Castro's Deathbed Portrait

When it comes to the brutal dictator who has caused a continuing exodus of millions of his countrymen and women, consistently violated political (and most other) prisoners' human rights, sent thousands to firing squads, jailed and terrorized gay Cubans for being gay, completely banned freedom of expression, and forcibly isolated and segregated anyone in Cuba suffering from AIDS into leper-colony type sanatoriums, I am not very objective.

But as he has done for decades now, this spectacularly intelligent and incredibly lucky man, even on his almost-deathbed still manages to permeate all levels of news and issues, including art.


Last year, this artist in New York apparently had the common "rosy" picture of Fidel Castro and Cuba, that most people who have never informed themselves about the real facts of Cuba and Cuban life under a Communist yoke, usually have.

And so he decided to create a massive Castro bust as a sort of an homage to the Cuban dictator. And he planned to unveil the huge homage to Castro in New York's Central Park. See the initial YouTube video here (by the way, if you look in the background, you see that this is the same artist who gave us the pregnant Britney Spears sculpture).

Those plans then changed.

Plans for an unveiling in New York's Central Park of Fidel Castro on his 'deathbed' have instead turned into plans for the deconstruction of his effigy in Miami, where he will be prematurely laid to rest. Capla Kesting Fine Arts announces the unveiling of "Fidel Castro's Deathbed Portrait" has been reconsidered by the artist, courtesy of the Miami FM morning show El Traketeo on WRTO 98.3 who protested the sculpture and arranged for the artist to come to their studio to hear the testimonies from several dozen Cuban exiles.

A ceremony for deconstruction of Castro's Deathbed Portrait will take place in Miami, November 8th at a time and location designated by WRTO.

[...]

After hearing hours of face to face testimony from Cuban people who have suffered under Castro, Edwards said on the air at WRTO, "I'm only sorry I wasn't aware of all that pain before my project started. After hearing all these painful accounts, in good conscience, as a friend of the Cuban-American communities, I cannot show the sculpture in Central Park."

And so, the colossal scaled clay model for "Fidel Castro's Deathbed Portrait" by Daniel Edwards, was instead "deconstructed" in Miami on November 8, 2006.

And the lesson here, taught to us by Castro in his deathbed, is that political art, which is more alive and well than many realize, can cover both sides of the political spectrum, and even in some cases, such as this one, switch to the right side of a debate, no pun intended.

My kudos to Edwards and to Capla Kesting Fine Art.

Viva Cuba Libre!

On the other Ebay hand

Swann Galleries is a highly reputable art dealer and auction house and they have 332 lots for sale on Ebay with some real steals (such as a Sam Gilliam starting at $500 Update: It closed at $2600 - still a great deal!).

There are quite a few works by African American artists of the caliber of Romare Bearden, Jacob Lawrence, Lois Maillou Jones, Renee Stout and many, many others. By the way, Swann has recently established a new department in their auction house called African-American Fine Art.

Also terrific photography by European American photographers Sally Mann, Imogen Cunningham, Walker Evans, Weston, Atget and many others.

See the lots here.

Nexus Move to Fishtown Completed

In Philly, Nexus has completed the move to a new home in the Crane Arts Building in Fishtown.

They will we reopen Nexus in their new home and at the same time inaugurate "Second Thursdays," a new monthly event of openings by galleries that are north of Northern Liberties.

Their inaugural show in their new digs features two digital exhibitions by Jennie Thwing and Catherine Passante. Through Feb. 25, 2007.

Second Thursday will be held February 8th from 6 to 9 PM. They will also be open on First Fridays from 6 to 9 PM.

Art Taxman (El Hombre de Impuestos)

Can a President remake society by Presidential decree?

"I think the president is going to do what he wants to do, because he will have all the power to decide on all things," Krakower says. "I think we're headed toward totalitarianism."

No, no guys... it's not our president that this CNN article is referring to, but that nutjob in Venezuela: Hugo The Chavez!

Though Chavez insists he will respect private property, he plans a new "luxury" tax on everything from second homes to art collections, and the rich will undoubtedly feel the pinch.

Just in case we ever decide to tax art collections in this country, I'm curious how the Venezuelan strong man will decide how much an art collection is worth at the time(s) that it is taxed.

Starting place would be for Chavez to get a full membership in artprice.com

See Bailey's take on the subject here.

Studio Gallery in DC seeking members

Next jurying of new member portfolios for DC's Studio Gallery is mid-February.

The Studio Gallery is currently jurying new member artists for its expanded gallery space in Dupont Circle. A thriving cooperative gallery for over 40 years, the new space offers constant membership exposure and a frequent show schedule. The gallery requires active participation of its members.

Submissions must include samples of recent work and a CD or slide portfolio. For details contact Carol Rubin at 301-996-7162 or email to c.rubin@verizon.net.

Job for Curator in China

Deadline: February 20, 2007

The Ullens Center for the Arts, in Beijing (the city formerly known as Peking) is seeking a Curator and also a Head of Events.

The Ullens Center for the Arts is developing a most comprehensive contemporary art institution in Beijing with exhibitions, screenings, performances, lectures and seminars, an art library and educational program. They are currently recruiting for the following two positions: Curator and Head of Events.

To apply please email a cover letter, resume, and two reference letters by February 20, 2007 to Colin Chinnery: colin.chinnery@ullens-center.org

Cheap Frida

New Frida Kahlo painting found!!!

Well...

As far as I know, the last Frida Kahlo oil that sold at auction sold for 5.6 million dollars.

However, apparently you can buy this one without a provenance on Ebay for an estimated $9,500.00. It's Ebay item number 190078828890, and as of the posting of this post, someone is bidding for this "vintage" Frida painting circa 1930. (Update: It sold for $5,700).



Personally, I didn't know that Frida had green eyes, and apparently neither did the person who painted this portrait and certainly Frida herself. And oh yeah, under her "signature" the words "Mexico" have also been "signed in."

Just in case, I guess.

Below is "another" portrait that Kahlo painted in 1929-1930... you make the decision that this is a work by the same artist at this same period.



Sigh... And oh yeah... here are some of the other art finds that this "dealer" is offering; none of them has a provenance, of course!

Knowledge is the best weapon.

PS - Here's another newly discovered "Kahlo painting."

Dark Tower

Tomorrow night one of the most anticipated events in the world of comicbookdom will take place: The midnight release of Stephen King's Dark Tower: The Gunslinger Born #1 comic book.

I recommend the purchase of a dozen or so of them, then wrap them in plastic and stash them away and forget about them. Nearly 150 retailers across the country will open at midnight on Tuesday (effectively 12:01 a.m. Wednesday, February 7, 2007) so that geeks who can't wait Stephen King fans can get their hands on the debut issue of the comic.

Oh yeah, had you picked up the Dark Tower series back when they were first published in book form in the 80s, you'd be sitting on around $20,000 worth of books right now.

And look in your attic, a first edition of The Stand goes as high as $25,000 and Carrie and The Shining routinely break $5,000 each.

Around the Greater DC area you can pick them up at Big Planet Comics located at 4908 Fairmont Avenue, in Bethesda, MD, tel: 301-654-6856. Other nationwide locations here.

I wonder why?

One of the few good things about moving is when you find things that you had forgotten that you had stashed away.

And a nice surprise was the re-discovery of this small (7 inches x 5.5 inches) portrait of one of my professors. It's a portrait that I created back when I was a student at the University of Washington School of Art.

He is/was of one of the most influential and courageous American artists who's never been given a show at the National Gallery of Art (although the Phillips Collection did step up to the challenge of a major Washington, DC area art museum actually focusing on a great artist who just also happened to be an African-American, and put up a great exhibition).

Jacob Lawrence.

Gallery 101

Georgetown's Department of Art Music & Theater and Gallery 101 are located off the main campus in the Walsh Building (at 1221 36th St. N.W. in Wash. D.C.) They are a small (approx. 400sq Ft. or the same size as my first gallery) space off the main lobby of Walsh and the gallery shows 4-5 exhibits in all media per academic year.

Information on current and upcoming shows can be found at this website. From that site you can find a link at the top to the gallery's page or just go directly to it here.

Commercials?

It's halftime at the Super Bowl and... am I the only one noticing that 80% of the commercials so far are CBS commercials?

What happened to all those usually fun and artsy Super Bowl commercials?

I think that advertisers said to CBS: "Too expensive" and they passed and CBS got stuck with a game without commercials other than their own.

For 17 years?

From the Philly Inquirer:

The Independence Seaport Museum accused its former president yesterday of defrauding it of $2.4 million to pay for a "lavish lifestyle" that included trips to France and New Zealand and freewheeling spending on paintings, high-end furniture and expensive boats.

The ex-director, John S. Carter, is under FBI investigation, Carter's lawyer confirmed last night.

Despite being paid $301,000 a year - more than the head of the Philadelphia Museum of Art - Carter systematically ripped off the seaport museum, the museum contends in a lawsuit.

Apparently this guy was really trying to hide the alleged rip-off, as he had "the museum pay more than $500,000 to buy and maintain boats that were solely 'for his personal use and enjoyment.' It said the vessels included a 38-foot sailboat, a sport-fishing boat, and a power boat - which alone cost $446,000.

Spent massively on three museum credit cards, racking up $594,000 in charges between 2003 and his departure in early 2006. He did not furnish supporting documents for most of the spending, the suit says.

Collected more than $200,000 in improper expense reimbursements over five years, including billing for museum landscaping that was never done."

Amazing, uh? There's a ton more allegations, and apparently the guy worked for the museum for 17 years! Read the whole story here.

Wanna see some sculptures around DC?

The Washington Sculptors Group's new show is Sculpture Now 2007 at Washington Square (1050 Connecticut Avenue NW (at L St.)), Washington, DC 20036. Juried by the other Cuban gallery owner, Ramon Osuna, of Osuna Gallery in Bethesda, MD. Show dates: February 5th to May 4th,2007 and Opening Reception: Thursday, February 15th at 6-8:30 pm. Featuring works by Constance Bergfors, Jackie Braitman, Teresa Camacho-Hull, Jordan Cohen, Adam Cook, Frederic Crist, Joel D’Orazio, Christopher Edmunds, Pattie Porter Firestone, Mary Frank, Judith Goodman, Michael A. Guadagno, Len Harris, Cynthia Hutnyan, James Kessler, Shirley Koller, Craig Kraft, Carol Gellner Levin, Philippe Mougne, Sharon Murray, Minna Nathanson, Tom Rooney, Mike Shafter, Bo Simeon, George Tkabladze, and Novie Trump.

The Washington Sculptors Group's current show is "intervene/activate," and that one is at the Union Gallery of the University of Maryland. Juried by Donald Russell, Director of Provisions Library. Through Feb. 22, 2007.

Brookside Gardens – 2007 Sculpture Show and Sale through April 15, 2007 – Includes work by Jeff Andrews, Frances Aubrey, Jordan Cohen, Phelan Meek, Barry Perlis, Ann Ruppert, Rima Schulkind, Ronald Spadin, Peter Wood and others. For information and directions, call 301.962.1438 or www.brooksidegardens.org. By the way, if you haven't visited Brookside Gardens, you are missing one of the most beautiful spots in the Greater DC area.

McClean Project for the Arts - Natural Inclinations: Works by Margaret Boozer, Elizabeth Burger, Marc Robarge and Laura Thorne through February 24, 2007. Tea and Tour of the Exhibitions February 15, 10:30 am, free, but please call 703-790-1953 for reservations. For information and directions, call 703-790-1953 or go to their website.

Katzen Center, American University Museum has five sculpture shows coming up: Contemporary Glass: Beauty and Innovation – January 30 to April 8, 2007, Richard Cleaver (from Baltimore) and Robert Brady - February 6 to April 15, 2007 and Dennis Oppenheim and Duane Hansen – February 13 to April 15. Reception – Saturday, February 17, 2007 from 6 to 9 pm. Gallery Talks – various dates. Check their website for details or call 202.885.1300.

Smithsonian American Art Museum - Joseph Cornell: Navigating the Imagination - Now through Feb. 19, 2007.

Go see some art!

First Friday Gallery Openings

Both DC and Philly hold First Friday joint gallery openings and/or extended hours.

In Philly, the Old City area galleries (around forty galleries and art venues) are open from 5 till 9 p.m. Details here.

In DC, the Dupont Circle area galleries (around 15 venues or so) are usually open from 6-8PM. Details here.

Also in DC, Project 4 has an opening tonight from 6-8:30PM for Ivanny Pagan, who is a Philadelphia-based painter (and whose work I think that I would like a lot) and Rich MacDonald, a Baltimore-based photographer.

In Philly, Nexus has completed the move to a new home in the Crane Arts Building in Fishtown.

They will we reopen Nexus in their new home and at the same time inaugurate "Second Thursdays," a new monthly event of openings by galleries that are north of Northern Liberties.

Second Thursdays will be held February 8th from 6 to 9 PM. However, they will also be open on First Fridays from 6 to 9 PM.

Madder now...

Jessica Gould over at the WCP scoops all the art bloggers in town and writes about the artistic and ownership of words controversy caused by the current exhibit at Bethesda's Fraser Gallery, which as most of you know, I used to co-own, and to which (since last year), I have no relationship with, and which is now solely owned, run and directed by Catriona Fraser.

Clear?

Anyway...

The controversial exhibit is part of Mini-Matic, and the article specifically discusses the work of DC area photographer Doug Sanford.

According to the article, Sanford broke up with his girlfriend because he was screwing around on her, so she then wrote him some nasty emails, and then he later made fine art photographs from some of the words in the emails.

According to Gould, "Some of the words are in larger type, inky iterations of hate. The rest are blurred—streaked with light, smudged, or shadowed."

The ex-girlfriend's name or identity is never revealed in any of the works.

“It was a pretty angry breakup,” he says.

And it’s gotten angrier.

On Jan. 12, the opening day of the exhibit, Sanford’s ex-girlfriend contacted both him and the gallery’s owner, accusing them of copyright infringement and demanding that the photographs be taken down. If they didn’t comply with her wishes, they say, she threatened to take legal action.

However...

According to Torsten Kracht, an attorney with Akin Gump Strauss Hauer Feld, although Sanford “may not be able to claim authorship rights in the underlying text of the e-mail, he may have a copyright in the unique photographic image he created because of the way he has put it together.” Kracht, who is not involved in the controversy, writes in an e-mail that Sanford “has selected only certain words, chosen to blur some of the text at the bottom and brought out the texture of the paper on which the e-mail is printed. That’s all his artistic expression and interpretation.”

Read Gould's excellent piece here.

I am not a lawyer (although it seems like everyone else in my immediate family is) and thus here's my question: I was under the impression that once you hit the send button and send an email to someone... a regular email and not an email containing the full text to your next novel... anyway - as soon as that email hits cyberspace and it's received by the intended recepient(s), then that's all she wrote and the recipient(s) can do anything they want with that email, including photographing it, posting it on a blog, printing it and stapling it to a telephone pole, etc.

So for the copyright lawyers who read this blog: Is that correct? Or does the copyright of an email always belong to the originator?

Although I think that when one writes a letter, the author always owns the copyright to the text of the letter, although the recipient of the letter has actual ownership of the letter itself, and can sell it on Ebay if he or she so desires.

Not that "email copyright" it would strictly apply to this case, as it appears to me that Sanford did not "publish" her emails, but rather took some words here and there (sort of a "visual sampling") and re-presented them in a "new" work of art that is not immediately visually recognizable as the original email.

Update: Bailey offers some advice.

Opportunity for Artists

Deadline: Unclear

Open Call for Web Based Art for the Web Biennial 2007. Submissions and exhibition Start: February 1st and end December 31 2007. The Web Biennial is a project produced by the Istanbul Contemporary Art Museum, in Turkey and artists can participate through the portal located at webbienial.org.

One project per artist. No Portfolio sites, No Commercial Projects. This project is totally free and open for all. This year all languages welcome except, in the head tags.

The Web Biennial is a NO concept, NO curator, NO location, NO sponsor event.

Send them the URL of your Web Based Art project. Put inside the head tags of your index page:

"Web Biennial 2007 - Name of the Artist - Name of Your Project." The index page and the web site needs to be on the same domain. No attachments.

You can e-mail submissions to: webbiennial@yahoo.com

Please also put in the subject line of your email: "Web Biennial 2007 - Name of the Artist - Name of Your Project."

First come first served; collaboration proposals from institutions welcome.

The Power of the Web

The other day I finally closed on my Potomac house, which I may add, sold at a helluva good deal.

Anyway, the really nice guy who bought my house informed me that he had learned all about the house and the sale, etc. by virtue of being a reader of this blog!

Picts at Honfleur

The below drawing is currently hanging at Honfleur Gallery as part of the pre-grand opening show on the art of tattooing. Call them at (202) 889-5000, x 113 to buy it.

It's a Pictish woman from my Pictish Nation series. Learn more about the Picts here.

Kirkland in New York

This is what happens when a motivated artist decides to take the artbull by the horns and organize his own first solo show in NYC.

Read JT Kirkland's NYC debut here.

Go JT!

Civilian Moves

Kriston Capps tips us that Jayme McLellan's Civilian Art Projects will move into the building (at 406 7th Street NW in Washington, DC) that currently houses Touchstone Gallery and was once home to Numark, David Adamson, eklektikos and others.

Read Capps' post here.