Artomatic Events – Bethesda
This January and February, a number of galleries in Bethesda, Maryland will host group exhibitions showcasing works they have selected from artists who responded to a call for entries by uploading their images to the Artomatic virtual gallery at Artdc.org.
These Bethesda venues, with leadership from Catriona Fraser of Fraser Gallery, have worked with the Bethesda Urban Partnership's Arts and Entertainment District members and Artomatic to establish and implement this inaugural Artomatic Associated Events project.
Participating venues are: Creative Partners Gallery, Fraser Gallery, Gallery Neptune, Heineman Myers Contemporary Art, Joy of Motion Dance Center, Round House Theatre, Washington School of Photography/Capitol Arts Network, and The Writer’s Center.
In addition to these group exhibitions (which incorporate the work of 30 painters, printmakers, photographers and sculptors), the January and February events will also cover a vibrant range of performance offerings, including open dance rehearsals and free Salsa lessons, artist talks, "assembly line" portrait sittings, poetry readings, and live music sessions, as well as networking opportunities and portfolio workshops for Metro area creative professionals.
Artomatic Associated Events - Bethesda will kick off with an Artswalk and a variety of opening-related events on Friday, January 12th from 6 – 9 pm.
Further details on the roster of events throughout the month will be available at both Artomatic.org and ArtDC.org. More information about the ArtsWalk may be found at this website.
Monday, January 08, 2007
Cudlin on Gopnikosities
My good friend Jeffry Cudlin, the award winning art critic for the Washington City Paper, offers an intelligent and readable counterpoint to my dissection of Blake Gopnik's comments on the Kate Kretz "Jollie as Madonna" painting.
Read Jeffry's good points here.
I think that the line between illustration and fine art is sometimes real and a lot of times blurred, and many times erased by history, and sometimes entire cultures could be wrong, otherwise we'd still be considering Ukiyo-e as illustrations and manuals, and packing materials for tea vases to be shipped to Europe.
We're both making exagerated claims in a sense... Duchampian followers have a great time spending time deciphering the many stories and angles and intricate issues in Velazquez's "Las Meninas," but the opposite and immediate reaction is delivered equally well and without much deciphering in Goya's "3rd of May."
So the answer is that both can fit into our appreciation of art. And if it wasn't for Rockwell's "The Problem We All Live With," we'd have a very little footprint in contemporary 60's paintings of the Civil Rights struggle.
In some Rockwellian works like this one there's an example of an illustrator whose work crossed over and now - at least that piece and all the works from his civil rights imagery - crosses into fine art. It happened in the 1800s as well - Honore Daumier being the best-known example.
Were Gericault's "Medusa" to be painted today - say with the subject being Abu Ghraib, would that be art or an illustration? Oh wait - it has been done - Botero has done it and it's considered important political art!
In my opinion, and of course I'm opinionated and not necessarily right, Cudlin and many other writers are sometimes too wrapped up in theory and often resistant to just open up and enjoy the possibility of the simplicity of art for the sense of "just because..."
When I first started exploring, creating and writing about art 30 years ago, I too was all wrapped up in theory, and straining to find the meaning, the struggle, the clues, the angst, and the message in all the art that I was seeing. Without a message, the art was useless, I had been taught; if it stands on the shoulders of another artist, it cannot be good.
Among many other events that slowly changed my appreciation of art, somewhere along the lines I stumbled across a book titled: Idols of Perversity: Fantasies of Feminine Evil in Fin-de-Siecle Culture.
And all of a sudden, the vapid, sickly sweet, saccharine Romantic art of the Victorians became a whole new world of clues, deciphering images that had secret meanings to the Victorians, etc.
It was a triumph for what Duchampians believe should be good in art. Yet it was a Duchampian triumph wrapped up in a visual eye candy that looked more like parlor room art than fine art; And it made me realize that both camps could be accepted.
And now I refuse to believe that art has to do this or do that, or delay our reactions, of give us clues, etc. in order to be accepted as high art. Don't get me wrong, there are still plenty of hacks out there producing paintings that sometimes astonish in their vapidity and waste of canvas, but to take the galvanized, one-track train of thought that it's either a Duchampian success or it can't be real art, is a sure way to eliminate a lot of good art which simply may offer nothing but viewing pleasure.
Henri Matisse once said that "there is nothing more difficult for a truly creative painter than to paint a rose, because before he can do so he has first to forget all the roses that were ever painted." I think most painters almost subconsciously do this. In painting anything, unless one is outright copying an existing work (as it is taught in many art schools to teach painting techniques), a good artist is always creating something new. Something that until that moment, when the loaded brush is applied to the canvas and allowed to deliver its content, has never been done in that exact stroke, or manner, or hue, or shape, in the entire history of mankind.
Take a look at the book... it's by Bram Dijkstra, who was a professor of English literature at the University of California.
Pat Goslee's Top 10 DC area art show
Talented DC area artist Pat Goslee is one of the area's most active artists and exhibits widely around the city. She says:
I don't have a top 10 list. I say the ultimate BEST show of 2006 was:
Swarm at The Fabric Workshop and Museum, 3 December 2005–18 March 2006.
The husband and wife curatorial team of Ellen Lupton and Abbott Miller embraced the theme of swarm in an exemplary fashion — presenting a global ecosystem of contemporary art. The BEST example I have EVER seen of a COMPLETE curatorial effort, Lupton and Miller executed every detail with intelligence and precision... down to the t shirt in the gift shop.
Sunday, January 07, 2007
Lou Stovall "Origin and the Landscape"
By Rosetta DeBerardinis
The Washington Printmakers Gallery selected master printmaker, Lou Stovall for its fifth annual invitational exhibit honoring his life and artistic achievements.
Stovall is a local DC area artist with international and national credentials. His array of spring floral prints "Origin and the Landscape" nicely coincides with Washington's current warm weather - thanks to global warming.
Stovall stood attired in fashionable gallery black on Friday night, at the first of his artist receptions, before his vibrant abstract floral prints that popped off the pristine Payne's gray walls. Several guests made references to Pollock, but anyone who knows art or Stovall saw no similarity.
Marguerite, Silkscreen Monoprint by Lou Stovall
The monoprint, "Finale, Alla Breve," has gestural black and green strokes that hop and skip across the surface. Each of its strokes has a beginning and an ending. "Marguerite," named for the character in a Faust opera, is composed of small colorful dots and circles with tiny arcs.
If you look closely at Stovall's work you see control. His arcs and gestural strokes unlike Pollock's, are intentional and he leaves nothing to chance. This show exemplifies the work of a true master technician.
The triumph of the human spirit is to rise above limitations to create a sense of order, a place of well-being, an attitude of possibilities, a desire for accomplishment.
Lou Stovall
Origin and Landscape
Jan. 3 - Jan. 28, 2007
Artists Reception: Sunday, January 7, 2007, 2-5 p.m.
Brown Bag Lunch Presentation: Thursday, January 11, 2007, 12 noon.
Washington Printmakers Gallery
1732 Connecticut Avenue, N.W.
www.washingtonprintmakers.com
202-332-7757
Saturday, January 06, 2007
Fred Ognibene's Top Ten DC Area Art Shows
Ubercollector Fred Ognibene is not only one of the DC area's best-known art collectors, but also a very generous donor to our area's museums. Herewith his list of the Top 10 11 DC area art shows, in alphabetical order:
1. Barlow Curates at Addison-Ripley, especially the amazing sculptures of Elizabeth-Lundberg Morrisette (actually an artist I discovered at the last Art-o-Matic).
2. Bellini-Giorgione-Titian and the Renaissance of Venetian Painting at the National Gallery of Art-one of the most beautiful shows I have ever seen.
3. Christopher French: New Paintings: Contradictory Resemblances at Marsha Mateyka Gallery - a very complex show of color families painted on Braille paper with hypnotic results.
4. Kevin Kepple at Addison-Ripley - Kevin’s works have matured and are more complex; the new palette he is using resulted in beautiful paintings.
5. Dean Kessman: Plastic on Paper at Conner Contemporary - plastic shopping bags as art - beautiful and unexpected renderings from some horribly ugly satchels.
6. Jim Lambie: Directions at the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden -thanks for showing his work.
7. Maggie Michael: Open End at G Fine Art - her paintings keep getting better and stronger and more complex.
8. Ledelle Moe: Congregation at G Fine Art and storefront installation on 14th Street - a sculptor willing to push the limits and with a very strong future.
9. Vesna Pavlovic: Collections/Kolekcija at Fusebox-a wonderful collection of images from an artist now in the Columbia MFA program... I am glad I bought her work early!
10. Erik Sandberg: Contrary at Conner Contemporary -h e is/will be significant competition for John Currin!
11. Ian Whitmore: Little Lies at Fusebox - a VERY talented artist with a guaranteed successful future.
Gopnikosities
I really, really try to stay away from constantly poking fun at the Washington Post's erudite Chief Art Critic, Blake Gopnik's curiously academic and outdated views on contemporary art, which are still somehow stuck somewhere in the 1960s - I think - but the man is a never-ending source of astounding agendart verbosity.
So here's the latest:
According to this AP story a "North Carolina artist intrigued by the public obsession with celebrity has found herself feeding that obsession with a painting of actress Angelina Jolie as the Virgin Mary hovering over a Wal-Mart check-out line.
Kate Kretz has painted for 20 years but none of her previous work has garnered the attention given 'Blessed Art Thou,' showing this weekend at Art Miami, an annual exposition of modern and contemporary art."
And so, this WaPo blogger asked Blake Gopnik for his opinion on the painting, and the Gopnikmeister delivered this brilliant Gopnikism:
"Kate Kretz's painting comes closer to magazine illustration than to the subtle fine art you'd expect to see in a major museum of contemporary art. It gets its messages across, alright. It presents Angelina Jolie as our nation's Madonna of Consumption. In a glory of siliconed breasts, collagened lips and foreign-adopted cherubs, Angelina reigns over Wal-Mart's banality -- its all-American brands, its all-American flag, it's all-American obesity. The problem with the picture, art-wise, is that its messages are way TOO clear. It's more like a puzzle-picture than a probing work of art: Once you've deciphered it, there's not much chance of giving it a second look. Its van-art technique, especially, is so generic that it hardly has a thing to say that hasn't been said a thousand times before -- often, much better. The crucial question, in our busy age: Why spend time with this work, when a 500-word Op Ed would do a better job expressing its opinions, and any number of Old Master paintings would mean more to an art-loving eye."Let me decipher this a-la-Bailey; Gopnik is affirming that:
1. "Real" art must be subtle in order to be of museum quality.
2. "Real" art should never be TOO clear in its message (otherwise who'd need critics to interpret it for us?).
3. "Real" art should "say" something, but not too clearly, and that something shouldn't have been said too many times before.
4. Old Master paintings, because they're done by dead Old Masters, can say something in a heavy-handed way, and really clearly, but that's OK, because they're Old Masters and not some new painter who's clearly never gotten the memo that painting is dead.
Friday, January 05, 2007
More Congratulations...
To DC area artist Matt Sesow, who will be exhibiting in New York City as well. His work opens next week at the van der Plass Gallery (South Street Seaport, pier 17). The exhibition runs from January 12 thru February 28th, 2007.
Sesow is already having a spectacular 2007:
January: Group show at van der Plas Gallery in New York City. Group show in Bethesda at Creative Partners (part of the Artomatic show).
March: Solo show in San Diego (Oceanside) at D Gallery
April: Two-person show in Atlanta
May: Solo in Rockland Maine (coinciding with the Basquiat/Warhol/Wyeth)
June: Solo in Sacramento (Pamela Skinner Gallery)
July: 31 days in July..
August: Solo show in Denver, Colorado
September: Adams Morgan Day and Arts on Foot in DC
October: Show at Alcove in Atlanta
December: Possible self-taught group show in Miami (part of Art Basel extravanganza weekend).
Is that a hard-working artist or what?
Gross Clinic Goes on View
Thomas Eakins’1875 masterpiece, The Gross Clinic, goes on public view at 4 p.m. today at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, and in early March will hang at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts. It is on loan to the Museum from Thomas Jefferson University until it is sold later this month by the University to the Museum and the Academy, which have joined in an extraordinary ongoing fundraising effort and have managed to keep the painting in Philly.
Congratulations too...
To Tim Tate, whose work will be included in "The Next Tortured Genius" exhibition in Chelsea's MonkDogz Urban Art Gallery, which opened amid much hoopla last year at 547 West 27th Street in NYC.
Congratulations
To DC area artist Elena Maza, whose work graces the cover of this month's Art Calendar magazine.
Walt Whitman, a kosmos
The National Portrait Gallery is holding a conference on Walt Whitman to coincide with the exhibition “Walt Whitman, a kosmos” on January 26th from 9 to 12.
They will have a stellar array of speakers: Jorie Graham, Pulitzer Prize winning poet; Alexander Nemerov, Yale University Art Historian; Sean Wilentz, Princeton University Historian and winner of the Bancroft Prize in History; and Michael Schmidt, Professor of Poetry at the University of Glasgow and managing editor of Carcanet Press, the leading poetry publisher in the United Kingdom.
For further information on the conference go to this website and click on the Events and Program link.
Peter Panse Update
Remember the case of the High School art professor suspended for the nude model issue? (Read this if you don't).
According to this website:
The Hearing Officer's decision in the case of Pete Panse - the New York art teacher suspended more than a year ago for having suggested that his advanced students should be allowed to enter figure drawing classes - is "imminent."
Thursday, January 04, 2007
Selected Art-O-Matic
No Art-O-Matic this year? No problem! The Examiner's Robin Tierney writes a nice pre-opening salvo of the mini-AOM joint exhibition that several Bethesda, MD galleries, AOM organizers and Jesse Cohen's ArtDC are putting together.
Conservative anti-AOM critics have cited the lack of a curatorial hand as AOM's main flaw, as opposed to a more liberal and democratic view of it as an open show. It will be interesting to see what comes out of the picks by well established and successful art gallerists.
The gallerists selections will appear at Heineman-Myers, Fraser, Neptune, Washington School of Photography, Creative Partners and other Bethesda galleries with joint opening receptions on Friday, January 12, 2007 as part of the Bethesda Art Walk. Details, maps, etc. here.
Kim Ward's Top Shows of 2006
Kim Ward is the hard-working WPA/Corcoran Executive Director and she comes in with the following:
"One exhibition that was, as Mary Poppins would say, 'practically perfect in every way,' in 2006 was the Hiroshi Sugimoto show at the Hirshhorn.
Picking a non-profit/alternative group, I think that Ashley Kistler is doing fantastic curatorial work at the Visual Arts Center of Richmond, an example being the latest show 'Time for Design' which is a micro view of design in the greater Richmond area --- fashion, architecture, etc.
DCAC is creating some fabulous panels discussing art topics that are timely and in need of community feedback.
I have found stunning work at the Arlington Arts Center Spring and Fall solo shows and I applaud Molly Ruppert and Jack Rasmussen for their commitment to art that is politically charged and difficult. They consistently show political work and have been doing so for quite awhile.
Cuban Art
I'm in Florida for a few days, and of course Florida and all things Cuban are now tied together. Reading the Dec. 25, 2006 issue of Business Week. On page 116: "Art's New Frame of Reference," retired real estate investor, Howard Farber starting buying contemporary Chinese art a decade ago. Now, he recommends work by Indians, Russians, Polish, Cuban and Chinese artists. Here the Cuban part:
"These artists may get a boost from the expected opening of Cuba after Castro's demise... Cuban artists such as Armando Marino, 38 who lives in Spain have little auction history and sell for under 12K. To learn about this market, pick up a copy of Cuba: Avant-garde:Cuban Art from the Farber Collection (Harn Museum of Art, $29.95) coming out in March.... Pieces of his collection will be featured in a show at the University of Florida at Gainesville on May 29th.A few years ago I co-curated and helped to introduce contemporary Cuban art to the Greater DC area art region with an exhibition titled "De Aqui y de Alla" (From Here and From There). It was an exhibition of Cuban art by Cuban artists and artists of Cuban ancestry from around the world and not only did the exhibition sell out, but it also yielded several key shows by the gallery, which picked up representation of many important Cuban artists since then. Two of the hottest ones, Sandra Ramos and Aimee Garcia Marrero will be showing at Fraser this coming May.
Laura Roulet's Top 10
Independent curator Laura Roulet, who amongst many great accomplishments helped to curate the great Ana Mendieta retrospective at the Hirshhorn a few years ago, sends in her pick for the top 10 DC area art show of 2006; her list is not in any order of preference:
"Dada," National Gallery of Art
"Societie Anonyme," Phillips Collection
The Walters (Ok, it's Baltimore, but that's close enough. This was a brilliant i"Louise Bourgeois: Femme,"nstallation)
"Joseph Cornell," SAAM (the re-opening of the National Portrait Gallery and Smithsonian American Art was one of the top 10 noteworthy events in general)
"Hiroshi Sugimoto," joint installation at the Hirshhorn Museum and Freer/Sackler
"Oliver Herring, Task," One day performance at the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden
"Janet Cardiff, The Paradise Institute," Corcoran (not new, but the opportunity to experience it again was fabulous)
"Other Than Art," jointly held at Provisions, G Fine Art and the Curator's Room
And two group shows highlighting some of our best local artists:
"Conversions," WPA/Corcoran and Ellipse Art Center
"Phantom Floor," Catholic University Art Gallery
Tuesday, January 02, 2007
On the subject of contracts
My post on the subject of the unfortunate theft of Afrika Midnight Asha Abney’s work from a restaurant show, and the subsequent issue of who (if anyone) pays for the loss, and my mention of why it is important to have contracts when forming a business association with a gallery or dealer - or any exhibition venue, for that matter – brought an unexpected deluge of emails from artists (and one gallerist) asking why a contract is such a big deal.
Let me give you some examples:
1. Take Afrika’s case: An artist has a show and someone steals a piece of art. What happens next? With a signed contract, the artist would know ahead of time that either (a) the gallery has no insurance, in which case the theft is a full loss, or (b), the gallery has art insurance, in which case (a) the gallery puts a claim in with the insurance company, or (b) the artist deals directly with the insurance company. And, by the way, in the event that there’s insurance, don’t expect to get the full value of the stolen work, but in most cases (and policies) only the 50% commission that you’d have received in the event that the work had sold instead of being stolen.
2. Talking about commissions; how do you know, other than a handshake, what the gallery’s commission is? Let’s say that you are told that the commission is 50% (the general standard for independent commercial fine arts galleries around here). Is that 50% of the price of the piece or 50% of the final sales price? I know of at least one major DC area art gallery that has a record of really screwing artists by giving them 50% of an agreed price for a piece; however, the gallery also often sells the piece for a lot more money to its out of town collectors and keeps the difference. Here’s how it works. The artist agrees to sell the photographs for $500 each and thus expects a commission of $250. The unethical gallerist sells some for $500, and some to its out-of-town clientele for $1000, but gives the artist the same $250 commission on those sales.
3. But let’s say that you have approached a gallery, and show them the works, and discuss representation, and the gallerist agrees to hang some of your work in his next group show. You are not sure if you are “represented” in the sense of the word as you understand it, but shake on it and prepare for your first appearance in a well-known gallery and invite all of your family and friends. At the packed opening, your second cousin-once-removed is admiring one of your huge watercolors, which are tacked onto the wall in a really cool post-post-post-modernist style. He leans forward to admire your brushwork and accidentally spills his white wine onto your watercolor, immediately making your representational work of art into a messy abstraction. What happens next? Does insurance cover damage? Is there insurance? Is that the guy who spilled the wine making a dash for the door?
4. Having learned your lesson, at your next opening you resign yourself to getting your new work framed and spend a ton of money getting them framed at the most affordable (in other words cheapest) possible way, but still spend a considerable amount of shekels -- because as everyone knows, framing is very expensive (unless you attend the Boot camp for Artists Seminar and learn how to cut framing expenses by 80%). When you deliver the works to the gallery, the gallerist goes into fits about your gold leaf rococo frames from Target and silver acidic mats and refuses to hang the work. A good contract would have specified ahead of time all issues dealing with framing and presentation standards.
5. Having calmed down, the gallerist then offers to re-frame all the work for you. You accept with a sigh of relief, and at the opening your 20 newly framed watercolors look great in the 8-ply pH-balanced, acid free mat board, under UV glass and Nielsen mouldings and backed by half-inch, acid free, pH-balanced foam core. You sell four pieces and are happy that things worked out in the end. A few weeks later you get a huge bill in the mail from the gallery; it is what remains of the framing bill after the gallery applied all of your commission to the total framing bill. A good contract should also specify the economic who’s and what’s of any framing done by the gallery.
6. Your relationship with the gallery is now seriously on the rocks, but then you are told that a review in Art News will come out soon. Three months after your show has closed the review finally comes out in Art News and it’s a good one. A young computer geek in Bala Cynwood, Pennsylvania, who is waiting to see his doctor for his annual physical reads that Art News review while waiting in the doc’s office, sees the nice reproduction of your work and after he goes home, looks you up on the Internet and contacts you directly and tells you that he read the review of your gallery show in Art News and wants to buy the painting reproduced in the magazine. You sell him the painting and put all your money in the bank. Sixteen minutes after the painting is delivered to Bala Cynwood, the gallery gets a call from a collector in Spokane, Washington who has also read the Art News review and wants to buy that painting. The gallerist calls you and tells you the good news. You are ecstatic that two people want your painting, but then you tell the gallerist that someone else in Bala Cynwood read the review and that you sold the painting to that person. The gallerist congratulates you on the sale and then asks you to make sure that you send him the gallery’s commission. You are confused because you had no idea that you owed the gallery a commission.
7. Your review in Art News has opened a few doors for your artwork and you are invited by a non-profit art venue to have a solo show at their space in a year. You are pleased and tell everyone, including the gallerist, who informs you that because his gallery represents your work, you are not allowed to exhibit anywhere else in the city, or maybe the area, or maybe the state, or maybe the US, or maybe the world.
8. Then your Alma matter, impressed with your artistic prowess, invites you to a group show of alumni artwork in the school’s gallery. Since you attended art school in another state, you are pretty sure that it will be OK to show there, because after the last confusion, you discovered that the gallery had exclusive representation for your work only in DC, MD and VA, and your art school is in Brownsville, Texas. You tell your gallerist, and because he has never heard of Brownsville, Texas, looks it up on the Internet and then he informs you that if you exhibit your artwork in “certain places” it will bring the reputation of the gallery down and thus the gallerist doesn’t want you to exhibit in Brownsville, Texas – or anywhere in Texas, Arkansas and Nebraska for that matter.
9. You beg and plead because you really want to impress your ex-girlfriend in Texas, and the gallerist allows you to include one piece in that alumni show, but makes it clear that he needs to be consulted on any and all exhibitions of your work. And so you exhibit your best piece in Brownsville and a New York gallerist, who happens to be a Robert Ervin Howard admirer, visits Brownsville and decides to check the local yokels show at the art school. Because your immense watercolors are the largest works in the show, they catch his attention and he jots down your name. Weeks later his intern calls you and tells you that they want to show some of your work in their next group show. This is really hitting the big time, and you announce to your gallerist that a big shot New York gallerist is including you in his next group show. He congratulates you and reminds you that you owe him 10% of any sales made in New York, or in Brownsville, Texas, or anywhere for that matter. You rant and rave and ask why, and he tells you that the reasons for your recent success all lead back to the exposure that he has given you. You demand to know why none of this stuff was made clear from the beginning. The gallerist answers that “everyone knows this,” and that he “likes to operate on a handshake and without a contract.” You then realize that you have him by the balls, since you have no signed contract with him or his gallery, and tell him that you are leaving. He says some threatening stuff about verbal contracts, but you walk away anyway, wondering how you are going to get back the six paintings of yours that the gallerist still has in storage.
10. Nonetheless, New York is New York, and you go visit the big shot New York gallerist and meet with him, and over a handshake he agrees to put you in a group show and tells you that his commission is 60% - You are not sure if you are “represented” in the sense of the word as you understand it, but shake on it and prepare for your first appearance in a New York City gallery and invite all of your family and friends...
Monday, January 01, 2007
Happy 2007
Have a great 2007 from rainy eff-el-ay... soon it will be time for the top ten lists to appear. If you'd like to see your top ten art shows of the year published here, please email them to me.
