Cinco de Mayo

This Saturday people will be drinking tequila and Mexican beer on a planetary scale, celebrating the fabled "Cinco de Mayo" date.

I always have fun asking people what "Cinco de Mayo," celebrates, and some of the answers that I have gathered over the years have been hilarious. Here's a quiz in fun:

Cinco de Mayo celebrates:

- May 5, 1810 - Mexico declares independence from the Kingdon of Spain. Eleven years later the Spanish soldiers get the memo and leave Mexico forever.

- May 5, 1848 - With the fearsome Spaniards gone, the United States goes to war with Mexico and grabs a huge chunk of land from the former Spanish colony. The Mexicans invent the term "gringo" to refer to the Americans.

- May 5, 1862 - The pissed off Mexican Army, under the command of Texas-born General Zaragosa whips the French Army at the Battle of Puebla. The shamed French Army never ever gets any respect on any other battlefield and becomes the practice runs for the German Army.

- May 5, 1900 - Tijuana bartender Jose Cuervo is horrified to discover that somehow an agave worm has been bottled accidentally in a tequila bottle that he was about to open. Disgusted he throws the bottle in the garbage. It is picked up by six drunk US Navy sailors on liberty, who drink the whole bottle and then get into a fist fight as to who gets to eat the worm. Cuervo notes this bizarre event and takes notes.

- May 5, 1938 - Mexican actress Margarita Carmen Cansino changes her name to Rita Hayworth and becomes an instant Anglo sensation in Hollywood.

- May 5, 1969 - Mexican-Americans decide that from now on they are be called "Chicanos."

- May 5, 1972 - The Nixon administration decides that Mexican-Americans are to be called Hispanic from now on. Other Americans of Latin American ancestry are also rounded up under this cultural name.

- May 5, 2000 - Hispanics decide that from now on they are to be called "Latinos" because Europeans from Spain and Portugal have joined the gravy train and have been declared "Hispanics" as well.

- May 5, 2025 - At 12 noon, with a majority population of Mexican-American ancestry, the state of California secedes from the United States of America and re-joins the Estados Unidos de Mexico.

- May 5, 2025 - At 12:45 PM Mexico declares its intentions to begin drilling for oil off the coast of California and begins moving the Mexican Army to round-up the Hollywood crowd.

- May 5, 2025 - At 1:00 PM California secedes from the Estados Unidos de Mexico. The Mexican Army promptly deserts and become instant residents of California. At 1:30PM, California asks to be re-admitted into the Union. The United States declines to take them back and begins building a wall along the California state line.

All in fun!

Be safe drinking and celebrating out there and Viva Mexico!

Loads of gallery openings tomorrow

Tomorrow is not only "Cuatro de Mayo," but also the first Friday of the month, and thus tons of galleries in DC and Philadelphia will have extended hours and new shows openings.

Details on Philly openings here.

Details on DC openings here.

The Personal Picture Plane

The Personal Picture Plane is an exhibition by Philadelphia and New Jersey based artists Ellen Abraham, Jim Brossy, Aurora Deshauteurs, Richard Elzo Dunn, Jessica Makin, Louise DeSalvor Masi, and Carol Taylor-Kearney. The exhibition is curated by Carol Taylor-Kearney and it was recently exhibited at the Gloucester County College's College Hall Gallery and is currently on exhibition at StrataSphere Exhibition Space in Philadelphia through May 27th.

Wanna go to another DC opening today?

The Independent Artists Forum presented by the Art Group of the Staff Association of the Organization of American States has an exhibition by The Independent Artists Forum: Ethel Bustamante, Haydeh Rastin, Marjolein van Milligen, Marion van Ruiten and Wendy Plotkin-Mates. The Opening Reception is today Thursday, May 3, 2007 from 5:45 to 8:00 p.m. At the General Secretariat Building (1889 F St., NW Terrace Level, Washington, DC 20006).

Wanna go to a DC opening tomorrow?

"Roman Vishniac’s Berlin" opens May 3 at the Sixth & I Historic Synagogue (600 I Street NW in DC) with a reception at 6:30 pm. Opening remarks by special guests Mara Vishniac Kohn (daughter of Roman Vishniac), Klaus Scharioth (Ambassador of the Federal Republic of Germany), and Aubrey Pomerance (curator of the exhibition and archivist of the Leo Baeck Archives at the Jewish Museum Berlin). RSVP to 202-408-3100 or info@sixthandi.org.

New DC gallery

A new gallery will open at 1353 U Street, NW in Washington, DC next year. More later...

Mega Art Show Ideas

The WaPo's former Chief Art Critic (and now mostly a resident of soggy Scotland) Paul Richard, writes about the disappointing numbers of visitors attending the Corcoran's mega exhibit "Modernism."

It's not easy predicting or creating museum exhibitions that will attract huge numbers and put some money in a museum's coffers, especially at $14 a pop, as the Corcoran's entry fee is. I've heard nothing but good things about the Corcoran's new director (Paul Greenhalgh) and at least he's trying to get the Corcoran back on track and also out of the red.

And museum directors are caught between a rock and a hard place when selecting exhibitions that have a good chance of being popular. In the elitist world of most art critics and the art world cabal, any exhibition that is popular with the masses is immediately suspect of being low brow.

The American art world generally does not trust the American public's sense of taste when it comes to visiting an art exhibition. If they line up around the corner, then the exhibit is too popular and thus... ah... "popular."

Nonetheless the Mid Atlantic Art News Mega Exhibition Ideas Department has been hard at work with some suggestions almost guaranteed to bring huge masses to the Corcoran, or any other museum in the nation for that matter.

Lines like the ones we experienced in DC with the Vermeer exhibition, or the Van Gogh exhibition, or the WPA/C PostSecret exhibition, or in Philly with the Dali exhibition.

Frida Kahlo - In celebration of the 100th anniversary of the birth of Mexican artist Frida Kahlo (1907–1954), the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, in association with the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA), will present a major exhibition of the artist’s paintings spanning her career. Curated by art historian and Kahlo biographer Hayden Herrera and Walker Associate Curator Elizabeth Carpenter, Frida Kahlo will open at the Walker October 27, 2007 – January 20, 2008, before traveling to the Philadelphia Museum of Art and SFMOMA. Why Kahlo is not coming to any DC museum is a mystery to me, and I can already hear the k'ching of cash registers in those museums selling posters, books, etc.

The Art of Comic Books - Hollywood gets it, so when will the artworld get it? Comic book characters generate big bucks for la la land, and I suspect that a massive survey of original artwork by both the vintage artists of the early to mid 20th century, as well as the cult icons like Frank Frazetta, Berni Wrightson and others, coupled with the young new hard guys and gals is sure to (a) expose the brilliant genre of art that is comic book art, and (b) get huge lines to see the original boards for Superman, or Batman, or Spidey, or Frazetta's spectacular series of Conan, The Barbarian illustrations.

PostSecret - Why someone hasn't done this on a massive scale is beyond me. Imagine a museum lined up with 100,000 postcards of Frank Warren's secrets. If they stood in lines around the block when the WPA/C did it in hard-to-get-to and hard-to-park Georgetown, imagine what it would do in a highly visible museum setting and to that scale.

The Ivy League and Seven Sisters Nude Photographs - It was an apparently long-established and bizarre custom at most Ivy League and Seven Sisters schools for incoming freshmen to pose nude for a series of photographs. In some cases, pins were attached with adhesive to their backbones at regular intervals from the neck down. These "posture photos" were in some of these schools a routine feature of freshman orientation week, and designed to "discover" those students with an erratic postural curve, and those were then required to attend remedial "posture classes." I kid thee not. Both George Bush presidents, Bob Woodward and many other now famous folks were required to do it at Yale. At Vassar, Meryl Streep did it, and at Wellesley, Hillary Rodham Clinton and Diane Sawyer also did it. Can you imagine the lines of people waiting to peek at a naked Dubya?

Ansel Adams Revealed - There are some fill-in-the-blank American art icons whose name alone guarantees a mega show because their art has become part of the American identity. In addition to Adams, other such artists include Georgia O'Keefe, Norman Rockwell, Andrew Wyeth, Andy Warhol and maybe Hopper. Because the Library of Congress owns thousands of Ansel Adams negatives created while Adams worked for the Dept. of the Interior, I suspect that a hard-working curator could dig and put together an exhibition of seldom seen Adamses.

Sports Art - People are always yapping about political art (yawn), which is simply another genre or subject that artists look at once in a while. And if we simply consider focusing an art exhibition on a particular subject matter, just to get a general survey as to what artists are doing on that particular subject, then a potential idea would be a survey of sports-related art. What has happened in this genre since the great George Bellows paintings? Some photos have become an iconic part of Americana, such as the great Ali - Liston photos. What else is out there?

Other interesting ideas (not guaranteed to be mega exhibits):

Ebay Artists - At any given time there are around 150,000 lots classified as art on Ebay and around 12,000 by self-representing artists. Ebay is generally where bottom-feeders dwell (for the most part) in the world of art. But we also know that it's not that unusual anymore for museum curators to occasionally troll through Ebay looking for specific stuff. Can a decent exhibition be curated from the massive numbers of artwork being exposed through Ebay? Just an exhibition of copy cats may be fun.

Blank Canvas - Imagine that a local museum sets up 100 4 ft. x 4 ft. blank canvasses on easels and sets up an online and snail mail lottery where artists from all over the world submit their details and at a certain point 100 of them are picked at random via a lottery style (or a curated process I guess) and selected to come to the museum for a specific period of time and create a painting live and in situ.

Googlart - A variation of the above, but a more contemporary approach, where the museum sets up 25 big LCD screens in a cool minimalist way, and each screen in hooked up online and connected to a wireless keyboard somewhere else in the museum, where visitors can type in some sort of search parameter and using some new dorky CGI script of whatever, in conjunction with Google Image Search, be constantly presenting images on the screen, say 10 seconds each? Because this is the USA, some sort of safety net to try to avoid porn would be needed, so perhaps a hidden human in the loop to prevent porn from going to the screens may be a good idea. Get Google to sponsor the exhibition, pay for the screens and for the minimal software development and you're set!

Any more ideas? Email me.

Tyler School of Art Seeks Exhibition Coordinator

Deadline: May 21, 2007

The Department of Exhibitions & Public Programs at Tyler School of Art, Temple University, is seeking an Exhibitions Coordinator to administer an ambitious contemporary art programs at Temple Gallery in Old City Philly and on Tyler's Elkins Park campus.

These programs are designed to contribute to the intellectual liveliness of the artistic community in Philadelphia, and to have a national impact as a forum for the debate of significant artistic issues. Tyler Exhibitions seeks a highly organized individual to work with the Director on public relations, planning, budgets, overseeing students, and all aspects of gallery and office administration.

The Successful candidate will be flexible, detail-oriented, and able to work on multiple projects simultaneously. Position requires minimum three years art gallery or museum experience, strong writing skills, knowledge of contemporary art, experience with office administration including expertise with Word, Access, and Excel.

Cover letter, resume, and three references to:

Sheryl Conkelton
Tyler Exhibitions
7725 Penrose Ave
Elkins Park, PA 19027

Pyramid Atlantic Art Center Seeks Executive Director

Pyramid Atlantic Art Center, a contemporary visual arts center and gallery in Silver Spring, MD, dedicated to creation, exhibition and appreciation of paper, prints and book art, seeks a new Executive Director to succeed founder, Helen Frederick, who has been running the joint for over 26 years.

The new person will direct, inspire and oversee art programs through collaboration with external artistic leaders for the organization's programming and artistic activity. Reporting to the Board, they will work closely with local, regional and broader philanthropic community, including state and local agencies, to cultivate financial and other support.

Experience should include: arts background, proven leader with entrepreneurial flair, experience with diverse fundraising of $500k annually, experience leading a management team and staff through change process, Master's or Bachelor's degree in Art, Arts Management or related field.

Click here for a full job description. To apply send email with your cover letter, resume and salary requirements to: successionusa@gmail.com.

Opportunity for Artists and Curators

Deadline: June 15, 2007

The Greater Reston Arts Center (GRACE) is requesting proposals for exhibitions for its main gallery space for periods of approximately 4-6 weeks. Proposals will be accepted from artists, independent curators, or arts organizations.

Visit this website for more details.

PostSecret Artist at Artomatic

My good friend, local artist and one of the world's best-known artists, Frank Warren, the talent behind the spectacularly successful PostSecret project, will be signing copies of his books at Artomatic starting this weekend.

Copies of Warren's three bestselling books, "PostSecret: Extraordinary Confessions from Ordinary Lives," "My Secret: A PostSecret Book," and his latest work, "The Secret Lives of Men and Women: A PostSecret Book," will be available for purchase during the signing events.

Launched at Aromatic in November 2004, PostSecret is an ongoing community art project where people mail in their secrets anonymously on one side of a homemade postcard. More than 80,000 postcards have been received. PostSecret has attracted interest from around the world, and the project's Web site, www.PostSecret.com has been visited by more than 70 million people.

"None of this would have been possible without Artomatic," said Warren, a Germantown, Md., businessman. "For me, Artomatic was a gateway to a new more creative and fulfilling life."

The PostSecret signings will take place on Friday, May 4, from 7 p.m. to 9 p.m.; Saturday, May 5, from 6 p.m. to 8 p.m.; and Saturday, May 12 from 6 p.m. to 8 p.m.

Visitors to Artomatic can also watch a video presentation of some of the
PostSecret postcards Warren has received in room Yellow 6B25.

For directions and hours, call the Artomatic infoline at (202) 544-1005.

Opportunity for Artists and Curators

Deadline: October 15, 2007

The Howard County Center for the Arts, a 27,000 square foot facility located in Ellicott City, Maryland, is seeking proposals from artists and curators nationwide for solo and group exhibits for the 2008-2009 gallery season.

All original artwork in any media, including installations, will be considered for the general review. The Arts Council is also accepting slide submissions for two specific upcoming exhibits: Illuminations (working title), a juried exhibit of artworks with light/illumination as the primary medium, and an untitled exhibit of book arts. Work previously shown at the Howard County Center for the Arts will not be accepted for review, nor will work previously submitted to the gallery program in the past year. There is no fee to apply.

Artists must be at least 18 years old. Artists and curators should submit up to 20 slides with an accompanying slide list, an artist/curator statement, resume and application to exhibit, along with a self-addressed, stamped envelope with sufficient postage for the return of application materials. Incomplete applications will not be reviewed.

Call 410-313-2787 for an application or download it here. Submissions are accepted on an ongoing basis, however, deadlines to be included in the next review is October 15, 2007.

Wanna go to a Germantown, MD opening tomorrow?

Artomatic Picks

Artomatic has created a means for the artists to pick their own favorites. See their picks here.

ArtDC delivers more than expected

By the time I finish writing this multi-faceted review and opinion piece on the capital's first international fine arts fair, it will all be over and done, and tired gallerists and dealers and their assistants may be still in the process of tearing down exhibits, bubble-wrapping work to be delivered to new owners or shipped back to galleries, or perhaps to the next fair, and figuring out their next step.


Some will have made a lot of money, others will wonder how they will pay bills incurred in attending this fair, others will still be working the phones trying to close last minute deals. But overall, I suspect that most of them will come back next year.

Because I have a very deep interest in what artDC was doing, can do and will do for the region - both as an art critic and as an art dealer and as an artist - I spent a lot of time at the fair, really trying to peel the onion and look inside it from all three perspectives.

I saw the beginning of what I think is something good for the regional visual arts. It is silly and unfair to compare (as some have done) artDC to Art Basel as Art Basel is now. Perhaps a fairer comparison (no pun intended) would be to compare artDC 2007 to Art Basel 1969 or 1970. And even that may be a little unfair to both Art Basel and artDC, as the latter is perhaps more sophisticated and better presented, than Basel was in those early days of artfairdom.

Like anything done in a group, there were some excellent galleries, some bad choices, and the vast number of galleries were quite adequate for DC's first art fair. The fact that the organizers were able to bring dealers from Europe, Latin America and Asia, speaks volumes for their hard work in selling Washington, DC as a viable art market.

The money certainly is here, although as anyone who's ever tried to sell a piece of art in the area knows, the collectors themselves are far and few in between, and a significant number of the 125,000 millionaires who according to Census figures live in the Greater Washington, DC region do not generally buy artwork with the same zest and zeal that they obtain mini mansions in Potomac and ride around in huge SUVs or expensive weekend motorcycles.

Why? Because to a certain extent, many of them lack the "formation" (as a Communist would say) to really understand, appreciate and know the difference between a "picture" and a work of art.

It's not that they are stupid or uncultured - after all, most of them are first generation, self made men and women, often from blue collar backgrounds, who worked their way up the food chain and made themselves what they are today.

Savvy businessmen, too many sharp lawyers, brilliant computer geeks, enviable technocrats - and all with little, if any, exposure to the arts, and more importantly, exposure to the availability of the arts.

Walk down M Street in Georgetown, or King Street in Alexandria, or Bethesda Row in Bethesda and you'll find many example of stores that successfully market, display and sell very expensive "pictures." They are usually located where most "real" galleries can't afford the rent - the prime real estate for business, right around the corner from Benetton, or Banana Republic, etc. They sell "pictures."

"Pictures" by movie stars, or musicians, or Spanish/Italian or Russian surnamed "painters" delivering "hand-embellished" Giclee canvasses with pretty pictures of Impressionistic women, or large wine glasses with cigars, or women with floppy hats, or Surrealistic landscapes... or Kincaid.

They are not cheap either; and these stores are doing gangbusters. So someone is buying these "pictures."

Why?

Because the buyers think it's fine art and they do not know any better.

Why?

Because they were not exposed to art in their upbringing. Not because their parents were bad, uncultured people, but because their parents were hard-working stiffs who worried about the rent, the electric bill, the food bill and paying for junior's college so that junior could get a Computer Science degree and go on and invent AOL.

And in college, junior probably was not exposed to art other than the two or three peripheral courses that he needed to get his electives; certainly not to buying art, or even aware that art was for sale.

And then junior works hard and becomes a millionaire, and now has disposable income out the yingyang, and looks around for expensive toys, because as George Carlin is fond of saying, we all love to collect "stuff."

And he sees ads for expensive cars, expensive furniture, expensive cigars, and he reads tons of reviews for the latest trendy restaurants, etc. But he's never really made aware that there's also art out there, for our local media has a spectacular sense of apathy towards the visual arts in our area. The Washington Post is the only major American newspaper that has a freelancer deliver around 25 reviews a year to cover an entire year of DC area gallery shows, and they allow their chief art critic to review only museum shows. Very little attention is placed upon our art galleries by the newspapers, certainly not commensurate with the amount of print space that they give theatre, music, dance, fashion, etc.

So junior doesn't know that the DC area has a really good and creative visual arts scene.

Thus when junior takes a stroll through the city's main shopping streets, he doesn't know about the side streets where the galleries are, but sees the stores passing for art galleries that sell the pretty, expensive "pictures," and then junior assumes that this "stuff" is art.

And he drops a ton of money for a pretty "picture." It happens all the time, otherwise these stores would go out of business.

But instead it is the art galleries that go out of business: Veerhoff (after 125 years), Numark, eklektikos, Fusebox.

Every once in a while, junior - usually by accident - discovers a reputable art gallery, and sometimes a real collector is then born. It has happened to me, as a dealer, many, many times. But for every one of those, thousands of others remain on the dark side, or worse still, think that they have to go to New York to find contemporary art.

And this is where an art fair like artDC makes its first impact upon our region.

Because the organizers clearly hired a sharp, savvy PR firm, the fair received a substantial amount of publicity, and it was clear from the numbers of people who attended the fair, that somehow the word got to junior, and a lot of juniors and juniorettes visited artDC 2007.

And hopefully the seed was planted in some of them and it will germinate so that they begin to learn the difference between what they have been buying and what else is out there, and more importantly: what else is in the DC area.

I am not sure if artDC has a way to gather the financial success or failure of the gallerists who took a chance with this first fair. They will answer that question in 2008. Those who return next year will be an indication of those who did well in 2007.

From my own observations, some of the local galleries were doing well. By Friday morning Curator's Office had already sold several large pieces, and while I spent the day doing the video review (will post soon), several dealers told me that they were also doing well. As you will see in the video, I even helped to close a $12,000 sale for a Catalan gallery from Giron, Spain. And on Saturday I witnessed a Miami gallery closing a sale for over $200,000 big ones.

Like any art fair, not everyone was doing well. A British gallery had not broken the ice by late Saturday evening; I hope that they did well on Sunday, which I am told had the largest crowds of the fair, which was expecting around 10,000 visitors in total.

And in addition to getting the word about art to junior, artDC also made sure that all of DC's precious and few art collectors also came to the fair. I saw most of them there on Thursday night, and many returned on Friday and Saturday.

On Thursday night a major ubercollector with a building named after him picked up his 9th Tim Tate piece at the fair. He was but one of many of the area's ubercollectors who was acquiring work at artDC. He is one savvy collector by the way, as he now owns one of Tate's seminal works that marry video and glass.

So the organizers got people to come to the fair. I must admit that I was hugely skeptical that this was going to happen, and even told them months ago that it would take a small miracle to get crowds to come, and pay, to see a visual arts event in our area.

I was wrong and they did a superb job; keep that PR firm!

So what about the art itself? What did junior and the area's ubercollectors get to see, and buy?

The diversity of the artwork was as I expected it would be. Anyone who has been to major art fairs would know this. There was art to satisfy nearly every imaginable taste, and attempts to cover all trends in both the primary and secondary art markets, although there was the usual limited number of sculptures.

Sculptures are difficult and expensive to ship.

Some have commented on the lack of "cutting edge" artwork at the fair. I'm not really sure what this means, although I suspect that in this case the comment was birthed because the writer either (a) skipped the new media section (I helped to jury that) and that silly but interesting "perpetual art machine," or (b) became visually overloaded at his/her first art fair. Next year artDC 2008 should invite the artists from Dorkbot DC to join in the new media salon.

But let's assume that there was very little art in someone's personal sense of what is "cutting edge." Let's also assume that you are a gallerist in Spain, or the Republic of Korea, or China, or Viet Nam, and that you are planning to attend DC's first ever art fair.

If you have done fairs in Miami, or New York, or Madrid, or London, then you know those places well enough, and know what sells there. You are -- after all -- a commercial gallery in the business of selling art. And if you are an independent, fine arts gallery, the business of selling art also comes coupled with a hard-to-define aesthetic ethic to also present work that helps to establish the gallery's reputation as a fine arts dealer - otherwise you're selling "pictures."

But you know very little about Washington, DC.

And so you do a little Googling, call a few people, read a few online blurbs, and try to gather some intelligence on the DC art market.

Good luck with that.

And so, as you prepare to buy airline tickets for you and your staff, and get hotel reservations for you and your staff, and hire a holding company in DC for the artwork that you're shipping from Korea, or Spain or China ahead of time, and pay for the crating and shipping, etc., and deal with American customs, you want to make sure that whatever you ship to DC is a mixture of your heavy hitters for sales or museum acquisitions, coupled with work that delivers an artistic continuity to your gallery's presence on the world scene.

This is not easy to foretell for a new market.

And some foreign and national galleries did well, and others probably failed miserably; but they all learned something. Same thing for the regional galleries. At around $8,000 for a booth, by the time that you add up all the expenses of staff salary, etc., even the locals had to sell at least $20,000 worth of art at the fair just to break even.

The artwork they and others brought included some of the best examples of Latin American masters that I've ever seen outside of the Miami fairs or perhaps ARCO. It included most major names like Matta, Lam, Pelaez, Portecarrero, Fini, Orozco, Mendieta, Rivera, Sequeiros, Botero, etc.


They also brought a boatload of the super hot Chinese market that some DC area art galleries (such as Irvine Contemporary Art) are also tapping into.

ArtDC probably brought the first mass exposure to the region of this vibrant Chinese art. "Another Look: New Art From Shanghai," a pavilion of 12 artists from the Shanghai area, was a coup for whoever planned it, as it displayed a dozen artists that curator Liu Jian told me would give a wide range of examples of artistic diversity in Shanghai, rather than the stereotypical view of Chinese art that we're already getting from the Western viewpoint.

They also brought young European talent to the fair. I particularly liked The Steps Gallery's (from Bristol, England) stable of recent British MFAs; artists such as painter Juliet Rose, sculptor Kuldeep Malhi and others.

I also liked one of Galeria Giart's (from Giron, Spain) young painters, Xavi Vilaro's hyper-realistic massive paintings. The Europeans also brought plenty of the big, dead guns, and if Picasso, or Dali and a dozen other in-the-style-of Surrealists was your thing, then you were happy.

The North Americans also did well. Chicago's Aldo Castillo Gallery brought Carolina Sardi's "Snowing Over Miami" installation and it was a hit at the fair, as was Toronto's Artcore brave sculptures such as "3 Men Standing" by Steve Gibson. Have we ever seen nude older men in a public place in DC recently?


Miami's Hardcore Art & Contemporary Space had a superb sculptural installation by Hiroshi Ohashi (which sold almost immediately) as well as some provocative videos by various artists. Miami's Cernuda Arte brought the heaviest of the Cuban heavy hitters, with vintage works in the hundreds of thousands by Amelia Pelaez, Wifredo Lam, and others (there was a lot of Cuban art in the fair by the way).


And to no one's surprise, the regional galleries more than held their own and in some cases excelled above the competition. Graham Caldwell's piece at G Fine Art probably had the best spot at the fair and was by far the best sculptural installation in artDC.


Parish Gallery delivered in their specialty: contemporary and vintage art by African-American artists and truly stood out because of it.

Philadelphia's private dealer Dolan/Maxwell also stood out with their strong grouping of vintage Philly artists. Baltimore's Goya Contemporary had a superb mix of blue chip artists (such as a really unique Keith Haring) together with brilliant work by emerging and mid career artists like Liliana Porter and Timothy App, as well as some breathtaking works by Madeleine Keesing.

Migration from Charlottesville seemed to be doing well at the fair, and had several huge Polaroids by Swiss installation-photographer-wizard Joachim Knill which were some of my favorites in the whole fair, and Douz and Mille more than held their own in the New Media area which truly had a very cool range of video projections and installations.

Randall Scott Gallery also showed well, especially the burned glass abstractions of Etsuko Ichikawa, which are reminiscent of the gunpowder pieces of Cai Guo-Qiang, but Ichikawa is developing her own method involving the use of molten glass that makes Cai's seem like childwork in comparison. Also notable were the imaginary teen worlds of photographer Julia Fullerton-Batten, and the gorgeous mixed media pieces by Cara Ober, which were my wife's favorites in the entire event.

Like any large art fair, there was also gimmicky stuff that bordered on kitsch and wall decor, such as the resinated Chinese poster-like work, and the large icons of JFK and Jackie made out of tiny photographs to resemble the op-art that Dali painted by hand in the 60s and they also were almost a copy of the process that Inga Frick did by hand cutting and pasting (before one could do this in PhotoShop) in the 80s and 90s.

But overall there was a glorious and typical visual overload of a lot of different art all in one huge location, which by the way, was superbly planned and very ample in size, with wide walking avenues between the booths, and not the usual congested halls that seem to characterize most art fairs. Visitors could walk and see a lot of different art that they'd rarely get to see in one place.

And this is where an art fair like artDC makes its second impact upon our region.

Another unexpected windfall from the fair was the exposure of DC area artists to other galleries. On Friday I was part of introducing the work of a well-known DC area artist to a British gallery who is very interested in his work.

Also on Friday, while doing a video interview with a Spanish gallery, the owner discussed that she was very interested in exploring the local artists and seeing if she could find some artists to bring back to Spain. By Sunday I had connected her with a couple of artists that I felt fit into her artistic focus, and she had chosen to bring back works by one local artist.

And other than those two personal anecdotes, I am sure that it happened with other galleries and artists. I am also aware of a major gallery with galleries in two US cities which hooked up with Tim Tate.

And thus it seems like the fair managed to help establish a connection between area artists and out-of-area galleries. I am sure that it worked the other way as well, and I'd be curious to hear from DC area galleries who picked up new artists that they "discovered" at the fair.

And these connections is where an art fair like artDC makes its third impact upon our region.

I believe that the artDC folks have signed a three year contract with the Convention Center, so it appears that they're in this for the long haul. And I believe that now is the time for quick thinking artists and curators and business-savvy dealers to start planning what they're going to do around and with artDC 2008.

A shout to the Scope and Bridge and AAF and other art fair moguls: Let's get some peripheral fairs going next year!

Local coverage of artDC

Yesterday I popped into the press office over at artDC and checked out the wall of press coverage about the fair so far.

It's clear that the fair's PR staff has done a super job getting the word out, and the press has generally responded quite well, especially the art bloggers.

The three major local newspapers have also done quite well, with the Washington Post -- no surprise here -- essentially ignoring the fair in the Style section (Style's editor Deborah Heard just doesn't get that she continues the decline started by her predecessor Eugene Robinson), while covering it nicely in the Weekend section and via online bits here and there.

The Washington Times delivered a spectacular, multi-page, multi color orgy of images in covering the fair (on Saturday), which I also can't find on their sucky website, because although I can find the story, the link is bogus (Update: Here's the valid link).

In the City Paper, my good friend Kriston Capps wrote a piece which curiously questioned the fair's business practices in dealing with non-profits, rather than discussing the art itself (impossible to do ahead of time) or the effect of the fair on the region. In the end (I think) it actually came out in favor of the fair organizers' interest in ensuring that the area's non-profits had a presence (there are 22 of them at artDC) at the fair, which as the article points out, is something most other art fair organizers don't care about.

Gopnik on artDC

I saw Blake Gopnik and his lovely and talented wife (painter Lucy Hogg) at artDC last Friday. Today the Post's Chief Art Critic writes a small blurb about the fair, but it's what he writes about the capital area galleries in today's Sunday Arts (I was unable to find the piece online Update: Here's thelink) that caught my eye:

"It's hard, trying to run a commercial gallery in Washington. Try to get the attention of art lovers and you're competing with the city's great museums, which are better places to see art than any gallery could ever be. Try to get the money of art collectors and you're competing with New York, where there's more art to see. In an attempt to remedy the situation, many local galleries, as well as some from farther off, are participating in this weekend's ArtDC..."

Gopnik goes on discussing the fair, but in this paragraph Blake has shown his first crack in the armor that has essentially protected most of him from being interested in the region's art galleries and artists, and also shows a clear understanding of the difficulty of running the business of an art gallery in the region.

I hereby take back 50% of all the negative things I've written and said about this man's writtings.

Maybe 25%... OK, OK... 50%

ArtDC Quicklook

I've spent the last three days over at artDC, although yesterday was a visit to create a video review of the show which will be posted as soon as Jeanie is done with the editing.

My first impression of the fair as a whole has been very positive, and I will expand on it later. But generally, artDC has brought a breath of fresh air, fresh art, fresh collectors and fresh opportunities for both DC area art galleries and DC area artists.

Almost three solid days at the fair, and interviewing dozens of gallerists, and meeting and chatting with dozens of DC area art collectors and artists, have given me a deep insight into the fair (and its effects on the area), that I think will reveal some surprising (and unexpected) benefits to the region that go past just having the capital region's first international arts fair.

As a dealer, and as a critic, and as an artist, and as an experienced art fair goer (my first art fair visit took place while I was living in Europe in the early 1980s), I think that I bring a set of multilevel experienced eyes that other area writers (so far) have not had time to develop because of age, or lack of fair-going experience, or zero business acumen, and even snarky personal agendas.

If you are an artist, a gallerist, an art collector, or just a person interested in seeing the beginning of something good and positive for our reginal arts scene, go and visit the fair tomorrow, it's last day.

I will have a full review shortly.

Update: Excellent review of the fair by Mark over at Ionarts. Read it here.

Waaaay behind

If you've emailed me in the last couple of days, I'm not ignoring you, it's just that I've been floating between artDC and the Warehouse the last two days and haven't had time for email... have at least 200 in the inbox and a gazillion in the spam checker.

I'll get to them by Monday.

Wanna go to a DC opening tonite?

Right across the street from artDC (which is being held at the DC Convention Center), the Warehouse Gallery is hosting a show of local artists called “No Representation” from April 26 to May 12, 2007. I've already seen it (twice) and it looks great.

The show, curated by Molly Ruppert, Sondra N. Arkin, Ellyn Weiss and Phillipa P.B. Hughes, will include all media and has two rules only: all of the art is by local artists and all the work is abstract. Artists in the show are artists include: Sondra N. Arkin, J. Belmar, Mark Cameron Boyd, Renee Butler, Tory Cowles, Laurel Farrin, Michael Gessner, Janis Goodman, Pat Goslee, Tom Green, Eve Hennessa, Kristin Holder, Brece Honeycutt, Becky Jones, Joanne Kent, Adrian Loving + Ayodamola Okunseinde (Dissident Display), Aubrie Mema, Elizabeth Morisette, Emily Piccirillo, Lynn Putney, Marina Reiter, Nooni Reatig, Chris Tousimis, Dan Treado, Andres Tremols, CC Vess, Gail Vollrath, Anita Walsh, Rex Weil and Ellyn Weiss.

The opening is Saturday, April 28 starting at 6 pm.