Top 10 Shows of 2004

With the large number of commercial fine art galleries, embassy galleries, non-profit galleries, artists cooperative galleries, alternative art venues and museums that we have in our Greater Washington, DC area, the task of selecting a list of top anything is not a trivial task.

To make matters worse, everytime that I've done this in the past, and after I see someone else's list, I always go "crap! I forgot about that show!"

Nonetheless, here's my top ten visual arts show of the year for our region, sans our shows of course. I was tempted, as 2004 allowed us to bring to the DC region some brilliant work by world-class Cuban artists like Sandra Ramos, Cirenaica Moreira, Marta Maria Perez Bravo and Aimee Garcia Marrero (all of whom were in Art Basel Miami Beach) as well as a spectacular second sold out show by Tim Tate, who enjoyed what can best be described as a record-setting 2004.

My Top 10 (in no particular order)

Ana Mendieta at the Hirshhorn

Sally Mann at the Corcoran

Chan Chao at Numark Gallery.

Bruno Perillo at Irvine Contemporary Art

Ian Whitmore at Fusebox

The Quilts of Gee's Bend at the Corcoran

Margaret Boozer at Strand on Volta

"In 2Words: Numbers" at Target Gallery.

Courtly Art of the Ancient Maya at the National Gallery.

Dan Flavin at the National Gallery of Art.

Washingtonian takes a swing at Glenn Dixon and Blake Gopnik

Washingtonian magazine's national editor, Harry Jaffe, has an article in the current issue titled "Three Best Post Columnists — and Two Worsts."

He writes:

Worst Review: Glenn Dixon on the Calder Miró show

Reading Post art reviews, one sometimes imagines the critics walking into exhibitions with their noses so high in the air they can’t see the walls. The height of naive nastiness came from Glenn Dixon in his October 10 review of the Calder Miró show at the Phillips Collection. Dixon, a freelance writer, tried to be more dismissive than the Post’s main critic, Blake Gopnik.

He succeeded in that but failed to describe the exhibition. He doesn’t like Miró. He denigrates Duncan Phillips, the museum’s founder. Every line reeks of animus. Viewers have flocked to the Phillips to see the wondrous and playful collection. Ignore Dixon; see the show, which closes January 23.

Regardless of how one feels about Dixon's animus, my question to Mr. Jaffe and to Washingtonian: How can you publish a magazine about Washington, DC and not have a regular column each month that reviews a gallery or museum show?

Like (cough, cough) the elegant and eloquent reviews of restaurants that the magazine publishes in issue after issue?

We need more critical visual art voices in this town to write about our artists, our galleries and our museums. And glossy magazines like Washingtonian need to step up to the plate and add to our city's cultural scene with more than just restaurant reviews and more than just listings of museum shows and the rare page about an artist or a show here and there.

One half page review a month is not much to ask, is it?

How about we kick start another letter writing or email-sending campaign? Let's all write to Mr. Jaffe and ask him to add a regular monthly art review column to the magazine (and not just museum reviews for chrissakes!). Make sure that you also copy the magazine's editor John Limpert and the arts editor, Susan Davidson.

Jeffry Cudlin Goes Yard

That's new baseball talk (new to me) for hitting a home run. The current issue of the Washington City Paper has Cudlin's review of the area's visual arts year gone by.

And I'll be damned if Cudlin doesn't just hit a very readable homer, but also throws a couple of tight fastballs (awright, awright... enough with the baseball talk).

On Blake Gopnik:

"Ostensibly, Blake Gopnik is the Washington Post’s art critic of note. But his coverage of the art scene this year has seemed less concerned with Washington than with a certain city to the north: He wrote a travelogue on the galleries of Chelsea, and he recently began conducting studio visits with artists living and working in Brooklyn. Still, certain D.C. events were on Gopnik’s mind, if not on his itinerary. We could count on him to draw attention to anything confirming his worst suspicions about his occasional hometown — say, those PandaMania bears, or, yes, the redundant controversy of Artomatic (in which I participated)."

That was very good, and it takes cojones to say it; and there's more. Cudlin praises Dixon, references a well-known BLOG and slams Jessica:

"Meanwhile, thoughtful freelance critic Glenn Dixon — the only area reviewer to write on a 19.3 grade level, according to one local art blog — bailed on the Washington City Paper and made an auspicious debut in the Post’s Galleries column. Then he promptly thought better of it and bailed once more —which leaves column readers again with Jessica Dawson and only the blandest publicizing imaginable. But now only twice a month."

Ouch! I do disagree with Cudlin's broad characterization of cooperative galleries when he writes that "Numark [Gallery] stands out in a ’hood that’s home to craftsy emporiums such as Zenith Gallery and — even more dubious — pay-to-show member galleries such as Touchstone."

I disagree 1000% with his characterization of artist-run cooperative galleries.

Cooperative galleries such as Touchstone are not "dubious" and in fact cooperative galleries in this town are some of the oldest galleries in our area, surviving the demise of many private galleris, and have been a breeding ground for many, many artists, who now show in other galleries - including now showing in most of the independent, private commercial fine art galleries mentioned in Cudlin's article.

In fact, I am told that at least one of those "other" galleries mentioned elsewhere in Cudlin's article is one that unfortunately has charged artists to exhibit. This is called a "vanity gallery" and it is much different than a cooperative of artists all sharing the costs of running a gallery space. Being a true "vanity gallery" is unethical especially when the gallery pretends to be a "regular" gallery and in private charges artists a fee to exhibit in their spaces. Very unethical.

Otherwise a superb round-up! Read Cudlin's entire article here.

Bravo Cudlin!

WCP's Top 10 Photography Shows of the Year

Louis Jacobson delivers his take on the photography year for 2004 in our area with a very good piece in the current Washington City Paper.

Lou's Top 10:

1. "Lost Images: Berlin Mitte" at Addison/Ripley Fine Art.

2. "Winogrand 1964" at the S. Dillon Ripley Center International Gallery.

3. "Maxwell MacKenzie: Markings" at Addison/Ripley Fine Art.

4. "Jacques Henri Lartigue: Vintage Photographs, 1905–1932" at Sandra Berler Gallery.

5. "Martin Kollar: Slovakia 001" and "Darrow Montgomery: Postcards From Home" at the Kathleen Ewing Gallery.

6. "ABCDF: Portraits of a City" at the Art Museum of the Americas.

7. "Room Service" at Panhwa Art Studio.

8. "Aaron Siskind: New Relationships in Photography" at the Phillips Collection.

9. "Christopher Burkett: Resplendent Light" at the Kathleen Ewing Gallery.

10. "Viggo Mortensen: Miyelo" at Addison/Ripley Fine Art.

Anne Truitt

One of the Washington area's best-known and most respected artists, Anne Truitt, born in Baltimore in 1921 and a resident of the Greater Washington, DC area for many years, has died at age 83.

Her work was and is represented locally by the Ramon Osuna Gallery in Bethesda.

Our best wishes to the Truitt family.

My current exhibition of nude drawings at Fraser Gallery Georgetown is online here.

Comments, criticisms and purchases welcomed.

The Lebanese newspaper Daily Star has an article discussing the work of GMU Professor Chawky Frenn, who is of Lebanese ancestry.

The article discusses the Dartmouth exhibition where Frenn outshocked Damien Hirst.

Read the Daily Star story here.

The Art League

The Art League is our area's largest artists' organization, with over 1,200 members. The Art League also operates a school with over 2500 students per term and a supply store for the purchase of art supplies by students and members.

When I first re-arrived to the Washington area in 1993, the first thing that I did was to join The Art League, and was a member for several years.

Each month The Art League has a juried competition, where members can bring two original works of art to be juried by a guest juror. Selected works are then hung at The Art League's large gallery on the ground floor of the Torpedo Factory.

The current show was selected by Maurine Littleton, the owner and director of the terrific gallery by the same name in Georgetown that is perhaps the finest glass gallery in the world.

I have been asked to be the juror for the January competition and will be doing so during the first week of January.

To get more details on becoming a member of the Art League, call them at 703/683-1780 or view their application form here.

A couple of days ago I was filmed by a TV crew who is doing a 13 part TV series called "Art Adventures." It is focused on collecting art, mostly for beginning collectors.

They also focused on the work of Tim Tate, as the series also identifies new emerging artists.

It was supposed to be a five minute screen time, which in TV-land always means a couple of hours of shooting.

Dr. Claudia Rousseau, the over-qualified art critic for the Washington Post-owned Gazette newspapers writes a singularly eloquent and intelligent review about our Winter Group Show in our Bethesda outpost.

Cough, cough...

At the risk of sounding nepotic (and definitely waaaaaaaaay past objective!), I think she really drilled into what some of the artists that she writes about are trying to deliver. It's hard to write eloquently about a group show (always some good.. always something forgettable).

Before moving to our area, Rousseau was one of Latin America's most influential art critics. It is no surprise that she gets Cuban artist Sandra Ramos right off the bat and writes:

"Cuban artist Sandra Ramos' approach to figuration uses a surrealist vocabulary to convey politically charged content. "In my paper prison" is part of "Isla prisión," a strongly emotive series about Cuba as a prison in both political and artistic senses. Here, the artist's body, wearing the uniform of Castro's "Communist Youth," lies in the shape of the island behind prison bars formed by pencils. Ten unmounted paper sheets in plastic sleeves comprise "The Inability to Trap Images." Each shows a silk-screened hand with a small image printed above it.

Taken together, Ramos' work can be interpreted as a reference to the failure of artistic censorship, or simply to the travails of the artist to capture reality. Either way, the images make an indelible impression because they clearly have profound meaning for the artist, and hopefully, for the viewer."

And she gets our own area's Tim Tate; she writes about him:

Glass artist Tim Tate's new works, "A Slice of Heaven/A Slice of Hell," the first an icy blue, the second red, hang side by side in long, narrow cast bronze frames. An examination of their imagery presents the same provocative vocabulary that has made Tate so successful in recent years. Much of it appears universal, even Dantesque, but is instead very private and autobiographical in nature. For example, what may recall a Catholic votive for many viewers -- a red glass flame topping a blown glass heart bearing a cross, in turn containing yet another red flame -- is titled with a distinctly non-religious ring: "Hunka' Hunka' Burnin' Love." Yet for the artist, the eternal flame on top, inspired by John F. Kennedy's tomb site, is a healing image, intended to convey ideas of love and spirit outliving death and pain.

Tate uses private images of healing all through his works. In "Nine Paths to Heaven or Hell," a circular piece made of nine glass voussoirs (wedge-shaped pieces that form an arch), the topmost element contains a hand surrounded by rays holding a beaded ball (a nucleus perhaps?), also conceived as a healing image.

Tate's technique is impeccable. Yet his allusive and mystifying content is a far cry from the craft approach often associated with glass art.

Read the whole review here.

New Gallery to Open in Potomac

Potomac, a wealthy Maryland suburb of Washington, DC is located within the Soviet Socialist Republic of Montgomery County, and it is one of the nation's most affluent regions, with an average household income of $246.271 and a median housing value of $919.958, and yet... there's not a single fine arts gallery anywhere in Potomac.

Soon to be resolved!

Potomac will have its first active fine arts gallery beginning early next year. The Kathleen Margaret Srour Gallery promises that it will offer an artists' cooperative gallery and will offer a cooperative management, quality work and low commissions.

Yolanda Prinsloo, its director and founder, is currently reviewing artists for membership. Anyone who is interested, please contact Yolanda at this email address or call her at 301.765.6739.

Artist's Studio Space Available

Premium artists' studio available immediately. Huge, open studio space on ground floor. Secure, 24 ft high loft ceiling, mezzanine, loading dock in prominent Brookland artists' building. Blocks from Metro. $2000/month. Smaller unit available also. Call 202/543-3370 for info or email to this email address.

Corcoran responds to Weil's resignation

Christina DePaul, the Dean of the Corcoran College of Art + Design has submitted the following response to the resignation of Rex Weil.

"Rex Weil is well loved by his students and respected by Corcoran faculty for his energy, passion and unique approach to teaching. We are sorry that he has chosen to resign and find it unfortunate that he does not agree with the direction the College is taking to advance the curriculum and integrity of the institution."

My thanks to Ms. DePaul for taking the opportunity and time to respond.

Congratulations to area photographer James W. Bailey, whose Circle Theater Rough Edge photograph will be published in the Winter issue of the Tulane Review back in his home turf in New Orleans.

Talking about New Orleans, another unusual fact that I discovered in my recent reading of Prof. Louis Perez's excellent book On Being Cuban was the fact that Truman Capote (who was born and raised in the Big Easy) got the "Capote" last name from his Cuban stepdad.

Museum Opportunity for Artists

Deadline: April 30, 2005

Call for Submissions: Radford University Art Museum, Virginia. Artists are encouraged to submit slides or a CD with images of recent work, along with a vita and artist's statement. They have several exhibition spaces ranging from 250 to 1750 square feet, and are open to novel approaches to the exhibition process. Qualifications: "Thoughtful and thought-provoking artists."

Send materials to:
Radford University Art Museum Curators' Committee
Box 6965
Radford University
Radford, VA 24142

20th Annual Mayor's Arts Awards

Everyone is invited to the 20th Annual Mayor's Arts Awards on Monday, January 10, 2005 at The John F Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts.

I've been attending these award ceremonies for the last few years and it is packed with great entertainment: dance, singing, poetry, music, etc.

This free evening of entertainment will feature award presentations and performances by the finest talents in the city. For more information visit the DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities website here.

You can view Mayor's Arts Awards Winners since 1981 here.

Emergency Grants for Artists

Change, Inc. provides one-time $1,000 emergency grants to visual artists of any discipline who are facing possible eviction, unpaid bills, fire damage or any other emergency that the Change, Inc. board deems worthy.

Applicants must be professional artists who can demonstrate need. Send a letter of need, proof of inability to pay bills or rent, a resume, any reviews or press releases of past exhibitions, photos or slides of work and two reference letters from others in the field. Grant applications should be sent to:
Change, Inc.
PO Box 54
Captiva, FL 33924
Tel: (212) 473-3742

Prof. Kurt Godwin's Top 10 DC Area Art Shows

Kurt Godwin, is an Adjunct Art professor with Virginia Commonwealth University and a lecturer at Catholic University of America. He sends in his top 10 DC area art shows, saying that they are "perhaps in no particular order."

1. Mr. Whistler's Galleries - Avant-Garde in Victorian London, Freer Gallery

2. These Things Happen - video by Brandon Morse, Strand on Volta

3. All the Mighty World - Roger Fenton, photography at the National Gallery

4. Cai Guo Qiang - Hirshhorn Directions and the big boat at the Sackler

5. Surrealism & Modernism - at the Phillips Collection

6. Picasso - Cubist Portraits of Fernande Oliver - National Gallery

7. Diego Rivera - Cubism - National Gallery

8. 2004 Summer Juried Show - Signal 66

9. Articulating the Intangible - Group show - McLean Project for the Arts

10. Post Mortem: And Away We Go... - Group show - Signal 66

Rosetta DeBerardinis Top 10 DC Area Art Shows

If anyone around here sees a lot of art shows, then let me tell you: It is DC area artist Rosetta DeBerardinis!

Not only is she a talented and highly collected DC area artist, but for the last few years she has been leading guided gallery walks around the city, most recently as the leader of the new Bethesda Art Walk Guided Tours.

Rosetta gets to see a lot of gallery shows! And here are her top 10 picks:

1. Chan Chao at Numark.
2. Edward Clark at Parish. (Rosetta says that this show was her favorite).
3. Jason Gubbiotti at FuseBox.
4. Joan Konkel at Zenith.
5. Wayne Trappe at Zenith.
6. Sica at Zenith.
7. Tim Tate at Fraser.
8. Rima Schulkind at Touchstone.
9. David Flavin at the National Gallery.
10. Gyroscope at the Hirshhorn.

Corcoran Resignation

Rex Weil, who is the DC area editor for Art News magazine, as well as a highly respected artist, and part of the faculty at the Corcoran College of Art & Design has resigned and sent around the following note:

Dear Friend & Colleagues:

At the end of last week, I resigned from the Corcoran College of Art & Design. The teaching atmosphere at the Corcoran has become intolerable. I hope this will be heard as a resounding vote of NO CONFIDENCE in the administration of the College.

Rex Weil

I don't know what the issues that caused this "atmosphere" at the Corcoran College of Art & Design are, but I hereby invite the Corcoran to respond if they so desire, and I hope that they do, as this key DC area museum and school seems to keep getting into the news for the wrong reasons, and it deserves better. Furthermore, Weil is a very respected name in our area, and I am sure that his resignation will raise questions, as it already has done with me.

Corconites, the ball is on your court.