Art Donations for BRITE Auction

Irvine Contemporary's Heather Russell is curating artwork donations for a fundraiser for BRITE in NYC.

The event will be held on April 5 at the Scandinavia House at 58 Park Avenue at 38th Street in New York City from 6.30-9:00 pm. You can learn more about BRITE here.

All donations of artwork are to be dropped off to Heather here in DC at Irvine by March 29th. Works on paper, sculpture, painting, photography, digital prints, and original works encouraged in the $500-$1000 retail range. Works can be mailed or hand delivered to her at the gallery. Flat works must be framed or matted. As this is an organization for supporting children, she kindly asks that each artist keep that in mind when selecting a work to submit!

Please email jpegs and bio to Heather directly at heather@irvinecontemporary.com.

She has 17 accepted submissions already, and is limited to about 30-40 works of art, so hurry! All artists are invited for free to the event itself and their personal contact info will be listed that night, available to collectors and patrons.

I intend to donate and hope that many of you do as well.

Kirkland on Manuel

Thinking About Art reviews Nathan Manuel at Flashpoint.

Read Kirkland's review here.

Missing

An alert reader noticed that the Whitney's official list of Biennial reviews is missing both the Washington Post review and the Newsday review as well as ignoring the myriad of art blog reviews.

I've brought it up to their attention. You can read the Whitney's list here.

Update: The Whitney responds and says that "this is an ongoing compilation of selected press reviews and previews. Thanks for mentioning the missing reviews."

It's still a little odd to me; I mean, it's understandable if they want to skip a review such as the Newsday review, which basically trashes the show; but it's odd that they would skip (even initially) the review from the world's second most powerful newspaper.

A Colossal Agglomeration of Ugly Stuff

Is how Newsday art critic Ariella Buddick describes the Whitney Biennial. She adds on:

"Which would be fine, if the sculptures, videos, paintings and installations sacrificed attractiveness for thoughtfulness, profundity, visceral power or wit. But this year's Biennial is depressingly shallow. Oh, yes, and also heavy-handed, humorless, puerile and just plain boring."

I love it when a critic really goes for the jugular of a review! And this degree of passion in writing about art should be applied to both the positive and negative view of a show.

Buddick writes that

"Curators Chrissie Iles and Phillipe Vergne have selected works that conform to their murky concept of what the state of contemporary American art should be...

This vague herd, we are told, has been busily "challenging concepts," "transgressing boundaries," "blurring lines" and "investigating relationships." ...

I have some news for the curators: There are no boundaries left to transgress. Art can't be liminal in the absence of the thresholds. How can you challenge conventions that have already been burned beyond recognition? There's something almost quaint about the use of these cliches. Where have the curators been for the past 20 years?

I know where: Inside museums.

Read the whole review here

Secondsight Meeting

The next Secondsight meeting will be held on Friday, March 24 at 6.30pm. The guest speaker will be one of the areas most successful commercial photographers, Katherine Lambert

Katherine specializes in editorial and corporate portrait photography. Her work has appeared in numerous national publications including Businessweek, Time, Newsweek, People, Bloomberg, Audubon, Fortune and Forbes as well as annual reports and corporate brochures.

Secondsight is an organization dedicated to the advancement of women photographers through support, communication and sharing of ideas and opportunities. Secondsight is committed to supporting photographers at every stage of their careers, from students to professionals. Each bi-monthly meeting includes an introductory session, a guest speaker, portfolio sharing and discussion groups. Each photographer will have the opportunity to present their work within a small group of other photographers, ask for constructive criticism, gain knowledge or simply share their artistic vision and techniques.

Please visit www.secondsightdc.com for all the information you'll need to attend the meeting or contact Catriona Fraser at:

secondsight
PO Box 34405
Bethesda, MD 20827
www.secondsightdc.com
301/718-9651

Ouch!

Check out what happened to Teague in New Orleans. And I think that it has something to do with this?

See it here.

Selected Photographers

These are the photographers and photographs selected by juror Catriona Fraser for the IV Annual Bethesda International Photography Competition.

See them here. The exhibition opens next Friday at our gallery with an opening reception from 6-9PM as part of the Bethesda Art Walk.

See ya there!

Juror

Tonight I'll be jurying an exhibition for the Capitol Hill Arts Workshop, a terrific art venue on 7th Street, SE.

More on that later.

Vettriano original nets £290,000

Everytime one of Jack Vettriano's paintings comes up for auction in the UK, it's as if British art collectors spit on the face of British art critics and British museums.

One of Jack Vettriano's most popular paintings, Dance Me To The End Of Love (one of the world's bestselling posters), just sold for nearly 300,000 pounds in Scotland (and way over that once all commissions are added in) - that's a lot of dollars!

Untrained, gruff and very un-PC, Vettriano is perhaps the world's best-selling artist. He has been shunned by the high art world, with major UK galleries refusing to acquire his works. However, this self-taught Scottish artist has huge worldwide popular appeal. His painting The Singing Butler sold for almost £750,000 in 2004, the highest price ever paid for a Scottish painting at auction.

The only example of his work to be featured in a public collection in the world is a painting donated by a collector to the Kirkcaldy Museum in Fife, Scotland, Vettriano's birthplace.

New Photography Curator

Toby Jurovics has been hired as the Smithsonian American Museum's new Curator for Photography.

Previously, Jurovics served as a curator of photography at the Princeton University Art Museum.

As a federal government employee, Jurovics will be now responsible for research, exhibitions and acquisitions related to the Smithsonian American Museum's photography collection.

What Hollywood didn't tell you

Congrats to Philip Seymour Hoffman for winning an Oscar for playing Truman Capote in the movies.

And now for what Hollywood didn't tell you...

Between 1946-1956, around 50,000 Cubans obtained legal permanent visas to emigrate to the United States.

It was during this migration that José Capote migrated to the USA and settled in New Orleans in search of work, met and married Lillie Mae Faulk, and became a father to her young son Truman.

DC Dealer in NYC's DIVA

Hardworking DC art dealer Rody Douzoglou will be participating at the Digital and Video Fair (DIVA) in New York March 9-12, 2006.

Click here for more info on the videos and artists that Rody has been showcasing at art fairs all over the world.

One more

One of the great things about living in an area with a great visual arts presence is the sheer number of good places and venues that exhibit artwork. Here's a new one to me:

DC artist Afrika Midnight Asha Abney will be exhibiting through March 31, 2006 at The Graham Collection, located at 3518 12th St NE in Washington, DC. Contact numbers for Afrika Midnight Asha Abney is 202-455-3773 or Karl Graham, gallery owner of The Graham Collection at 202-832-9292.

Wanna go to an post-opening party tonight?

MOCA in Georgetown opened their Erotica 2006 exhibition yesterday, but tonight they're hosting another social mixer starting at 6PM featuring not only the artwork, but also X-rated videos.

And they're going to be doing this every Saturday at 6PM until the end of the exhibition - they will also host a closing party on March 31 starting at 6PM.

They're also having belly dancers, body painters and live figure drawing throughout the month. Contact them for details and schedule.

This looks like fun!

Deadline July 15, 2006 noon

Second Annual Quick Draw Competition at Plein Air Easton - A painting competition and Arts Festival sponsored by Easton Main Street in historic small-town Easton, Maryland.

Any artist may participate for $10 registration fee. (You do not need to be a juried participant in the week long competition). Cash and product awards to winning artists with exhibition/sale of all participants in the lovely gardens of the Historical Society immediately after the Quick Draw. Artists must paint, any medium, in a four block area in the downtown historical area from 2 - 4 PM July 15, 2006.

Juror: Camille Przewodek, OPA. For more information, go to www.pleinair-easton.com or call Carolyn Jaffe at 410-820-8822 or email them here.

Tierney on Hokusai

The Examiner's art critic Robin Tierney checks in with a piece on Hokusai at the Sackler and also a bit on the Frederick Gallery Walk.

Read it here.

How Art Appreciates

British artist and former Tate Prizewinner Grayson Perry opines on what makes art appreciate in value (thanks AJ). He writes:

"I think by far the most important factor in making art works valuable is what experts say and write about them. Respected figures in the art world hold the power to increase the value of a given artist’s work by bestowing art-historical importance and "specialness" upon them. Academics, curators, critics, powerful gallerists and collectors can give out extremely valuable brownie points. A work purchased by a leading public institution boosts an artist’s stock, which is why dealers will offer considerable discounts to museums.

A write-up in one of the heavyweight art mags such as Art Forum or Art Monthly spreads the consensus. One reason that I was so surprised at winning the Turner was that I had never [been] featured in one of these publications. Maybe this is the art equivalent of climbing Everest without oxygen."

Having lived in Great Britain for many years, I know how Brits are obsessed with "class" in all manners and forms, and so it is no surprise to me that Perry's conclusion has to do with class. Read the entire article here.

WaPo on the Corcoran

The WaPo's David Montgomery compiles a write-up of the Corcoran's Thursday shake-up first reported in the blogsphere yesterday, including here.

The article states at the end that "staff writers Blake Gopnik and Kate Wichmann contributed to this report."

Other contributors didn't know they were contributing.

Affordable Artists Studios

From 190 sq. ft at $206 per month to 970 sq. ft. for $1053 per month, and the utilities are included. Shown Wednesdays 6:00 - 8:00 pm at 6925 Willow NW or call 202-882-0740 or visit here and then click on A.Salon.

Corcoran Director Begins To Plot New Course

The new Corcoran director Paul Greenhalgh announced a few important changes (mostly driven by economic re-structuring) at the Corcoran yesterday.

Departing are chief curator Jackie Serwer, senior curator of education Susan Badder, prints and drawings curator Erik Denker, European art curator Laura Coyle, and traveling exhibitions director Joan Oshinsky, among others.

Update: Both Stacey Schmidt, who is the Corcoran's Associate Curator of Contemporary Art and Margaret Bergen, who has done a great job as the Corcoran's PR guru, are also leaving soon for family reasons.