Artists Websites: Chawky Frenn
My good friend Lebanese-American painter Professor Chawky Frenn is a DC area painter who needs little introduction.
Art critic Donald Kuspit, one of the most visible art voices of the 21st century, has written that Frenn "constructs a spiritual space in which the contemporary public can feel emotionally at home, however troubling the emotions his imagery evoke in them."
The New York Times wrote that "Chawky Frenn is a painter who has nailed down the figurative mode, and this accomplishment gives him the license to convey anything he wants, including the grand theme: the elusive meaning of human existence."
The Washington Post wrote: "From a classical nude contemplating a human skull to his latest series of still lifes of slaughtered animal carcasses, Frenn is an artist's artist (as opposed to a critic's artist)."
Frenn's works are used to controversy. In 2001, his Boston gallery decided to cancel a Frenn solo show at the last minute as a result of the Sept. 11 attacks.
In 2004, his exhibition at Dartmouth caused an uproar on campus. Frenn, who was exhibiting at the same time at Damien Hirst, managed to outshock Hirst.
Visit his website here.
Thursday, August 21, 2008
Wednesday, August 20, 2008
2008 Lucelia Artist Award Nominees
The Smithsonian American Art Museum announced a few days ago the nominees for the museum's 2008 Lucelia Artist Award.
The 15 nominees are Doug Aitken, Jennifer Allora and Guillermo Calzadilla, Slater Bradley, Matthew Buckingham, Mark Dion, Keith Edmier, Spencer Finch, Harrell Fletcher, Mark Grotjahn, Trenton Doyle Hancock, Rachel Harrison, Zoe Leonard, Suzanne McClelland, Wangechi Mutu and Dana Schutz.
Nominated artists work in a diverse range of media including film, installation, mixed media, painting, photography, sculpture and video.
The one artist in this list that continues to be a question mark for me is Dana Schutz.
Artsy Raincoats
Ahhh... the glamorous life of an art dealer...
Earlier this year we peddling art at a New York art fair, and when the fair ended one day, at the end of the day all the gallerists marched out as the building closed.
Except that it was raining out like a Florida rain; buckets and buckets of water. The sidewalks were like rivers, with at least a couple of inches of running, dirty New York City sidewalk water covering shoes and sandals.
You don't want your feet soaked in NYC sidewalk dirty water.
So everyone had to wait until the monsoon ended, and slowed down to a trickle. Since we didn't have umbrellas or raincoats, a little tape and bubbling wrap and voila!
Art on Trial
Souheil Chemaly turns us all onto Art on Trial.
Developed in part to increase public awareness of such restrictions, Art on Trial is a virtual exhibit of artworks that were once at the center of actual courtroom battles.
Check it out here.
The collector's mind
Edward Sozanski, the Philly Inky's art critic has an interesting article titled Art: What motivates big collectors to do what they do?
The Cone sisters of Baltimore, Claribel and Etta, might have seemed eccentric to some of their contemporaries, not only because they continued to dress like staid and proper Victorians well into the 20th century but also because they collected avant-garde art.Read the article here.
Anyone who has seen the Matisse-rich Cone collection at the Baltimore Museum of Art will realize that the sisters - who otherwise lived the most conventional of spinster lives - were more aesthetically adventurous than 99 percent of Americans who witnessed the birth of the modern world.
Like Albert C. Barnes, a contemporary of younger sister Etta, they enthusiastically patronized the two most prominent European modernists, Picasso and Matisse, along with other progressive artists such as Cezanne and Gauguin.
Mainly, though, they concentrated on Matisse. Of the approximately 3,000 objects in the Cone collection in Baltimore, about 500 are by him, the largest group of Matisse works anywhere.
Even since I first visited the collection years ago, I've wondered how and why two Victorian spinsters from a wealthy but nonartistic mercantile family made such an astonishing conceptual leap. The question of what ignites such a passion for collecting art never fails to fascinate.
Tuesday, August 19, 2008
China detains American artist
An American artist who planned to use laser beams to flash "free Tibet" on buildings in downtown Beijing was detained Tuesday, according to a colleague and a pro-Tibet group.Read the AP story here.
James Powderly, co-founder of Graffiti Research Lab in New York, was detained before dawn as he prepared to use a handheld green laser to project messages on prominent structures in Beijing, according to Students for a Free Tibet.
Powderly's colleague, Nathan Dorjee, said in New York that he received a text message from the artist which said he had been detained around 3 a.m. by police.
Officials at Beijing's Municipal Publicity Security Bureau did not answer phone calls Tuesday night. His whereabouts remained unknown, the group said.
Has been decided already
Didn't we already have this "controversy" a few decades ago with Sally Mann's photos of her children? And didn't we all decide back then that it was art and not pornography?
So why is it an issue with photographer Betsy Schneider?
Opportunity for Artists
Deadline: September 1, 2008
1708 Gallery is seeking exhibition proposals from artists and curators for its 2010 exhibition season. 1708 Gallery is a non-profit space for new art committed to expanding the understanding, development and appreciation of contemporary art. The Gallery provides public exposure and opportunity to emerging and established artists internationally. By showing art that questions, challenges, and redefines the social and aesthetic boundaries of the visual arts, 1708 Gallery offers an opportunity for the public to investigate, discover and be inspired by the most recent developments of contemporary art. Artists and curators may submit proposals for single or group shows of all media. For an exhibition proposal form, please visit their website at www.1708gallery.org (under exhibitions and proposals).
Next deadline is September 1, 2008. For more information, please contact: Tatjana Beylotte at tbeylotte@1708gallery.org or 804/643-1708.
Two ops for photographers
Deadline: postmarked by August 29.
Washington School of Photography is seeking submissions for a juried show in their gallery to take place October 10, 2008. This is a national photography exhibit, which will coincide with their annual silent auction and is a venue on the Bethesda, MD ArtWalk. Fee to enter: $25/4, $5/addtl, slides or CD. More information and forms at www.wsp-photo.com or SASE to: WSP, 4850 Rugby Avenue, Bethesda, MD, 20814.
Deadline: postmarked by September 29.
Washington School of Photography is seeking submissions for a juried show in their gallery to take place November 14, 2008. This is a regional photography exhibit open to camera club members residing in Maryland, DC, and Virginia, which will coincide with FotoWeek DC and is a venue on the Bethesda, MD ArtWalk. Fee to enter: $25/4, $5/addtl, slides or CD. More information and forms at www.wsp-photo.com or SASE to: WSP, 4850 Rugby Avenue, Bethesda, MD, 20814.
Monday, August 18, 2008
The Marlboro Gallery National Juried Sculpture Exhibition at Prince George's Community College features 21 artists from around the country (including one of DC's top creative sculptors: Adam Bradley).
My good friend Kristen Hileman, Associate Curator at the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden juried the show and will present awards during the reception on my birthday, September 6th, 4 – 7pm. The exhibition and cash prizes totaling $3500, including the $2000 Kari Beims Sculpture Award for Best in Show, was made possible through a generous donation from an anonymous patron of the arts.
I hear that Kristen put together a really interesting show and sounds like a really exciting even because the venue has been able to give sculptors place where they can show some substantially large work, and give away some significant monetary prizes.
Only Women Bleed
One of the judges of Australia's top religious art competition has resigned in vehement objection to a work that has been included in the finalists' short list.
Australian art critic and historian Christopher Allen resigned from the panel of judges after Adam Cullen's triptych Corpus Christi made the short list for the $20,000 Blake Prize for Religious Art.
Corpus Christi depicts Jesus on the cross with the inscription, "Only women bleed," a line from a song by rocker Alice Cooper.
Allen told ABC Radio that he did not like the painting, which he said "has a kind of deliberate ugliness that has been exploited as a gimmick."
Read the CBC News story here.
Man's got his woman to take his seed
He's got the power - oh
She's got the need
She spends her life through pleasing up her man
She feeds him dinner or anything she can
She cries alone at night too often
He smokes and drinks and don't come home at all
Only women bleed
Only women bleed
Only women bleed
Man makes your hair gray
He's your life's mistake
All you're really lookin' for is an even break
He lies right at you
You know you hate this game
He slaps you once in a while and you live and love in pain
She cries alone at night too often
He smokes and drinks and don't come home at all
Only women bleed
Only women bleed
Only women bleed
Black eyes all of the time
Don't spend a dime
Clean up this grime
And you there down on your knees begging me please come
Watch me bleed
Only women bleed
Only women bleed
Only women bleed
Only women bleed
Only women bleed
Only women bleed
Only women bleed
Art fairing
Art fairs have already proliferated to such an extent worldwide in recent years that they have begun to kill one another off.Read the SF Chronicle story here.
Add a little more booze...
A new trend in the art business is flourishing at a moment when the economy is tight and sales are slow at galleries around town. What's the idea? Add a bar.Read the Seattle Times story here.
Friday, August 15, 2008
Calling all Fridas!
Audition for Frida Kahlo look alikes at SFMOMA..
Details here... and there’s a third audition coming up this Saturday, August 16th!
Made in China
DC painters Matt Seesow and Dana Ellyn spent most of July traveling throughout a huge chunk of China and they painted every chance they had, using supplies they bought there, with the results going on display this Saturday night at Longview Gallery in DC.
The free opening reception kicks off at 6 PM and is scheduled to go until 9PM.
Matt says that they "hit much of the 'must see' attractions while in China, so our work reflects a lot of that experience: Shanghai acrobats, pandas, Mao, Tiananmen Square, chickens, kitties, and all kinds of Communists. We missed the Olympics, bummer... no badminton or skeet shooting paintings... sorry."
Longview Gallery is at 1302 9th street, NW ... near the Convention Center/Gallery Place metro stops. The show runs through September 20th.
SAAM Acquires new Christo
The Smithsonian American Art Museum in DC has acquired "Running Fence, Sonoma and Marin Counties, California, 1972-76, A Documentation Exhibition," the definitive record of the major early work by Christo and Jeanne-Claude.
The Christo and Jeanne-Claude's epic project consisted of the installation of the "Running Fence" (1972-1976), a white fabric and steel-pole fence, 24 1/2 miles long and 18 feet high, across the properties of 59 ranchers in Sonoma and Marin Counties north of San Francisco. The "Running Fence" existed for only two weeks; it survives today as a memory and through the artwork and documentation by the artists.
This is the first major Christo and Jeanne-Claude complete project archive to be acquired by a museum. It includes more than 350 individual items. With this acquisition, the museum has obtained nearly 50 original preparatory works by Christo, including 11 large-scale drawings — each eight-feet wide — and 35 additional drawings and collages he made in preparation for the final installation. The archive also includes a 68-foot long scale model, more than 240 documentary photographs by Wolfgang Volz in color and black-and-white, a film by filmmakers David Maysles, Charlotte Zwerin and Albert Maysles, documents, 324 color slides and one nylon fabric panel and steel pole.
The artists will be at the museum to discuss the project on my birthday, Saturday, Sept. 6, following a screening of the award winning film "Running Fence" (1978), directed by the Maysles who have documented six of Christo and Jeanne-Claude's major projects.
Thursday, August 14, 2008
Dark Clouds
In the last 2-3 weeks I've received at least half a dozen calls and emails from Miami art fairs whose deadline for application has passed, inviting us to apply to their fairs. That can only mean one thing: gallery applications are down.
Another possible sign of a slow down in the art fair market?
I'll skip Miami this year and look forward to a better 2009.
