thursday?

Noi Volkov opens at Tyson's Corner's Habatat Galleries on May 8 with a reception from 7:00 - 9:30 pm. The exhibition will be on display until June 14th.

Memorial to the medium

It wasn’t supposed to be this way, but “Polaroids: Mapplethorpe,” opening this week at the Whitney, has become a memorial to the medium. Several weeks ago, the diminished Polaroid Corporation announced it will, in 2009, quit the instant-film business.

Read the article by Christopher Bonanos in New Yorker here.

Friday = Artomatic

Artomatic, the art show that art critics love to hate and everyone else loves to visit; the capital area's homegrown art extravaganza, opens to the public at noon on Friday, May 9, with art, performances and special events, including the fire-dancing troupe Flights of Fire and performance art in the form of a new TV game show, “The Road to Success!” in just the first weekend.

From past experience, there will be dozens of parties going on throughout the spaces. This is the DC event this week.

“NoMa is ready to welcome tens of thousands of visitors to Artomatic so they can see the transformation that is under way in NoMa,” said Elizabeth Price, President of the NoMa BID. “NoMa is currently a hotbed of construction activity and now, thanks to Artomatic, the neighborhood will be bursting with the energy and excitement that only the artistic community can create.”

Highlights of Artomatic’s opening weekend include:

• Unveiling of nine floors of 2-D and 3-D visual arts presentations by more than 700 local and regional artists.

• Flights of Fire – a fire dancing performance to be held outside at 9 p.m., Friday, May 9.

• “Electro-acoustic psychedelic world dance music” by Baltimore’s Telesma at 9 p.m., Friday, May 9.

• A Latin dance workshop with professional dance instructor Ibis Villegas, featuring salsa, merengue, samba, and other styles at 2 p.m., Saturday, May 10.

• Progressive rock by Guardians of Iridescence at 8 p.m., Saturday, May 10.

• “The Road to Success,” performance art by Carolina Mayorga in the form of a new TV game show at 8 p.m., Saturday, May 10.

• New wave/indie rock by Plastiq Passion, an all-girl band from Union City, New Jersey at 11 p.m., Saturday, May 10.

• An expressive drawing workshop with Giliah Litwack at 1 p.m., Sunday, May 11.

• "In-your-face" jazz/jam music "with a touch of funk" by Bethesda, JD-based Bassment Breaks at 4 p.m., Sunday, May 11.

A full schedule of events is available at www.artomatic.org/event.

Held regularly since 1999, Artomatic transforms an unfinished indoor space into an exciting and diverse arts event that is free and open to the public. In addition to displays and sales by hundreds of artists, the event features free films, educational presentations and children’s activities, as well as musical, dance, poetry, theater and other performances.

Who will be this year's AOM emerging star? Let's get those "Top 10" lists going!

May 9–June 15 at Capitol Plaza 1
1200 First Street, N.E., (Corner of First and M Streets)
Washington, D.C. 20002
(New York Avenue Metro station: Red line)
Free, but donations accepted

HOURS
Wednesday–Thursdays: 5 p.m. to 10 p.m.
Fridays–Saturdays: Noon to 2 a.m.
Sundays: Noon to 10 p.m.
Closed Mondays and Tuesdays
Directions- here.

Looking for studio space in Arlington, VA?

Immediate availability! Reeb Hall Studios has an opening for a fine artist in need of a small studio available June 1st, 2008. Rent/size approx. 12x18'/$230/month. 24 hr. access.

If interested, please send 1 to 3 small jpgs of recent work of yours and/or your website address and a really short letter of interest to: reebhallartists@yahoo.com

Click!

Click! is a photography exhibition that invites Brooklyn Museum’s visitors, the online community, and the general public and artists to participate in the exhibition process.

Taking its inspiration from the critically acclaimed book The Wisdom of Crowds, in which New Yorker business and financial columnist James Surowiecki asserts that a diverse crowd is often wiser at making decisions than expert individuals, Click! explores whether Surowiecki’s premise can be applied to the visual arts—is a diverse crowd just as “wise” at evaluating art as the trained experts?

The audience evaluation period has started but will close on May 23! So if you know everything about art or nothing at all, create an account, log in and evaluate some of the works that have been submitted during their open call for Click!

Evaluation can take a while, but you can do as little or as much as you want and you can log in anytime throughout the evaluation period. They need evaluators with a range of knowledge about art (including none!) and varied geographic locations (including outside of Brooklyn!) to log in and have their say.

Click! culminates in an exhibition at the Museum, where the artworks are installed according to their relative ranking from the juried process. Visitors will also be able to see how different groups within the crowd evaluated the same works of art.

The results will be analyzed and discussed by experts in the fields of art, online communities, and crowd theory. The exhibition is organized by Shelley Bernstein, Manager of Information Systems, Brooklyn Museum.

Click here.

MoMA exhibit dies

One of the central works in the exhibition “Design and the Elastic Mind” at the Museum of Modern Art in New York (until 12 May), Victimless Leather, a small jacket made up of embryonic stem cells taken from mice, has died. The artists, Oron Catts and Ionat Zurr, say the work which was fed nutrients by tube, expanded too quickly and clogged its own incubation system just five weeks after the show opened.

Read the story by Helen Stoilas in the Art Newspaper here.

Tim Tate sets new auction record

I'm pretty sure that a new auction record for a work of art by a living Washington, DC artist was set last night in Philadelphia when two mixed media glass reliquiaries by Tim Tate were auctioned off for $82,000.

That's right boys and girls - Eighty two thousand Samolians.

Buy Tim Tate now.

In the Greater DC area Tate is represented by Fraser Gallery. In Philadelphia you can currently get his work at Wexler Gallery (where's he's currently in a group show). In Chicago his work is available through the Marx Saunders Gallery (where he's currently in a group show). In Charlottesville go to Migrations Gallery. In London his dealer is the Steps Gallery. In Santa Fe he's represented by Jane Sauer (where he currently has a solo show). In Norfolk you can get it through Mayer Fine Art Gallery. In San Francisco it's the Donna Seager Gallery. In Berlin it's Gallery 24, and throughout the US at art fairs and such through the Maurine Littleton Gallery.

See the auction in the video below...

Today: Zoe Strauss Photography Installation Under I-95

Philly photographer and installation artist Zoe Strauss will exhibit 231 new and selected works today, Sunday, May 4th, 2008 from 1pm to 4pm under I-95 at Front St. and Mifflin St. in South Philadelphia.

The exhibition is free and open to the public. Selected pieces of Ms. Strauss's art will be available as color photocopies for purchase at five dollars each. The event will happen rain or shine.

This is the 8th year of Ms. Strauss's ongoing 10-year photo installation in South Philadelphia. Within the last 8 years Ms. Strauss has shown in the 2006 Whitney Biennial, had an acclaimed solo show at Silverstein Photography, is shooting for a book of her photography to be released in October 2008, has been commissioned to create a ramp project at the Philadelphia ICA, had eight prints purchased by the Philadelphia Museum of Art for their permanent collection, received a Leeway grant and became a member of the Leeway advisory council, shown a slideshow at the Philadelphia ICA and won the "friends of Arcadia award" for her piece in the Arcadia Works on Paper Show.

Zoe Strauss is also the executive director of the Philadelphia Public Art Project. For more information on the May 4 exhibit or on the Philadelphia Public ArtProject please visit this website or contact Zoe Strauss at info@zoestrauss.com or 267.250.4158.

Only two years left in the project! Don't miss it!

New one on me

"Art day trading" is what I am going to call this curious happenstance.

Gallerist tells me of selling a work of art to a collector during a preview of a show. Buyer pays around $30,000 for the piece and then says to the gallerist something along the lines of: "keep it for sale during the show and see if someone buys it for $40,000 by the end of the exhibition."

Never seen this before

We went gallery hopping around Philly's Old City section and the streets were packed with people, performers and artists. All the galleries were packed.

In fact, the opening at Wexler Gallery was so crowded last night, that the owners at one point had to regulate traffic flow into the gallery as people came in and out.

I've never seen a gallery so packed for three solid hours and when they finally closed the doors there were still tons of people outside.

I'll have a video of the openings and the artwork later...

Art for Obama

On Friday, May 23, 6:30-9 PM, Duality Contemporary Art, a new gallery located in Arlington, Virginia, near the Shirlington area, is hosting an "Art for Obama Benefit Reception."

Art for sale is priced from $100 to $800 and there's a silent auction as well. Work by: Deborah Coburn, graffiti artist Tim Conlon, Joy Every, John Gascot, Dirk Herrman, Elizabeth Grusin-Howe, Lucy Herrman, Beverly Ryan, Nancy Sausser, Langley Spurlock, Paula Wachsstock, Angelika Wamsler, and more.

Details here

Healing Arts Gallery Grand Opening

DC's Smith Farm will be hosting the grand opening of its new Healing Arts Gallery on Friday, May 9th from 5:30-8PM.

The Gallery is a first-of-its-kind exhibition space in the US, innovatively designed to provide each visitor with a unique experience of how the arts can enhance wellbeing.

Smith Farm Center, a renowned leader in combining art with health and healing, has leveraged its decade of experience at the forefront of this emerging field to design and construct the facility in the heart of the U Street historic art district in Washington, DC.

The Gallery, recently featured at the Museum of Modern Art’s (MOMA’s) “Value and Importance of Art in Health Care” Conference, is supported by the DC Commission on Arts and the Humanities for its groundbreaking approach. The public is invited to attend the grand opening events.

It’s also a “green” gallery – and I believe it may be the first in the nation. Whenever possible, Smith Farm has chosen to incorporate environmentally sensitive choices into the rehabilitation process. These choices include: compact flourescent lights throughout the space, No-voc paint, a donated, reclaimed brazilian cherry wood floor, low-water flow toilet and energy efficient HVAC system. The Gallery has a "green roof" and two living walls of plants that actually oxygenate the facility. The Gallery’s tenant is a store that focuses on green products.

Details here.

A note from J.W. Mahoney

Corrections from J.W. Mahoney on “Report from Washington, D.C.” Art in America, May 2008

It's always lucky whenever the DC arts community gets any major art magazine coverage, and, with only a few exceptions, noted below, I stand by the edit of the text of this article. My image selection for the piece, however, was largely ignored by the editors. There are images I consider redundant by some Color School artists – the art world knows all these people by now – and, without any disrespect implied to the artists themselves, any images by artists unmentioned in the text were selected by my editors. The piece looks good, but it's not as I designed it to look.

Some textual corrections: Philippa Hughes' name is spelled that way. The gallery representing Tom Downing's estate is the Addison-Ripley Gallery, even as Leigh Conner has often featured Tom's work. And Michael O'Sullivan is noted as "the only DC art critic to be taken seriously by local artists," when the original text was, specifically, "the only Washington Post art critic to be," etc. And the original piece was longer, and included more artists, from Jae Ko to Borf, to Yoko Ono.

What's important is that our arts community continue to wake up to two significant conditions: first, that we're radically, originally, rich aesthetically, however slim or quixotic the validation feels from our greater social community and its media - and its museums. Second, that we have to validate (or keep validating) ourselves and each other first, before and whether or not an art world of 2008 or 2009 ever does.

J.W. Mahoney

First Fridays Everywhere!

There's a seriously cool exhibition of paintings by Matthew Kucynski in a show titled "You're apocalypse!" going on right now at Philly's Pentimenti Gallery. The show goes on through May 31, 2008 and the reception for the artist is tonight, May 2 from 6-8PM as part of Philly's great First Friday openings.

And of course Damien Hirst, Tim Tate and others open (In)Between at Wexler Gallery; there's already buzz in Philly about this exhibition and this morning a clip of it was in the local CBS news. I'll be there tonight. Details on all the Philly area gallery openings here.

DC also has their First Friday gallery openings going on for the galleries around Dupont Circle. Also generally from 6-8PM. Details on DC openings here. Check out Washington Printmakers Gallery, they have "Tasting the Ghost," new prints by Heather Self through May 25. Their First Friday Reception is from 5 - 8 p.m., and the Artist's Reception is Sunday, May 4th, 1-4 p.m. with an Artist Talk from 2-3 p.m. Also look for Katya Kronick's paintings at Studio Gallery also opening tonight. A few minutes from Studio, drop by and see Anna U. Davis' solo at Hillyer Art Space.

Tonight is First Fridays in Fell's Point in Baltimore too! Check out DBK5's "Foundations of Style Writing" (Curated by Adam Stab) opening tonight.

Michael Platt

H&F Fine Arts in Maryland opens a solo exhibition of new work by artist Michael Platt. An opening reception will be held on Saturday, May 3 from 5:00–8:00pm; on Saturday, May 24, there will be a reading by poets Carol Beane and Maya James, and storyteller, Ken Ford at 5:30pm followed by a gallery talk with Michael Platt at 7:00pm.

"Lost and Found centers on work made in collaboration with poet and Howard University professor Carol Beane. The historical and contemporary traumas of American slavery and Hurricane Katrina are the implied backdrop for a stunning installation in which a New Orleans-style shotgun house is surrounded by prints of female figures on translucent polycloth. Whether fugitives from slavery or disaster, the figures are displaced, lost, fearful, and yearning. The obscured shotgun house, representing home, is seen but not accessible, telegraphing futility and despair while suggesting the possibility of hope, celebration, reflection, and return."

A 2007 recipient of the prestigious Franz and Virginia Bader Fund Grant, Platt has exhibited nationally and internationally. His work is held in many private and museum collections including the Corcoran Museum, the Smithsonian Museum of American Art, and the Library of Congress.

Artists' Websites: Jeffry Cudlin

"Une Balle au Coeur." acrylic on canvas, 24" X 48", c.2008 by Jeffry Cudlin

My good friend Jeffry Cudlin is a talented artist, a superb curator, the Director of Exhibitions for the Arlington Arts Center, the award-winning art critic for the Washington City Paper, and my WAMU sparring partner on the Kojo Nnamdi show. Visit his website here.

Delphine Perlstein at the Maison Francaise

French artist Delphine Perlstein's opening at Anacostia's Honfleur Gallery last year was ruined by the awful events that happened at Unifest -- remember the person who ran her Volvo through the crowds of people attending the street festival, with her 8 year old in the car?

That was the night of Delphine's opening at Honfleur Gallery, and needless to say, most of the guests could not make it as there was utter chaos, road closures etc. in Anacostia that night.

But Honfleur Gallery stepped up to the plate and worked to secure the artist an exhibition at the French Embassy's Maison Francaise in DC, from May 7th to May 23rd 2008.

If you haven't been to an opening at Maison Francaise, then you're in for a pleasant surprise! Please RSVP to attend the opening reception at 6pm on May 7th. Call 202.944.6091 or email cuturel.wahsington-amba@diplomatie.gouv.fr to RSVP.

Calling all art undergrads!

As I mentioned several times in the past, I've been retained by the Longview Gallery of Washington, DC to curate an exhibition for them focused on student work.

The exhibition hopes to deliver a survey of the best artwork by undergraduate art students working in accredited art school programs in Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland, District of Columbia and Virginia.

Over the last few months I have visited a ton of schools up and down the mid Atlantic. In the process, the new Mayer Fine Art Gallery in Norfolk, Virginia liked the concept, and now the DC show will have selected students have art travel down to Norfolk for a second exhibition there.

I will curate the exhibition from both a submission process as well as visits to schools and studios. All selections and invitations will be made at my discretion.

Through this process, the exhibition also hopes to educate the selected students on the process of participating in a commercial gallery art exhibition, including advance preparations, presentation and delivery of artwork, opening receptions, dealing with the press, etc.

Calendar

May 5, 2008 - Deadline for postmark of entries to me

May 10, 2008 - Invited Artists Notified

June 5, 2008 - Deadline for Delivery of Art to Gallery

June 7, 2008 - Opening Reception

July 5, 2008 - Exhibition Closes

July 6, 2008 - Pick-up of Unsold Work


This exhibition is open to all art students 18 years and older who are enrolled in an accredited undergraduate art school program in Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland, the District of Columbia and Virginia. At my discretion, the exhibition may also include a piece by the selected students' art professor. All work selected must be for sale and framed and presented professionally to conservation standards. Open to all two and three dimensional media. The size of the submitted artwork cannot exceed 40 inches in any one direction (excluding frames).

There are no fees or charges associated with this exhibition and process. Accepted artists are responsible for any costs associated with delivery and return of unsold work. All preliminary judging will be done from digital entries.

A formal opening and reception for the accepted artists will be held on Saturday, 7 June 2008 from 6-8 p.m. at the Longview Gallery. The gallery is located at 1302 9th street, NW, Washington, DC 20001, Tel: 202.232.4788.

A second formal opening and reception (dates to be announced) will be held in Norfolk for the second show.

All the details and prospectus can be downloaded here. Art professors desiring to contact me to set up a school visit should contact me directly via email: lenny@lennycampello.com.

Looking for DC area studio space?

The Glen Echo Park Partnership for Arts and Culture is seeking visual artists and nonprofit visual arts organizations to join the Park’s Resident Artists and to lease studio space in the refurbished Chautauqua Tower.

Artists are invited to join them for an Open House on Saturday, May 3 from 10:30am to 1pm for studio tours and more information. Two studios will be available for a 1-3 year lease starting on July 1, 2008. For further details about Glen Echo Park, its resident artists, and to download the Request for Proposals, please visit www.glenechopark.org. Responses to the Request for Proposals are due on May 27, 2008.

Art Basel news

"Thanks to the appearance of an exponentially more fabulous Art Basel Miami Beach fair each December since 2002, the once-tattered resort town has gained a new sense of itself as an aesthetic destination. . . . Now members of the local Establishment, enamored with their smart new friends—collectors, artists, and curators from around the world—want to see if they can get them to stick around. It’s partly about wishing to be taken seriously as a cultural alternative to New York and Los Angeles. But it’s also a bet that fertilizing the creative class is good economic-development policy—especially in a city hit hard by the real-estate meltdown. Which is why a local developer and collector, Craig Robins, is starting a free postgraduate art program in Miami."

Read the whole article by Brett Sokol here.

Speaking of Art Basel, Cay Sophie Rabinowitz today resigned as Artistic Director of Art Basel and Art Basel Miami Beach. Art Basel and Art Basel Miami Beach will be led now by Annette Schönholzer (formerly Director, Operations and Finance) and Marc Spiegler (formerly Director, Strategy and Development). Both now share the title Co-Director, Art Basel and Art Basel Miami Beach.

I'm also trying to confirm an interesting ABMB vs MB rumor... more on that later.

Senior Art Show at WCU

Because I am currently curating an undergraduate student show, which I have titled "Early Look," I have been visiting a ton of art schools along the mid Atlantic.

I recently visited West Chester University in West Chester, Pennsylvania and will soon review their "Senior Art Exhibition" here.

Meanwhile, see a quick walkthrough of the show below...

Scott Brooks - Under the Skin


One of the innovative, inventive, smart, and nicest artists from the Greater DC area is the very talented Scott Brooks and he is opening in DC's Longview Gallery. The opening reception is Saturday, May 10, 5-8pm.

I've been admiring how Brooks continues to grow and progress as an artist - and the most important "and" - to exhibit widely around the nation.

And thus I add him to my "Buy Now" list.

Buy Scott Brooks now!

Wanna go to a Philly opening on Saturday?

There's tons of openings in Philly and DC as part of the First Friday gallery openings routine, but just in case...

Strata Sphere, an artistic exhibition space at 1854 Germantown Avenue in Philadelphia, will be presenting the works of two area painters, Paul Hamanaka and Darla Beckemeyer Cassidy, in a show titled The Floating World, from May 3rd through June 7th.

The Floating World is a concept in Buddhism that "expresses the ephemeral nature of our existence." There will be an opening reception on Saturday, May 3rd, from 2pm – 5pm. The exhibition will run until June 7th.

Cuban reviews

Although I am Oh-for-two as far as reviews are concerned for the two shows that I have curated so far for DC galleries this year, the one currently on exhibition at Norfolk's Mayer Fine Art Gallery has been getting good critical coverage and exceptional sales.

One look at this exhibition makes it clear why Cuban art is especially hot right now.
- Betsy DiJulio
Portfolio Weekly

Last week it was reviewed by the Virginian Pilot (as soon as I can find a link I will put it up) and today it was reviewed by the Portfolio Weekly. Read that review here.

Danny Conant at Tibet House in NY

For many years now, DC area photographer Danny Conant has been visiting, photographing and developing a special relationship with the people and the nation of Tibet.

This relationship is clearly evident in Conant's beautiful new book Vanishing Tibet, which delivers ample proof of what can be created when a superbly talented photographer puts her passion and effort on a subject that is special to her.

And this Thursday, May 1, 2008, Conant also has an opening of her Tibet photographs from 6-8pm at Tibet House in New York. The exhibition runs to July 1, 2008.

Washington Report

Art in America magazine's May issue has a report on Washington, DC by AinA's DC editor, my good friend J.W. Mahoney (page 94).

(In)Between opens in Philly this Friday


This coming Friday Philadelphians will get a chance to see some interesting sculptures by British artist Damien Hirst and the District's own Tim Tate in what appears to be a superbly well-curated group show at Philadelphia's Wexler Gallery.

Damien Hirst, The Fate of Man (5/25), 2005, Cast silver, 6 x 5 x 8 inches
Curated by Sienna Freeman, Associate Director of the Wexler Gallery, the exhibition is based loosely on the idea of Vanitas - 16th century Dutch still-life paintings that celebrate life’s pains and pleasures while meditating on their inevitable loss.


Damien Hirst, The Sacred Heart, 2005. Cast silver, 12 x 17 inches
Featured artists include Damien Hirst, Randall Sellers, Adelaide Paul, Tim Tate, Anne Siems, Dirk Staschke and Joe Boruchow. The show will run from May 2nd through June 28th, 2008. *An Opening Reception will take place on First Friday, May 2nd from 5-8pm.


Tim Tate, Love in the New Millennium. Blown and cast glass, electronic parts, original video. 14 x 6 x 6 inches

I know that you know that I have no objectivity when it come to Tate, and I have been telling you this since his sculptures were $600 a pop, but buy Tim Tate now!

5th Annual Bethesda Fine Arts Festival

The Bethesda Arts & Entertainment District will present the 5th annual Bethesda Fine Arts Festival, a two-day fine arts event highlighting 140 contemporary artists who will sell their original fine art and fine craft on the streets of Bethesda, Maryland. The festival is scheduled for Saturday, May 10 from 10am-6pm and Sunday, May 11, 2008 from 10am-5pm.

The festival will take place in downtown Bethesda’s Woodmont Triangle along Norfolk and Auburn Avenues, located six blocks from the Bethesda Metro Station. Free parking is available adjacent to the event in the parking garage located on Auburn Avenue.

With over 20,000 attendees over the two day period, the Bethesda Fine Arts Festival has become one of the top art events in the Greater DC region and a must see for those who think that good art is only available in gallery or museum walls.

Direction here and a list of details here.

Go buy some artwork!

Con La Mirada en el Cielo

In his second solo show at Philly's Projects Gallery, Henry Bermudez presents “Con La Mirada en el Cielo” where Bermudez continues "his exploration of spiritually surreal imagery, combining his unique vision of pre-Colombian and Christian iconography. The complex arrangement of interlocking lines and colors are reminiscent of intricate Persian tapestries. The dense arrangement invites us to travel further into a realm of contemplation. Bermudez’s current body of work expands upon the tradition of cut-paper assemblage, in some cases expanding his surface to monumental proportions."


An internationally exhibited artist, Bermudez’s work is in numerous museum and private collections throughout the world. He was the Venezuelan representative to the 1985 Venice Biennale. A solo exhibition of his work is scheduled at the National Museum of Catholic Art and History in New York City in 2009.

The exhibition opens this coming First Friday, May 2nd with artist receptions from 5-8 p.m. The exhibition continue through May 31st, 2008.

DCAC’s Sparkplug opens this coming Friday

DC Arts Center’s resident collective Sparkplug launches its first exhibition as part of "an ongoing pursuit of adventures beyond the commercial gallery system."

Sparkplug is "a gathering of a dozen or so Washington, DC metro area emerging artists, curators and writers that meet once a month to discuss their work, explore common concerns and ideas, grow their community, and dream up creative engagements both in DC and around the globe."

This inaugural two-week catalyst show will include work by: Deborah Carroll-Anzinger, Peter Gordon, Lisa McCarty, Kathryn McDonnell, Michael Matason, Mark Planisek, Karen Joan Topping and Jenny Walton. It is curated by Lea-Ann Bigelow.

The goal of Sparkplug is "to identify superior artists, curators and arts writers without current gallery representation or institutional employ, to provide them with an ongoing source of support, inspiration and encouragement, and to enlist them in the long-term development of a vital DC Arts Center collective."

Sparkplug is still actively seeking members – "dedicated visionaries with a broad range of backgrounds and experiences and a diversity of professional preoccupations and creative aspirations – from all communities in the Washington, DC region."

The Opening Reception is May 2, 7 - 9pm and some of the artists will be on hand on Saturday, May 10th from 3:00 PM to 6:00 PM to discuss the show, their work, and Sparkplug at the DC Arts Center.

Sculpture at Evergreen

Wanna go to an opening in Philly next Friday?

The Bridgette Mayer Gallery in Philly has coming up an interesting solo show of gallery artist Ivan Stojakovic -- titled Build-Up -- opening on the 29th, which will run through May 24, 2008.

This is Stojakovic's second solo show at the Bridgette Mayer Gallery. He currently lives and works in New York City, and is originally from Belgrade. Along with his solo show at the gallery in 2007, Stojakovic has exhibited in New York, Canada and Serbia in solo and group exhibitions.

Build-Up will run from April 29- May 24, 2008. An opening reception with the artist will be held, First Friday, May 2nd from 6:00- 8:30p.m.

Post Modernist Writing

". . . invents puzzles out of nonsequiturs to seek congruence in seemingly incongruous situations, whether visual or spatial . . . inhabits those interstitial spaces between understanding and confusion."

The above quote is from the Whitney Museum's Biennial exhibition of contemporary art... yeah.

That elitist deconstruction of the English language is what passes in some circles for art lingo, but the Wall Street Journal's Eric Gibson has it right when he writes that "there is no excuse for a museum letting nonsense of the sort quoted above out in the open, particularly an institution whose mission includes educating the public. If the Whitney continues to snub this public -- its core audience -- by "explaining" art with incomprehensible drivel, it shouldn't be surprised if people decide to return the favor and walk away."

Bravo Mr. Gibson! Read the whole article here.

I visited the Biennial a few weeks ago intending to write a review, but I just couldn't justify spending time doing so. Everything seemed... so common and typical... nothing stood out in my mind.

For example, Oliver Mosset's work is exactly like a the work of a couple of hundred art school students each year (and because I am curating a student exhibition even as I type these words... I know!) and even like the work of a few Artomatic artists every time that there's a new AOM. As is Ry Rocklen's... or Frances Stark or 97.756% of these artists' works.

It is not to say that they are all bad, but what it does says -- to anyone who visits a few art fairs and a few hundred art gallery openings a year -- is "I've seen a few dozen artists who do exactly this stuff... yawn."

In this blue chip setting, I and we want to see something that WOWs us... never mind the shitty writing to explain the shitty art.

We say this because we expect this show to -- at least-- show us a couple of artists and works which really stand out, but instead, it seems likes it continues to degrade into a masturbatory event of "what-does-the-chosen-curator-who-never-actually-goes-to-gallery-openings-regularly... so that he/she only has a tiny perspective..." think is "new" and worthy of inclusion.

But it is not the curators's fault, but the mix of curators.

Whitney Museum: Throw in some common sense in there and you'll be shocked by the changes. Add a small time collector to the curatorial mix; not a multimillionaire, but a guy who owns a dry cleaners or a deli and has a passion for collecting art, or a bartender from NYC who has a passion for going to gallery openings and whose apartment is full of art. Include a small city curator or gallery director with a very focused perspective and you might be surprised what some commoners' blood does add to your blue blood curatorial effort: stamina and a new set of eyes (and new eyes have new perspectives),

For arts' sakes, connect to the "outside the art world" world... somehow.

Otherwise, stay they way you are, and resign yourselves to be the laughing stock of the critical and public world, but at least show me at least one memorable fucking painter or at least one video worth remembering, or one installation that doesn't look like garbage.

Pick out a really young artist whose name hasn't come to you via the usual routes... someone still in school but struggling to deliver something that is good and still someone can choose to display in their homes, for after all, some significant parts of the production of the art community are commodities -- not all mind you -- but not all are just ideas and undecipherable conceptual art.

It's supposed to be sort of a survey... right? So stop trying to be so edgy, because by the time you get to the edge, we've already seen it before when we got there first.

Because unlike you, we are not stuck in offices in museums, waiting for someone in our inner circle to tell us what is the latest and greatest in edgy art, so that we can then re-invent the English language to explain it.

Get out and see some stuff, and remember what the word "survey" means. Or take the approach that some Latin American nations' Biennials take (such as El Salvador and Costa Rica) and open the Biennials so that artists can send submissions for consideration. In this cyberspace world, it is not that hard to do and not that difficult to view and jury.

As for the text, it also brings me to the non-issue of: since every signage in public spaces these days are of the bilingual nature, why isn't museum wall text also displayed in Spanish?

Oy Gevault! Imagine translating all that crappy writing into Spanish if the Whitney Biennial was to travel around the US, as some have suggested.

Que Barbaridad!

Orphan Works Bill

(Via)

In their final report, the independent review has recommended that the UK adopt a similar policy to what U.S. Orphan Works legislation is proposing, namely that works can be used if the copyright owner cannot be found after a 'reasonable search'.

Is Congress on drugs or what? Give up copyright if the copyright owner cannot be found after a "reasonable search"? This is crazy! Especially in the cyberspace world of today, where an image may be reproduced myriads of time and then lives forever as multiple digital footprints of that original image!

According to the Orphan Works Blogspot, earlier on, the Copyright Modernization Act of 2006, HR6052, which incorporated the Orphan Works legislation, after intense pressure, was withdrawn, but it is now back!

Read the Senate Version here and/or the House version here and then contact your Lucy-in-the-Sky-with-Diamonds elected official and tell him or her to drink a lot of coffee and realize what they're doing!

You'd think that the Republicans were in charge of Congress or somethin'!

Talking about Romare Bearden...

A Romare Bearden mural at a Port Authority subway station has been appraised at $15 million and could cost the transit agency more than $100,000 a year if it is forced to insure it, officials said Wednesday.

The financially troubled Port Authority is now struggling to decide what to do with the mural, according to spokeswoman Judi McNeil.

"We have to put our practical hats on and say, 'We're a bus company. We're not art experts,' " she said.

The mural, in the Gateway Center Station, was appraised as the Port Authority plans to build a new station. The project is part of the $435 million North Shore Connector T expansion from Downtown to the North Shore.

Port Authority officials plan to meet with members of the arts community, including local museums, to discuss the mural and whether it should be relocated to the new subway station or to another venue.

Interesting, uh? There's more!

The mural was mounted in the subway as it opened in 1984. The agency commissioned Bearden for $90,000, using donations from public and arts organizations.

Officials are leaning toward appraising a second subway mural, also potentially valuable. A Sol LeWitt mural called "Thirteen Geometric Figures" is mounted in the Wood Street Station, Downtown. LeWitt is considered the father of conceptual art.

I think some DuChampians would have a little issue with that last statement, but read the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review story here.

Rice on Duane Michals

The Philly City Paper's Robin Rice with an excellent review of Duane Michals at the Sol Mednick Gallery, Univ. of the Arts, in Philly.

The Poet decorates his muse with verse, c.2004 Duane Michals
Read it here.

52 O Street open studios this weekend in DC

I alerted all of you a while back, and DCist's Lynne Venart now has an excellent walkthrough of the studios.

Read it here and then go buy some art... somewhere.

Lotta Art is tomorrow in Baltimore

Inaugural Exhibition

I've been remiss in failing to mention the inaugural exhibition of the new Lillian and Joseph C. Duke Gallery at the Community Arts Center of Wallingford, PA - the nearest art gallery/center to my own home!

On exhibit is the Philadelphia Watercolor Society juried members' show of works on paper and the show ends today. The juror was Geraldine McKeown, NWS.

By the way, Media Pennsylvania is known as "Tree City, USA," but I have a new name for them: "Allergy City, USA."

A rarity coming up

Aaron Douglas: African American Modernist presents "the first nationally touring retrospective of Aaron Douglas (1899-1979), one of the most influential visual artists of the Harlem Renaissance. This exhibition brings together more than 80 rarely seen works by the artist, including paintings, prints, drawings and illustrations."

The show opens at the Smithsonian American Art Museum in DC on May 9, and runs through August 3, 2008.

I really hate the segregation of art by race or ethnicity, but once in a while something stands out so grossly out of synch that it must be pointed out.

This coming show is also a rarity for the DC area museums: an exhibition by a black artist.

Example: As far as I know the National Gallery has only hosted one exhibition in its entire history by a black artist, in this case African American artist Romare Bearden.

The Corcoran has done a little better, most recently hosting Sam Gilliam's first retrospective. Jonathan Binstock, then the Corcoran curator, had done his thesis on Gilliam, so I am sure that this helped get this DC art star a long overdue museum show in his own city. And the Phillips Collection certainly has paid attention to my old professor Jacob Lawrence with a couple of traveling exhibitions.

But some black artists are way overdue for the kind of exposure that an NGA show can afford an artist. My first suggestion is Wifredo Lam.

Any others? Feel free to comment.

Wanna go to a DC opening tomorrow?

DC's Studio Gallery has an opening Saturday night April 26 from 5-7PM. They are featuring the work of Roberta Thole in the upstairs gallery. Her works "allude to classicism and the environment and are mixed media with paint, copper and emulsion."

Downstairs gallery has two emerging artists who "use paint in a very bold, abstract way." Katya Kronick "draws her inspiration from nature directly" and Andrew Acquadro "abstracts everyday images in a very bold and dynamic way."

Artists' talk: Alexandria, VA

Amy Lin will be discussing her work at the Art League Gallery in Old Town Alexandria on Saturday, April 26 @ 3:30pm.

Buy Amy Lin now.

Seeing double

One of the below invite cards is from the Corcoran's new "Anonymous" fundraising exhibition, the other is from the Washington Project for the Arts' own series of "Anonymous" fundraising shows...

Eakins update

The Philadelphia Museum of Art announced today that it has completed the funding of its share in the joint acquisition of Thomas Eakins’s heroic 1875 masterpiece, The Gross Clinic, through deaccessioning Eakins’s Cowboy Singing, which has been jointly acquired by the Denver Art Museum and the Denver-based Anschutz Collection, as well as two oil sketches for Eakins’s Cowboys in the Badlands, which have been acquired by the Denver Art Museum. The Museum acquired The Gross Clinic early last year with the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts from Thomas Jefferson University, amidst a spirited campaign to keep the painting in Philadelphia.

Above from the press release from a few days ago; details here.

Five ways to get sued for using people in your Art

Beth Russell is a musician and attorney admitted to practice law in New York, Connecticut and Wisconsin. She is the author of the book Art Law Conversations perhaps the key legal book for artists. Buy it here.

And Beth pens Five Ways to Get Sued for Using People in Your Art for Art Calendar magazine - which by the way is a must subscribe-to magazine if you're an artist looking for a great opportunites and business magazine for artists (disclosure: I've written tons of articles for Art Calendar over the years).

It's a great article; read it here.

Opportunity for Sculptors

Accepting Entries: May 2 to September 5 (received deadline)

The Washington Sculptors Group has a call out for "Aquifer," a sculpture exhibition to be held at the Edison Place Gallery (701 8th Street, NW Washington, DC 20001) and co-curated by my good friends Deborah McLeod and J.W. Mahoney.

The exhibition is open to members of Washington Project for the Arts and Washington Sculptors Group. Artists who are not current members may join either or both organizations. New members may request a membership form by contacting WPA at www.wpadc.org or WSG at www.washingtonsculptors.org.

For more info or details visit the The Washington Sculptors Group website.

New Look

Yes boys and girls... after five years with one of Blogger's earliest templates, I finally took the plunge and switched to a new template in order to allow comments.

You see, for quite a while I have been struggling to add comments to this blog; without an iota of success.

So then I decided to do a little research and quickly found out that my 2003 vintage blog template didn't support comments and that the only solution was to switch to a new one.

And so, countless hours later, here it is! Expects a few visual tweaks here and there.

Frida Kahlo at the Philadelphia Museum of Art

Seldom does an art review need a little context from the perspective of the reviewer's own historical involvement with the work being reviewed, as this one does.

In 1975, I visited Mexico City and discovered the works of Mexican painter Frida Kahlo. Almost immediately, I developed an artistic obsession with Kahlo's image and over the years I have created hundreds of works on that subject, including dozens of art school assignments at the University of Washington School of Art (1977-1981).

Although the vast majority of those works were sold over the years, a few years ago I had a solo show in Washington, DC that chronicled 27 years of preparatory drawings, etchings, oil paintings, watercolors and sculptures about Kahlo.

In 1975 my parents took their first vacation ever, at least in my memory. As Cuban exiles, the American tradition of yearly vacations was as removed from their routine as the Cuban tradition of Nochebuena is from American Christmas holiday customs.

Anyway, they decided to go to Mexico City for a week with another couple from New York, which is where my folks had been living since leaving Cuba as political refugees in the early 60s. In 1975 I was finishing my first year in the US Navy, where I had enlisted right after High School, and stationed aboard USS Saratoga, homeported in Mayport, Florida.

I had turned down a New York State Regents Scholarship, a Cornell University art scholarship and a Boston University art scholarship to satisfy my desire to see the world before I went to college.

Mexico City and its nightlife and food (and how far a dollar went) made such an impression upon my parents and their friends, that the one-week trip became two, and eventually they spent nearly a month in that huge, dirty city, enjoying the food, scenery, clubs and markets. They also asked me if I'd like to join them for a few days, and since they were paying for it, I got a few days leave and flew to Mexico City for about five days of my own, unexpected vacation.

I hardly spent any time with them. As a 19-year-old teenager, my interests were more focused on girls, cheap booze and plenty of great things to do. It was while visiting a museum during the last few days of my visit, that I accidentally discovered Frida Kahlo.

I remember walking into the museum salon where the Two Fridas hung. It was love, or more like witchcraft, at first sight. This large, spectacular painting swallowed my visual senses and attention as no work of art would do again until I first saw Velasquez's Las Meninas at the Prado in Madrid eight years later.

At that first exposure, and the ones that followed over the years, as I tried to absorb as much of Frida Kahlo as I could in my remaining Mexico City days, I became an addict for the work and imagery of this Champagne Communist Mexican virago. I recall sitting down in the room where the Two Fridas was hung, and copying the painting through a pencil sketch done on gift wrapping vellum paper from an earlier touristy purchase of a huge, saucepan sized solid silver belt buckle and brown cowboy etched leather belt that I wore for years and that thankfully has been now lost.

Kahlo left me gasping for knowledge about her and her work. Her imagery was like nothing I had seen before, even in my childhood's New York atmosphere that often included day-long trips to the Brooklyn Museum, the Met, MOMA and many other New York museums.

The more of her work that I discovered, the more I became obsessed with learning about her. In 1975 and the first few years that followed, this wasn't exactly an easy task. In those years, at least in Mexico, Kahlo was still just Diego Rivera's wife; a wife who also happened to paint.

And thus my burning interest in visiting the massive Frida Kahlo exhibition which opened a few weeks ago at the Philadelphia Museum of Art (PMA).

PMA is the only East Coast venue for this major exhibition, the first in nearly 15 years to be devoted to Kahlo's work. It includes more than 40 of Kahlo's paintings, including many that have never been exhibited before, and others which have never been seen in the United States. You can see the exhibition in the video below:



The exhibition was organized by the Walker Art Center working with the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, and curated by Kahlo biographer Hayden Herrera, whose brilliant Kahlo biography is a must read for Kahlophiles worldwide, and by the Walker's associate curator Elizabeth Carpenter.

In addition to the Kahlo works, the curators have included over 100 photographs from Kahlo's personal collection, some of which have been annotated and drawn on by Kahlo.

Among them are images by Tina Modotti, Nickolas Murray, Gisele Freund and many others. They truly help to create a sense of place and time and aura around some of the most iconic imagery from 20th century art.

The PMA show also adds some additional materials from the museum's own collection. These works, mostly ex-votos works, really add a brilliant insight to Kahlo's influences. The PMA additions were curated by the PMA's Michael Taylor and Emily Hage; more on that later.

A proper Kahlo primer demands the reading of Hayden Herrera's Kahlo biography or at the very least the viewing of Selma Hayek's Frida movie.

The film was the most recent of a curious worldwide Kahlomania that shows little sign of slowing down. It is especially curious in the sense that the artist who now represents "Mexicanity" to its most profound depth, was essentially ignored in her own country for many years, both during and after her lifetime (Kahlo died in 1954), and only had one exhibition of her works in Mexico (in 1953), just before she died.

Kahlo was born in 1907, and in 1929 she married Diego Rivera. At the time he was perhaps Mexico's best-known artist and womanizer, and their relationship was turbulent, to say the least. It also provided the subject matter for some of Kahlo's best-known works.

Almost upon entry we see "Frieda [sic] and Diego Rivera," painted in 1931. Painted while Kahlo and Rivera were living in San Francisco, this work was first exhibited at the 6th Annual Exhibition of the San Francisco Society of Women Artists. It's a rather sad double portrait, where Kahlo paints Rivera's profession as an artist, and depicts herself as a traditional Mexican wife, even taking Rivera's last name when she signs the work "Frieda [sic] Rivera." Their hands barely touch each other.

Kahlo was a woman of multiple identities, but this one is far from the Frida Kahlo who has become an unexpected icon to the world's feminist movement. And yet this early work provides a seminal entry point to Kahlo's deep debt to Mexican folk art, and what Herrera calls "Mexicanidad" (or Mexicanity), a post-revolutionary idea formulated by Mexico's intelligentsia to carve out a Mexican identity based upon its own rich indigenous history and its mestizo culture.

And over the years a distinct and very Mexican icon would emerge. An artist who has also become a separate icon not only to the same Mexicans who mostly ignored her while she was alive, but also to the new culture of Mexican-Americans once known as Chicanos who have since adopted her as an iconic cultural leader of their re-discovered Mexicanity.

A genetic and iconic paradox emerges in this latter deification of Kahlo. In 1936's "My Grandparents, My Parents, and I (Family Tree)," Kahlo has depicted her own family tree proudly reflecting her own mestizo heritage, exhibited by her maternal grandfather's indigenous blood.

She also showcases her three Caucasian grandparents, and even depicts herself being sustained inside her mother and we also see the moment of creation as an European sperm enters her mother's mestizo egg. Kahlo shows herself as a small child in her Blue House, perhaps sadly stating the end of the line, as Kahlo was unable to bear children.

Kahlo's Mexicanity would grow and progress over the years, and she embraced the traditions of Mexican folk art and the colonial religious paintings known as "ex-voto" with a ferocity that is a perfect example why the post-modernist war cry of "it's been done before" fails immediately no matter how often repeated.

"So what?" would have answered Frida Kahlo as she used the ex-votos as guides for some of her most successful works.

In "The Suicide of Dorothy Hale," we have an opportunity that no one else got to see at the Walker or will see in SF. An opportunity to see, side by side, how Kahlo embraced an older tradition and brought it forward to her own painting dialogue.



Commissioned by Clare Booth Luce in 1939 (while Kahlo was living in New York as a bit of a Champagne Communist) to commemorate the suicide of her friend Dorothy Hale, I was told by Hayden Herrera that it "horrified" Luce when she first saw it.

It is a painting executed in the direct style of the ex-votos, and somehow the PMA has found in its own collection an ex-voto that almost matches the storyline of the Kahlo painting.

An ex-voto is a votive painting commissioned by someone to celebrate or record an event where someone has survived a dangerous event. In Mexico, it was generally painted on tin sheets. Often the ex-voto has a narrative style that shows the progression of the event, in a timeline, in the actual work.

In the Kahlo painting we see Dorothy Hale jumping to her suicide, first as a small figure jumping off her apartment building, which is surrounded by clouds echoing El Greco. We then see Hale's body in a close up of her fall, and finally the broken and bloodied woman on the ground. A banner at the bottom of the painting tells the story in Spanish, and Kahlo has bloodied her signature and even the frame.

In the PMA's ex-voto, titled "Fall from a Balcony," we see a Nanny and child falling through the floor of a balcony, which has given way under their weight. We also see them on the ground, having fallen and miraculously survived the fall. The banner at the bottom relates the story of the fall.

It's a brilliant juxtapositioning of two unrelated works that cement the powerful influence of ex-voto upon Kahlo's own work as no words can describe.

Brilliant artists borrow from all sources around. The Beatles' "A Day in the Life" borrowed from the morning newspaper headlines that Sir Paul was reading over his beans on toast:

I read the news today oh boy
Four thousand holes in Blackburn, Lancashire
And though the holes were rather small
They had to count them all
Now they know how many holes
it takes to fill the
Albert Hall

Kahlo's horrific "A Few Small Nips," painted in 1935, is a revelation in many ways. As Herrera tells the story, Kahlo was inspired to make this gruesome painting, which depicts a man in a bloodbath of an assault on a naked woman who has been stabbed many times, from a newspaper story relating the crime.

The killer, while being reprimanded by the judge, was quoted as responding that he had only given the victim a "few small nips."


The work came at a difficult time in Kahlo's own life, when her marriage to Rivera was on the rocks, because Rivera had an affair with Kahlo's younger sister Cristina. The painting is a visual bloodbath itself; Kahlo's misery is projected onto victim lying naked on a bloodied bed. There's blood everywhere, including the frame, which Kahlo has used to extend the bloodstains.

And there's something else that even a Kahlo expert such as Herrera first discovered when she saw this painting for the first time during this exhibition: Kahlo has also stabbed the frame repeatedly, extending her own anger onto the wood, giving it a few small nips of her own.

This is why sometimes even a familiar work of art yields new clues when examined for real; those angry stabs on the frame had not been revealed in the countless reproductions of this work.

This revelation alone is worth a trip to see this exhibition. See Hayden Herrera discuss the work below:



Another incarnation of Frida Kahlo was her ability to paint her own pain. Starting with a horrific accident in her youth, which left her body broken and subject to pain throughout the rest of her life as well as countless operations, Kahlo borrowed from her own physical pain to deliver images that makes us wince from a different place than the images of a suicide or a stab victim.

Physical pain that comes from a deep moist place inside us all, and which Kahlo has exposed via her painting many times.

It's there in "The Broken Column," (c. 1944) and also in "Without Hope," and perhaps in one of her best-known paintings "The Little Deer," where the pain becomes arrows on the deer's body.

There are surprises in this show as well. Even for a Fridaphile like me and I suspect for most acolytes of Fridamania. Such as "The Circle," a round work that is undated and look nothing like any Kahlo work that I have ever seen.

And then there is "The Two Fridas" just as I remember from my first exposure to it back in the mid 1970s. This is her largest work, painted in 1939 and occupying a place of honor in the exhibition.

Two gigantic Fridas sitting against an El Greco sky, holding hands and sharing a bloodline. One is a Mexican Frida in her Tehuana dress; the other Frida is bloodied and the dripping vein paints small red flowers on her white dress; perhaps a contemporary European wedding dress of the times.

See curators Herrera and Carpenter discuss the work below (the video is part 1 of 3; the rest are at YouTube):




I hope that this exhibition will kindle new interest not only from her legions of fans, but also from art scholars and researchers, as there are still many holes and gaps that need to be identified and expanded in this amazing life.

Kahlo's influence on contemporary art also needs serious examination by art scholars and researchers. Kahlo's obsession with her own image has been reflected in the work of many important contemporary artists and photographers who use their body and image as the canvas for their work.

And even as Fridamania continues to expand and her images commodified into Chinese made Mexican souvenirs of all kinds, Frida Kahlo is a major 20th century artist, perhaps even eclipsing her husband's place in art history.

Like Picasso, Kahlo refused to be labeled and refused to produce one style or genre of work. “God is really only another artist," once said Picasso, "He invented the giraffe, the elephant, and the ant. He has no real style. He just goes on trying other things."

Frida Kahlo is at the PMA through May 18, 2008. See a quick walk-through the exhibition below:

When bloggers bite

Read this.

Been done...

Remember the Washington Post "experiment" with violinist Joshua Bell playing outside a Metro station in Washington, DC, just to see who would notice?

(Via) And so someone (www.Klara.be a Belgian art radio/channel) has done a very controlled experiment for 48 hours with a painting by Belgian painter Luc Tuymans, one of the stars of the contemporary art world. They put one of his paintings out on the street and then filmed it for 48 hours and counted the people who ignored it (96%) and the people who stopped to look at it (4%). See the experiment below:

These kind of "experiments" are silly, because people out on the street, especially outside a Metro station - as was the case with the Joshua Bell experiment - are in the context of getting from A to B, and their senses are attuned to that task, not listening or viewing artwork.

A more interesting experiment would be to put a Luc Tuymans in a group exhibition of emerging artists in some artists' cooperative somewhere, under another name, and then see what happens with jury awards, visitors interests, etc.

Even there the context is a little sketchy, but a lot clearer than having it hung on a busy street.

Or put a John Currin painting on the streets and see how long before someone defaces it.

I personally just like to sit in front of "Watson and the Shark" at the NGA and see how it reels people in.