DCARTNEWS reader and fellow artist Michelle Banks brings this New York Times story about a four-year-old artist to my attention.
"In all, Marla has sold 24 paintings totaling nearly $40,000, with the prices going up. Her latest paintings are selling for $6,000. Some customers are on a waiting list."I now share it with you. Read it and weep.
I've been thinking about taking this class:
The Washington Glass School offers a class titled "Beginner Glass Lovers' Weekend."
This class is for those of us who damned near flunked glass in art school or are just starting out or who just want to make some cool stuff out of glass. You learn all the basic stuff over a weekend, and this weekend is the Beginners Glass Lovers' Weekend and the class is being offered.
Not only do students learn several ways to work with glass, but they also will make four glass pieces (bowls, etc.) while learning at the same time. For more info or schedule of other classes, contact the school at 202/744-8222 or via email at WashGlassSchool@aol.com.
Jacqueline Trescott, writing in the Washington Post, reveals that the National Gallery of Art is finally dedicating permanent galleries to photography, giving prominence to the photographs of Alfred Stieglitz, Walker Evans, Man Ray, Paul Strand and Ansel Adams.
I hope some women photographers also find their way to the permanent galleries.
Sarah Greenough, is the curator and director of the department of photographs at NGA, and three shows a year are planned for the new galleries. The coming shows are by Roger Fenton, Andre Kertesz and Irving Penn.
Photography is certainly very hot, and at least 50% of our sales are photographs from the fifteen photographers that we represent.
And next November 13, beginner collectors have a great opportunity to start or add to a collection through the Annual "Auction in the Park" being held by PHOTOWORKS At Glen Echo Park.
All tickets include one entry in an art raffle, entitling every guest to a work of art from the raffle collection. In addition, a silent auction will feature photographs by well-known contemporary photographers, on-location shooting with respected commercial photographers, funky photo equipment, and trips and workshops with photography-related themes.
For more info, contact Alexandra Walsh at 301/523-3318 or Emily Whiting at 301/213-7763.
The George Carlin quote for September:
"I'm desperately trying to figure out why Kamikaze pilots wore helmets."
OK... ready for some info about some openings to go and see over the next few days?
On Wednesday, Sept. 29, from 5-8 PM, Zenith Gallery's space at 901 E Street, NW, showcases The Reflection Series, a recent collection of stunning photo-realistic oil paintings by Washington DC artist Joey Manlapaz. I am familiar with Manlapaz's works and she has refined her skill to a level where I consider her amongst the best photo-realistic painters that I've seen in the last few years and certainly around here.
This coming Friday is the first Friday of the month. So boys and girls: what does that mean?
Answer: The Galleries of Dupont Circle are having their opening receptions or extended hours. It all happens from 6-8 PM this coming Friday. I'll be there! Come and say hello if you see me.
On Sunday, October 3, from 3-5 PM, four very good area artists are having an open studio (for the grubs in the audience: they will have Champagne and Hors d'Oeuvres).
They are Rosalind Burns, Susan Hostetler, Michele Montalbano and Jeneen Piccuirro. Their studio is at 411 New York Avenue, NE and you should RSVP to 202/546-9584.
Later that day, Lucy Hogg has an artist's talk at Strand on Volta on Sunday, Oct. 3rd from 7-9 PM. I've seen this show and it is well worth a visit. I am now finishing a review of the show and will be pimping it to the various newspapers and magazines that sometimes publish my reviews. Once it is picked up and published I will also have it here.
I got the feeling (in reading between the lines) that Banerjee was a little uncomfortable with the visual content of the work, and it translated into the profile.
This show is on my list to try and see and discuss this coming week. It has been extended to October 10.
Keegan is currently an MFA candidate at Catholic University.
Remember the whole debate about pandas as public art?
New York had apples, Los Angeles had angels, Norfolk has mermaids, Baltimore has fish - or it is crabs? and a bunch of cities around the world have had cows. And now San Francisco has hearts!
Regardless of how you feel about the pandas being "art," I think that our pandas will soon go on auction and proceeds will help fund grants to DC artists. More info here.
Today's Sunday Arts in the Washington Post gives me yet another opportunity to vent two of my primary pet peeves against the world's second largest newspaper.
The first is why their Chief Art Critic is identified as "Washington Post Staff Writer" instead of "Washington Post Chief Art Critic." I know, I know... it's a Virgo thing, but I think Gopnik deserves to be separated in title from the guy who writes the obituaries, or stories for the Kid's Post. I betcha it has something to do with some silly union rule about all writers being equal.
The second peeve is why The Washington Post's Chief Art Critic seldom if ever writes about Washington, DC galleries. Today he does a magnificent job of writing about New York galleries.
Hey! The New York Times already does a great job of doing that, and I am glad that Blake is affording us to chance to get a view of what's going on around New York galleries.
But.
How about a quarterly article like this one about Washington, DC galleries?
Dupont Circle, Georgetown and downtown DC are a lot closer than Chelsea, and I seriously doubt that the New York Times will send their Chief Art Critic to DC to do a round-up of DC galleries.
Darth Vader Grotesque in the National Cathedral
Grammar.police has a really funny posting discovering that there's a grotesque of Darth Vader in the National Cathedral!
I didn't know this!
It was sculpted by our own Jay Hall Carpenter (who is a damned good sculptor by the way), carved by Takoma Park's Patrick J. Plunkett and placed high upon the northwest tower of the Cathedral.
Makes my head hurt.
I have to eat some crow in reference to some of the issues raised in my earlier posting defending Art-O-Matic; I've since corrected those particular issues. My recollections as to the sequence of events and causes involving Glenn Dixon's on-air comments on the Kojo Nmandi show and the reasons for his subsequent review of the show in the WCP were incorrect, and Dixon pointed this out to me.
I have apologized to Dixon, corrected the posting, and below now publish Dixon's email to me in order to clarify the issue:
Dear Mr. Campello:
I'm writing regarding your posting yesterday about Art-O-Matic. Although you didn't identify me by name, it is no secret that I was the Washington City Paper critic who spoke about the 2002 exhibition on the Kojo Nnamdi Show in November of that year.
You are guilty of misrepresenting my comments and distorting the facts.
That I had not yet attended that year's Art-O-Matic was not something I hid from listeners. In fact, I prefaced my comments with a disclaimer:
"I've gotta say, I have not seen the current Art-O-Matic yet, but I've been to the first one, and it nearly killed me. There is a serious quality issue. It's not a very kind show to viewers. You have to wade through a lot of dross to get a few gems. The first year there were maybe two or three artists out of all of them that I really cared about."
I hadn't intended to weigh in on Art-O-Matic, but found myself in a situation where to keep mum would have been to offer tacit approval to the rather boosterish comments of my fellow guests, Joe Barber and Peter Fay.
By the time my 2002 wrap-up appeared in City Paper in late December, I had seen Art-O-Matic--not at the urging of my editor or because of some supposed scandal, but because I wanted to know if my misgivings were justified. What I wrote was this:
"After dragging myself through Art-O-Matic the first year, I vowed I'd never repeat the experience. But I went again, largely because I felt a little guilty about warning Kojo Nnamdi Show listeners off it sight unseen (although I was upfront about not having visited the exhibition at that point). I needn't have been so scrupulous. If anything, Art-O-Matic, as a visual-art event, had gotten even worse, more sprawling and more amateurish."
Again, note that I was completely forthcoming about the fact that I hadn't seen the show at the time of the broadcast.
The fact that streams and tapes of the Kojo Nnamdi Show and full texts of my writing for City Paper can easily be accessed or ordered online suggests that you made no attempt to check your mistaken recollections against the facts.
This little flap is indeed the result of an ethical lapse, but it is yours alone. You owe your readers a retraction and me an apology.
Sincerely,
Glenn Dixon
Want to go to an opening tonight?
Curated by Faith Flanagan and Allison Cohen, and opening tonight at Dot Projects & Artwork (501 Ninth Street - NE, Washington, DC Phone: 202-546-0334) Saturday, September 25, 6:00pm to 9:00pm is a preview of the exhibition Hot Damn - Fresh Art featuring work by:
Noah Angell, Virginia Arrisueno, Ken Ashton, Lisa Bertnick, Christine Carr, Franck Cordes, Kathryn Cornelius (performance at 7:30 p.m.), Mary Early, Djakarta, Kevin Kepple, Peter Loge, Jayme McLellan, Dylan Scholinski, Trish Tillman, Kelly Towles, Leigh Van Duzer, and Joan Van Sledright.
And next Saturday, the Museum of Modern ARF in Arlington has an opening reception on October 2 from 6-9 PM for "Breaking the Silence II: Questioning Power Now More Than Ever."
Ionarts has a terrific recap of the Peter Schjeldahl (art critic for The New Yorker) lecture at George Washington University's Lisner Auditorium as part of this year's Clarice Smith Distinguished Lectures in American Art.
Downey writes:
"One of Schjeldahl's major points on the topic he chose ("What Art Is For Now") was that the snob appeal of art is one of the "underestimated engines of culture," that for now he has "no desire to swell the size of the tent" of those who love art. In his view, there is no reason to bring art to the masses. Those who want it will find it, and "if somebody doesn't want art, bully for them." However, as Schjeldahl also noted, the audience for art worldwide may be larger now than it ever has been, and the art market is a booming business. This may help explain the gulf that can be observed between major art critics and the art-going public, in the case of the J. Seward Johnson sculptures at the Corcoran, for example (see [his]post from September 14, 2003)."
Defending Art-O-Matic
Two letters in the current issue (one by Judy Jashinsky and one by Philip Barlow) express their disagreement with Schott's view of Art-O-Matic.
Let me start by saying that I am not very objective when it comes to Art-O-Matic. I think that it is the best thing that happens to the Washington visual art scene every couple of years; whatever is in second place is a distant second.
I am also rather sick and tired of the way (because of its size, energy and open attitude towards hanging any and all artwork as long as the artist is willing to help run the show) that it gets bashed by some in the lamestream media, the alternative media and even the BLOGosphere.
Such as when a WCP writer cruelly bashed the 2002 Art-O-Matic on the Kojo Nmandi Show. He admitted that he had not actually been to that year's exhibition (and thus pre-formed an opinion about that year's Art-O-Matic based on his dislike of the previous one). In his defense, he then felt guilty and actually visited the show, which he then brutalized again on paper.
And much like the current CBS Rathergate, some of the past Art-O-Matic bashing didn't really pass the journalistic ethics test.
Such as when a Washington Post art critic wrote a dismissive small pre-opening review, again without actually ever setting foot in the place.
So, I think that it is not just the bad art that they dislike; I believe that they also resent the democraticization of the art process, the joyfulness and uniqueness of the event, the huge public success that it enjoys and the fact that it takes place in our own backyard.
And they miss the key ingredient that the event adds to our cultural tapestry: an incredible amount of artistic energy and a vast amount of attention to the visual arts. Anytime that you get over 1,000 artists to organize something of this magnitude, the footprint and its impact will be vast.
And, as far as I know, there's nothing like it anywhere else in the nation, possibly the world. And here's where the key to Art-O-Matic bashing lies: If the event took place in London, or New York, or Madrid, or LA or San Francisco or even Chicago, it would be lauded as a good thing for contemporary art and artists. I can see the headlines now: "Los Angeles' Art-O-Matic is The Place to Discover the Next Generation of LA's Artists."
So what if it is growing? The 2002 version brought out 40,000 visitors; can we envision a future Art-O-Matic where it is an international open show, where artists from all over the world can participate and a quarter of a million visitors from all over the planet converge on DC to see the exhibition? I can.
So what if it is non juried? That way it allows people like me to go and see work by artists and artist-wannabes that otherwise I would never see because they are way off the radar of our curators and galleries. Granted, a lot of the work in past Art-O-Matics I have found amateurish, bland and forgettable. This puts Art-O-Matic in the same company as many recent shows in the Hirshhorn, the Corcoran and the last few Venice Biennales and Whitney Biennials.
And unlike those exhibitions, and as Barlow eloquently points out in his letter, many of today's top DC artists have Art-O-Matic in their resume: Manon Cleary, Dan Steinhilber, Adam Bradley, Scott Hutchison, the Dumbacher brothers, Renee Stout, Tim Tate, Michael Clark, Allison Miner, Jordan Tierney, Richard Dana, Graham Cladwell,Judy Jashinsky, Richard Chartier, and many, many others.
I am looking forward to Art-O-Matic 2004, and 2006, and 2008...
Louis Jacobson reviews Antonia Macedo at Touchstone Gallery in the current issue of the WCP.
The same issue has picked up my bit about the grubs and has it in their Letters to the Editor.
One of the most eloquent and qualified art critics in our region, Dr. Claudia Rousseau, delivers a third review of our current exhibition of paintings by controversial GMU Professor Chawky Frenn.
Read the earlier Washington Post review here and the Washington City Paper profile of Frenn here.
AJ points to a story in The Guardian that reveals that Dinos and Jake Chapman are about to rebuild one of their dioramas that was destroyed in the Momart storage unit fire in London last May.
That makes an analysis I made a while back about the infuriating "high art" double standards (applied not only to artists, but also to processes and art). These double standards are even more infuriating as one discovers more and more variations upon the same theme. Here it is again:
The Theme:
J. Seward Johnson is a very rich man and his "art" has been brutalized by the press everywhere. I don't like Mr. Seward's work, but the main reason given in the reviewing of his work is not that Seward is a bad guy (he's very generous with his wealth towards the art world) or even a bad sculptor, but that his concept of taking someone else's two-dimensional art works - in Seward's latest case the Impressionists - and making them into a three dimensional "new" work is both kitschy and reprehensible.
The Hypocrisy:
1. As I whined about it before, the British artist brothers Jake and Dinos Chapman's best known works are based on the famous Goya etchings Disasters of War. Initially they used plastic figures to re-create Goya in a miniature three-dimensional form, and like Johnson (later on), one of these 83 scenes became a life-sized version using mannequins. Yet the Chapmans are darlings of the art world and were favorites in the last Tate show.
2. Whitney Biennial selectee Eve Sussman's "art" is to take Velasquez's Las Meninas and turn it into "ten minutes of a costume-drama feature film." It was actually quite good by the way.
3. Jane Simpson is one of Artnet.com's Artists to Watch for 2004. Her stellar reputation in the artworld has been acquired partially by her creation of sculptures based on Giorgio Morandi paintings.
Am I the only one who sees that all of these people are essentially working the same generic concept as J. Seward Johnson - but unlike Johnson, they are being lauded and praised?
What am I missing here?
Today's Washington Post has a really.... uh... odd Roxanne-Roberts-type article by "Galleries" critic Jessica Dawson about "Tony and Heather Podesta [being] a Study in Power Collecting."
"But the Podestas' stock of artists know well the benefits of securing such politically connected patronage. Uniquely capable of advocating for their artists using the lobbying skills of their day jobs, Tony and Heather can secure access, lend advice and connect artists to curators and coveted museum shows. It's backing more valuable, at times, than dollars.So that's where those Hirshhorn and Corcoran curators are hanging out!
...To keep themselves in pictures, Tony and Heather jet to art fairs and biennials from Sao Paolo to San Sebastian -- often just for the weekend. Theirs is a life led breathlessly, moving from airport to dinner party. The art is an extravagance that occasionally gives Heather pause.
... During last year's Venice Biennale, they threw parties night after night, renting out their favorite restaurant and packing it with artists and a gallerist or two. Here in Washington, they've hosted art parties with Patricia Puccini, Cathy de Monchaux, Anna Gaskell, Frank Thiel, Annee Olofsson, Nikki Lee and others. Curators from the Hirshhorn Museum and Corcoran Gallery of Art, top Washington collectors and the city's best dealers regularly show up. Podesta parties are where connections are made."
Pilfered from DCist:
"The Washington Post has decided not to run this week's episode of Boondocks, instead substituting an old sequence. Moreover, when this chat requested permission to LINK to the censored material, which is available to any and all on the Boondocks website, permission was denied.You can view the controversial comics here. The censored series started on Sept. 20 and goes throughout this week, so after viewing the first set of strips, click on "next date" to see the others.
The Washington Post has decided that it is inappropriate to disseminate this material in any way. Personally, this chat takes no position, pro or con, on this ruling, inasmuch as taking a position would amount to insubordination, a quality abhorrent to this chat."
