Lucelia Artist Award Nominees for 2005 Announced

The Smithsonian American Art Museum has announced the nominees for the museum's 2005 Lucelia Artist Award. According to the press release, "nominated artists show a sustained commitment to distinctive work that challenges conventional thinking and expectations about the nature of art. This award is part of the museum's continued commitment to contemporary art and artists through awards and acquisitions."

The 15 artists nominated for the award this year are Doug Aitken, Matthew Barney, Andrea Fraser, Tom Friedman, Ellen Gallagher, Roni Horn, Byron Kim, Maya Lin, Jennifer Pastor, William Pope.L, Fabian Marcaccio, James Siena, Catherine Sullivan, Lisa Yuskavage and Andrea Zittel. Nominated artists work in a diverse range of media including architecture, film, installation, mixed media, painting, photography, sculpture and video.

"The Smithsonian American Art Museum is pleased to acknowledge the significantc ontributions by these selected artists to the vibrant conversation taking place in the contemporary art world today," said Elizabeth Broun, the museum's Director.

The Lucelia Artist Award, established in 2001, annually recognizes an American artist under the age of 50 who has produced a significant body of work and consistently demonstrates exceptional creativity. Jurors nominate artists who will be recognized as one of the most important and influential artists of his or her time.

The $25,000 award is intended to encourage the artist's future development and experimentation. Previous winners were Kara Walker (2004), Rirkrit Tiravanija (2003), Liz Larner (2002) and Jorge Pardo (2001).

The award winner is determined each year by a panel of five distinguished jurors elected from across the United States, each with a wide knowledge of contemporary American art. Jurors determine the award winner in a day of discussion and review and remain anonymous until the winner is announced. Past jurors have included John Baldessari, Dan Cameron, Lynne Cooke, Richard Flood, Gary Garrels, Elizabeth Murray, Jerry Saltz and Robert Storr. The jurors remain anonymous until after the award is announced.

Sidra Stich, executive director for the Lucelia Artist Award, and not the SAAM, is the one who invites jurors to participate and she coordinates the nomination and jurying process. Since the 1970s, she has specialized in contemporary and modern art as a curator, teacher and writer. Stich is also the director of "art SITES," a series of contemporary art, architecture and design handbooks published in San Francisco. Applications are not accepted for this award. The 2005 winner will be announced in April.

The New York-based Lucelia Foundation, which funds the award, supports the visual arts, specifically 19th-century American and contemporary art.

By the way, SAAM is scheduled to reopen on July 4, 2006.

I'm not a mossback... I'm a crackpot!

I thought that I was a "mossback,", but the LA Weekly's Doug Harvey has now convinced me that I am a crackpot!

When critics, gallerists, curators or artists get their knickers in a knot over the need to promote traditional - generally figurative - art as an antidote to the rising tide of decadent, superficial, sensationalist hucksterism, they are relegating themselves to crackpot status. The issue isn't so much the viability of figurative work, as the mainstream art world easily embraces a handful of token figure painters like Elizabeth Peyton or John Curran [sic] every few years. Nor is it merely the fact that they are swimming against the tide of Modernism with its utopian sense of inevitability and its flagship aesthetic of reductive minimalism. What truly isolates them is the siege mentality with which they declare their dedication to representational craftsmanship, a passionate testifying that is out of place in the convivial social whirl of the art marketplace.

Harvey rants against "sixty-something New York based art critic Donald Kuspit" here, as if Kuspit's age has anything to do with his views.

It's all supposed to be a review of a show curated by Kuspit called "California New Masters" at Gallery C in Hermosa Beach, but ends up being somewhat a tirade against Kuspit and Kuspit's opinions on modern art and it even crosses into diminishing the exhibition space and showing a crack in California'a art armor and inferiority complex with NYC:

Kuspit can hardly be described as an art-world outsider, though. A contributing editor to Artforum and several other major art magazines, professor of art history and philosophy at SUNY Stony Brook, and the author of a score of books as well as the official Encyclopedia Britannica entry on art criticism, Kuspit is more of an insider than most Duchamp scholars will ever be. In Columbia University's National Arts Journalism Program's 2002 survey of visual-arts critics, he ranked as the 33rd most influential art theorist in all of history. Still, when the opportunity came for Kuspit to curate an exhibition demonstrating the kind of work he believes offers "the possibility of making a new aesthetic harmony out of the tragedy of life, without falsifying it," that opportunity was nowhere in or around Manhattan, but in the unlikely community of Hermosa Beach in a clean, well-funded space called Gallery C.

Does that mean that it can only make an art statement in Manhattan?

Probably.

Harvey doesn't like Kuspit's views on modern art and uses the unfair broad brush of generalizing, which is his right as a writer and critic, as as he clearly submits that he's partially in the right side of the argument because he is an artist: "it has been my impression from my own study of art history, my experience as an artist (I myself am a Master of the Fine Arts)..." blah, blah, blah...

People on either side of this "argument" are not crackpots; they are people with opinions, just like Harvey. The "argument," by the way, doesn't really exist other than in the words of puerile writing like Harvey's (in this case - I've never read Harvey's writing before, do not know it, nor him and will not paint all of his writing with one adjective) and fools like me who bite this kind of hook every time.

Me? Mossback and Crackpot and proud of it! And I guess I'll miss the "convivial social whirl of the art marketplace."

The Thursday Reviews

Jonathan Padget looks at Pyramid Atlantic in the WaPo and Jeffry Cudlin is eloquently descriptive but somehow leaves me somewhat wondering what he really wants to say (as far as a final opinion) with the last line in the dual shows at Numark Gallery in the WCP.

Last line: "His work manages to be attractive without actually being desirable."

Printmaker Jenny Freestone tells me that this coming Saturday January 29th and Sunday January 30th, from 12 Noon until 6pm, a group of Washington area printmakers will he having a sale of their works in aid of Union Printmakers Atelier, Inc.

Sale is at 926 Blagden Alley, NW (926 N St. Rear) in Washington, DC (Mt. Vernon Square Metro stop).

Artists include: David Chung, Scip Barnhart, Jody Mussof, Jenny Freestone, Andrew Kreiger, Robert Nelson, George O'Connel, Fred Folsom, Bill Woodward, Hi Gates, Kevin MacDonald, Wonsook Kim, and many more. Call Jenny Freestone at 301.655.4910 for more details.

On TV

Filming a TV review of the group show currently being showcased for the re-opening of the Arlington Arts Center, which finally re-opened after three years of being refurbished (originally it was supposed to take less than a year).

It will air next Thursday.

I will also write a review of the show. A heads up: Best of Show easily goes to Richmond artist Claire Watkins.

Read Michael O'Sullivan's excellent review of that show here

Secrets as Art

One of the Artomatic projects or art ideas that really sunk a hook into me, was this really odd and unusual project that had blank postcards where people could write their secrets.

What a terrific idea!

The creator of this idea is Frank Warren, and he is one of the artists whom Anne C. Fisher Gallery is currently showcasing in her beautiful gallery in Georgetown; and I've just been made aware of the Post Secret BLOG, where anyone can post a secret or read someone else's secret.

Is this a new kind of art? Is this the marriage of reality TV with "reality art"?

I don't know, but there's something definately new going on here. Anyone can contribute... and everyone is invited to anonymously contribute a secret to the PostSecret project. Your secret can be a regret, fear, betrayal, desire, feeling, confession, or childhood humiliation; Reveal anything - as long as it is true and you have never shared it publicly (and anonymously) before.

Steps: Create your own 4"x6" postcard and tell your secret anonymously. Then stamp and mail the postcard to the address at the bottom. Some tips:
(a) Be brief – the fewer words used the better
(b) Be legible – use big, clear and bold lettering
(c)Be creative – let the postcard be your canvas.

Mail your secret to:
PostSecret
13345 Copper Ridge Rd
Germantown MD 20874

Shrinkage <----- click on that! (Username: obfuscator and password: whome)

[By the way: (And thanks to AJ)... for sites that ask you to register: If you encounter a registration screen when you click on a link, try bugmenot.com, which will provide you with password access]

Karey Kessler

I am hearing really good things about the Karey Kessler exhibition at DCAC. I hope to go see this show over the next day or two, as Sunday I am flying to California for a week.

The exhibition, titled The Fleeting Instant of Now: Recent Works by Karey Kessler, runs until February 20, 2005.

Class Project

Tracy Lee had a class project in her (now over) brief George Washington University MFA stint, but she was told to "stop doing nudes" and instead she did this.

And Tracy Lee has now switched MFA programs to GMU.

Bravo Tracy Lee!

Visual Art Reviews at DCist

Starting today, together with DCist colleage Cyndi Spain, I will be doing full reviews and mini reviews for DCist, separate from what goes on here in DC Art News.

DCist reaches well over 3,000 visitors each day, and this new aspect of the site will certainly add a new dimension and voice to our warming art scene.

Read today's mini reviews here.

New Curator at Hirshhorn

As revealed in MAN, New York City curator Anne Ellegood is getting a government job and heading to Washington, DC to become an Associate Curator at the Hirshhorn.

Ellegood is a former art critic for New York Arts magazine and was a former Curatorial Associate at the New Museum of Contemporary Art in Manhattan as well as the former curator for the Peter Norton Collection.

Welcome to DC!

Critical Alignment (Part... whatever)

"And just at the moment painting is a highly fashionable art form. It's having a bout of serious twitches. In the past few years I can think of several major exhibitions that have identified a new spirit in painting... and there have been many other smaller ones.

Or go round the trendy commercial galleries in London. Painting is currently so fashionable, it's on the verge of being unfashionable again."

Read the whole article here.

Thanks AJ.

That big troublemaker J.T. Kirkland, over at Thinking About Art is incensed that the Ellipse Arts Center is seeking proposals for a summer 2005 exhibition, an Arlington-specific nine-hole miniature golf course: The Tour of Arlington Classic Mini-Putter.

I agree with J.T. and it seems to me that this beautiful gallery space, which only does four exhibits a year, could come up with a better summer show that a putt putt golf course inside the gallery.

Not to be defeated by a silly "art" project, some of the artists who comment on Thinking About Art have come up with some interesting "suggestions." Read them here and make sure to scroll to the top.

Congratulations to artist Lisa Bertnick, whose work will be included in Material Whirled, opening next Friday in Miami's Bettcher Gallery.

Lisa Bertnick is a 2001 graduate of the Corcoran and works at Hemphill Fine Arts. Other artists in the group show include: Ray Beldner, Kara D'Angelo, Scott Cawood, and Luis Sanchez.

Me on DC photographer Adrienne Mills in Paint Magazine.

See more work by Mills here. I own some of her photographs. Adrienne shows at Market Five Gallery.

Mark Jenkins and I traded artwork. One of his Pubic Hair Tapestries for my snow day drawing of Eve and Lillith.

Talking of snow, here are some more plastic men enjoying the stuff and two below:

A Painting a Day

(Thanks to ANABA) A Richmond, Virginia painter named Duane Keiser is painting one painting each day and posting them on a daily basis on his Blog.

He writes:

"Most of the paintings on this blog will be postcard-sized oil sketches (I call them Postcard Paintings.) I paint them on site, using a modified cigar box as an easel. Occasionally I may post a larger, more finished painting, in which case I'll include the dimensions. If you would like to purchase a Postcard Painting, they cost $100."

And guess what, most of the paintings are quite good and Mr. Keiser has practically sold all of them. Brilliant use of the power of the Web marrying to a forceful way to keep creating on a daily basis.

Opportunities for Artists

Deadline: January 31, 2005

Homage to Frida Kahlo. Online juried exhibition curated by yours truly. No entry fee. All entries done online via digital images. 1st Prize: Airfare, hotel and expenses for 3-day/3-night trip for two to the Frida Kahlo Museum in Mexico City, Mexico. (Total package valued up to $2,500), 2nd Prize: $1,000, 3rd Prize: $150 towards a Print on Demand order through Art.com Original Art & Photography.

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Deadline: February 3, 2005

2005 Bethesda International Photography Competition. An international photography competition hosted by Fraser Gallery Bethesda. Juried by Connie Imboden. Nearly $1,000 in cash awards as well as a solo show in 2006 for the Best of Show winner and invites to group shows for all other award winners. $25 for three slides. Download an entry form here or call 301/718-9651 or email us here or send a SASE to:
Bethesda International Photography Competition
Fraser Gallery
7700 Wisconsin Avenue
Suite E
Bethesda, MD 20814

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Deadline: February 15, 2005

The Constance Art Gallery in The Helene Center for the Visual Arts at Graceland University is reviewing proposals for solo or group exhibitions for the 2005/06 and 2006/07 seasons. Open to all media and US artists 21+. February 15, 2005, deadline for entry. Insurance, honorarium, postcards, no commission. Send proposal letter, 20 images in slide or CD format, resume, statement and SASE to:

Julia Franklin
Dept of Art-Constance Art Gallery
Graceland University
1 University Place
Lamoni IA 50140

Or call 641-784-5329 or email her here.

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Deadline: March 7, 2005

48th Annual National Juried Art Exhibition: At the Rocky Mount Arts Center in North Carolina. Open to all US artists in all media except video and installations. $3,300 in prizes. Juror: George Hemphill, President and Director of Hemphill Fine Arts Gallery and Art Consulting in Washington, DC. Postmark deadline for slide entry is March 7, 2005. Exhibition dates: April 30 - June 26, 2005. Download a prospectus here (see Artists Opportunities). Or e-mail your street address to this guy. Or call the Rocky Mount Arts Center, Rocky Mount NC at 252/972-1163.

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Deadline: March 15, 2005

Studio Montclair seeks entries for their 8th Annual Juried Exhibition, "Taboo," May 1-15, 2005, Makeready Press/Gallery 214, in Montclair, NJ. Cash Awards. Juror is Jerry Saltz, Senior Art Critic, Village Voice, 2001 Pulitzer Prize Finalist in Criticism, Contributing Editor to Art in America, lecturer, teacher. Entry Fee: $25 for 3 slides. For a prospectus send #10 SASE to:
Studio Montclair
Box 3041 Memorial Station
Upper Montclair NJ 07043

Or call 973/744-1818 or download the form from their website. Postmark deadline is March 15,
2005.

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Deadline: March 25, 2005

Residencies for Ceramic Artists. The Northern Clay Center (Minneapolis, MN) announces the deadline for its 2005 McKnight Artist Residencies for Ceramic Artists for mid-career ceramic artists residing outside of Minnesota. Residencies are 3 months in length and include a $5,000 stipend, a $300 honorarium for presenting a public workshop or lecture, studio space, and a glaze and firing allowance. Responsibilities include participation in a group exhibition and a written final report at the end of the residency. Application Deadline is Friday, March 25, 2005 by 5 pm. For more information and to receive an application, please contact the Clay Center at 612-339-8007, visit their website at www.northernclaycenter.org, or write to them at:
Northern Clay Center
2424 Franklin Av East
Minneapolis MN 55406

Timothy Comeau has some very interesting words on the future of painting. Read it here.

COSTCO sells Picasso Doodle

(Thanks AJ). COSTCO (yes, yes... COSTCO) has just sold a Picasso doodle done on the back of a bookcover for $40K. Read the story here.

They currently have a Chagall litho (several Chagalls actually) and also a Modigliani litho and a Leger litho for sale.

I am curious as to how these works, and works like this one get into the COSTCO system?