Spring Break in NYC

By Robin Tierney

Here’s a cure for cabin fever: a recession-priced escape to Manhattan.

Look for a discount fare on the Amtrak Acela (tip: board the no-cellphone “Quiet Car”). Rate-surf for the New Yorker Hotel, an architectural classic one block from Penn Station. It completed a massive renovation in time for the economic bust, so you can get a bargain and colossal views. Next, buy a $74 CityPass that gets you VIP admission at a bunch of iconic venues, and a $7.50 FunPass for 24 hours of unlimited subway riding on days you don’t feel like walking, although walking’s easy from this central location.

Now, some quick takes from my long weekend of art-spotting.

Big venues are scrambling more than ever to lure more visitors. The Metropolitan Museum of Art hit the bell with its new “It’s Time We Met” ad campaign built on photos submitted by museum-goers. Winners got a couple hundred bucks and an annual pass. So if you dream of having work shown at the Met, instead of slaving over a hot canvas just click some whimsical scenes with your cellphone.

So I shouldn’t have been surprised when security sentry Guy Anglade told me that visitors have asked which way to the “We Met at the Met” exhibition. Anglade shook his head: “Forget Carravaggio, where are the Flickr photos?”

"Six-year-old emulating Edward Hopper! His own choice, said his mother."
By Robin Tierney
The supersized images are plastered on billboards, buses and fencing in front of the museum. Evidently in the social media age, there’s an unquenchable thirst for acts of cuteness executed against fine art. Imagine your life’s work functioning as a background for goof-shots.

One special exhibition revisited the debate that won’t die: “is photography art?” “Walker Evans and the Picture Postcard” arrested scores of onlookers during my visit with its documents of Americana arcana culled from the photographer’s collection of 9,000 postcards. For most of the cards, the photographers remain unknown, but several of Walker’s own postcard creations are on view. Through his 1936 experiments, he taught himself to crop for maximum clarity and intensity. Walker then worked decades to free this humble genre from the pigeon-hole of nostalgia and get respect as an art form.


Walker Evans (American, 1903–1975) View of Easton, Pennsylvania (variant), 1935 Postcard format gelatin silver print 8.6 x 13.7 cm (3 3/8 x 5 3/8 in.)
Whatever you call them, their allure overpowers: viewers studied b&w and hand-colored portraits of beach towns, main streets, train depots, river ports, windswept cliffs, hometown jubilees, fan-dancers, sanitarium patients. The alchemy of documentary and lyricism includes original Coney Island amusements (“Atlantis, the Sunken City”), San Francisco’s Valencia Hotel vaulted out into the street by an earthquake, even an electric chair at Sing Sing prison.

The postcard exhibition closes May 25; check out curator Jeff Rosenheim’s terrific catalog.

Across the hall, I caught the final day of “Reality Check: Truth and Illusion in Contemporary Photography.” Interesting selections included faux-to-journalist David Levinthal’s staged battle using toy soldiers, flour and plastic bags shot using a very narrow depth of field. Mark Wyse documents a squirrel ignored in the road after falling to his death in his “Marks of Indifference” series.

Downstairs, “Pierre Bonnard: The Late Interiors” offered an opportunity to observe the graphic shorthand of dots, dashes, loops, spirals and zigzags the modernist used to record images and to compose paintings.

Make time to meander in Central Park.

Just south of the park you can overdose on eccentricities all day at MoMA (AKA the Museum of Modern Art). Sleep-deprived, I lacked the patience to mine for meaning in the temporary exhibitions that left me plagued by an earworm of “You Gotta Have a Gimmick” (from “Gypsy”). Such as Klara Liden’s projects, partly due to the medium designation of “interventions.” And a performance artist’s self-imposed year-long confinement to a cell. “Four Decades of Contemporary Art” felt like a Target commercial on drugs.

The ennui evaporated once I remembered to fetch my MoMA audio tour.

It’s worth scaling the steps for the survey spotlighting Martin Kippenberger, who has lambasted the vagaries of modern culture in nearly every medium. Consider “Psycho buildings” and the sprawling recession-ready installation presenting job interview as sporting event, complete with bleachers and cheerleaders.

MoMA admission gets you a free all-day ticket to use when you wish at P.S.1, the contemporary/indie art haven two subway stops east in Queens.


"Cheerful New York Graffiti in Building near P.S. 1"
By Robin Tierney
Speaking of gimmicks, even art-grumps might crack a smile at the swimming pool that mixes false bottom with false illusions. Darker spectacles play out on dual-sided screens showing Kenneth Anger’s surrealistic brain dumps. His lyrical 40s-style b&w “Faux D’Artifice” held me spellbound while others crowded before flickering frames of Coney Island biker escapades in “Scorpio Rising.”

Jonathan Horowitz commanded a bunch of spaces with jarring works in a range of media. Player piano playing songs from the Who’s “Tommy” paired with disturbing clips from “The Miracle Worker” and other movies. Commentary amusing and sinister about politics and celebrity, the universal appeal of violence and scandal, and imperialism as foreign policy and entertainment from the Roman Empire onward. It’s interesting. Really.

Watching Yael Bartana’s videos of vehicles eerily coming to a stop on a dark highway made me contemplate the narcotic effect of film, especially after I nodded off for an uncertain duration until a lady guard told me it was closing time.

Here comes a mini blockbuster

From the PMA:

Celebrating the extraordinary life and work of Andrew Wyeth (1917-2009), this installation consists of two paintings and seven drawings by the local artist. Among these works are a sequence of studies leading to the creation of Wyeth’s tempera painting Groundhog Day that demonstrate the transformation and distillation of observation that characterizes his finest work. Wyeth and his wife, Betsy, donated these drawings to the Museum in July 2006 during the final weeks of the retrospective exhibition Andrew Wyeth: Memory & Magic.

Born in Chadds Ford, Pa., 30 miles southwest of Philadelphia, Wyeth was educated at home and apprenticed to his celebrated father, the painter and illustrator Newell Convers (N.C.) Wyeth. He made his solo debut at the Philadelphia Art Alliance in 1936, at the age of 18, and was launched on the national scene the following year with a sold-out exhibition at the Macbeth Gallery in New York. Building on that early success, Wyeth proved to be a painter of profound imagination, skill, and staying power across seven turbulent decades. Both admired and criticized for the tenacity of his realist approach and the unabashed emotion in his paintings, he produced some of the most famous and haunting images of the 20th century.

“All I want to do is paint,” said Wyeth, “and I paint the things I know best.” The everyday “things” found in and around his homes in Pennsylvania and Maine resonated with feeling for Wyeth, offering him pathways into memory and fantasy. His paintings of “things” were rarely straightforward, realistic descriptions: usually, the subjects have been simplified in the process of study, manipulated, and layered with personal associations, metaphors, and symbols that express larger themes of loss, death, and the passage of time.

Curator: Michael Taylor, The Muriel and Philip Berman Curator of Modern Art
Location: Gallery 119, first floor

Out of Order at MAP: Drive-by review

Yesterday I got to MAP's Out of Order fundraiser auction art drop off a little earlier than last year, but by the mid afternoon there were already 270 pieces of art hung on MAP's wall.

So it seems that they're well on their way to top last year's numbers of over 600 works of art auctioned off for MAP's benefit, with 50% of the silent auction proceeds going to the artist.

When I got there and was filling out my forms, I had to do a double take on the artist who came after me. He was Michael O'Sullivan's (WaPo art critic) doppleganger, little glasses and all.

On closer examination he was a little older, but whoever this gent was, he really looks like O'Sullivan.

I stopped staring and went back to filling out my paperwork.

"Do you think this piece is too pornographic to hang in this show?" I heard the doppleganger ask the young MAP attendant. I turned and looked.

He had a painting well wrapped; he unwrapped it and showed it to the young girl. She looked a little confused and told him that it was OK. He asked if she was sure.

She then referred him to Julie Ann Cavnor (I think), the young MAP Executive Director, who was sitting behind the gallery's desk.

I couldn't resist, so as he walked to the desk, I stood up and strategically placed myself by the side of the desk, pretending I was studying the piece hung behind it, so that I could steal a look at the potentially offending work of art.

The doppleganger came to Cavnor and asked the same question. She looked at it, and over her shoulder, so did I.

I didn't see her face, but heard her telling the guy that it was OK. She did this in a very nice way.

Former Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court Potter Stewart once wrote that that "hard-core pornography" was hard to define, but that "I know it when I see it."

I think that Stewart and I, plus all the MAP personnel and I suspect every person on this planet would agree that there was no pornography in the work that the doppleganger was so anxious about.

Puzzling in fact.

The piece appeared to be an oil painting, sort of a naive style mixture of abstract and representational elements, thick paint application and sort of a New Ageish kind of look to the (ahem) finished product.

No naked bodies that I could discern with my quick stolen glance, no erect penises, no penetration of any orifices, no sucking of any kind, no genitalia that was recognizable as such.

No pornography; at least not on planet Earth.

Bypassing this distraction, I hung my work and moved on to look at the work that had preceded it.

Here's what I liked and what should be acquired during the auction:

There's an untitled lovely seascape watercolor by Patrick Klugh (#220) that will go fast. There's also a gorgeous tempting graphite work by photographer Elena Volkova (#59 and titled "Waterlines) almost next to it. This piece is a very minimalist rendition, clearly influenced by Volkova's equally minimalist photography. It is one of the best pieces in the show.

On the opposite end of the drawing spectrum, there's a very strong charcoal drawing by Matt Bergsbauer titled "Distortion #4 (it's work number 94) that reminded me a lot of Uruguayan artist Javier Gil's work. I also liked McKenzie Lefstein's woodcut titled "Trash City." That piece is number 65.

Two interesting nudes, a little too high for me to determine their media (could be drawing or digital), but with a lot of Vargas and Currin in them were next to each other (numbered 171 and 169 respectively) and seemed to come from the same artist's hand, but identified them as Brenda Brookind and David Wilson.

Number 44, "Hold Both Handles," a cool collage by M. Jordan Tierney was also quite good and should get a decent set of bids, as will Melissa Sue Mauro's appropriation of Hello Kitty in her "Distant Childhood Memories" (#72).

Candace Linthicum's pastel of a nude woman, #27 showed powerful skills with that very difficult medium, adn I also liked Diane Burnett's wire sculpture titled "The Eternal Struggle."

Right around the area where the Burnett sculpture is located, the O'Sullivan doppleganger was now engaged in conversation with a tall gent, and had his painting (wrapped again) under his arm.

"Do you think it's too pornographic?" I heard him ask the gent as I passed by.

The last piece that I will mention in this early look is David Herman's oddly titled "Untitled, Ocean." A powerful oil painting of a seascape that will get many bids, but David, is it untitled or is the title "Ocean"?

As I headed out the door, the doppleganger had returned to the receiving desk, and was once again quizzing once of the volunteers about the pornographicity of his work.

Molly, the fair attendant taking care of him, was being very nice, and I restrained my desire to jump in and ahhhh... ask him which part of "no" was fuzzy to him.

The Auction & Gala starts at 8pm, Friday, April 3, 2009. Go buy some artwork!

Things are not always as they seem

This elusive concept haunts the periphery of three distinct artists’ works, and for the month of April, Projects Gallery (which also sells my work) has three simultaneous solo shows of disparate artists who are united under the umbrella concept of Perception : Reality.

Canadian Ross Bonfanti creates his popular "concreatures" (if you've ever been to an art fair anywhere, any art fair... you've seen them) by rescuing cute, stuffed animals from thrift stores and ripping the stuffing out of ‘em.

The empty vessels are then filled with concrete. Once cured, the fur skin is peeled away, leaving a disarming "concreature" in place. Textured with the underside of the fabric, with fur embedded in the exposed seams, these sculptures retain their plush appearance and original features, including button eyes and noses.

The resulting sculpture is a constant juxtaposition between the expected and the actual.

Philadelphian Lauren Lyons is widely regarded for her photography of bands in highly stylized shoots.

She has photographed artist portraits and cheeky scenarios for illustrious clients such as Interscope Records, PETA, HBO, and Philadelphia Magazine. Celebrated for her accentuation of the artifice of her subjects, Lyons’ work exemplifies a contraction; she captures the visual evidence of the veneer.

Her carefully constructed images provide elusive glimpses at the truth, enough to ‘whet the palette’, ultimately creating a composed stylized truth.

Fellow Cuban Alex Queral’s carved phonebooks usually receive the “how’d-he-do-that?” attention wherever they are exhibited. His lushly detailed carvings are created from the soft material of phonebooks. Using classical carving techniques on an unexpected material, Queral brings forth the individual from the faceless masses. Queral crafts recognizable visages, vaguely familiar but elusively foreign, as well as evoking his own cast of characters from the bound sheets of paper.

Projects Gallery presents these three divergent artists from different regions of the continent. Each will be given their own exhibition space to focus on the individual artist, but the thematic thread connects them all. Popular in their own right, Perception : Reality invites the viewer to discover what lays beyond the first impression of these three artists’ works.

Perception : Reality will be on display April 6 - 25, 2009. There will also be an artist reception on First Friday, April 6th from 6 - 9 p.m. The reception is free and open to the public. Projects Gallery is located at 629 N. 2nd St. in Philadelphia’s Northern Liberties section.

Wanna go to an opening in Frederick, MD this weekend?

The Delaplaine Visual Arts Education Center has an openning reception, on Saturday, April 4, 2008, 3-5 pm for married artists William “Skip” Lawrence and Diane Santarella, who have simultaneous shows in April, at the Delaplaine Visual Arts Education Center Center in Frederick, Maryland.

Large canvases with rich layers of color will fill the Delaplaine’s F&M Gallery in “Homecoming”, recent paintings by William “Skip” Lawrence. "States of Mind" , by Diane Santarella, is showing in the Delaplaine’s Gardiner Gallery. Santarella’s paintings explore the graphic, visual experience of meditation, migraines, dreamscapes, and the organization of mental minutiae.

Sandberg at Conner

In Washington, DC, Conner Contemporary celebrates their first decade with concurrent solo exhibitions of new work by three gallery artists: Erik Thor Sandberg, Dean Kessmann and Isaac Maiselman.

I consider Erik Thor Sandberg to be one of the best painters that I have ever met.

His natural skills and his work ethic combine to deliver an artist who is somewhat of a throwback to the great age of painting, but also an artist whose consummate skill is also married to a very contemporary dialogue.

Conner describes Sandberg as an artist who "calls forth the regenerative powers of nature in Cyclical Nature, his third solo exhibition with the Gallery. Viewing the artist's latest series of large oil paintings on canvas elicits as much pleasure as he evidently took in painting them. Freeing figures from interior settings of his previous compositions, Sandberg opened magnificent landscape vistas as sites for the enactment of life, death and regeneration. In his inventive allegories, people and animals negotiate a tenuous balance between knowledge and irrationality. Sandberg reconciled the unsettling eventualities of his protagonists' actions by grounding them in vital elements which assert nature's boundless forces of reclamation and rebirth."

Dean Kessmann furthers his exploration of unusual ways of seeing familiar architectural spaces in Architectural Intersections, his third solo exhibition with the Gallery. In his first solo exhibition with Conner, artist Isaac Maiselman critiques political exploitation of religion in the video installation Entre el Dios, El Diablo.

The openings are on Saturday, April 4 from 6-8PM. If you are a lover of great painting, do not miss this show.

AIPAD report

One dealer, when asked what she’d sold, replied: “Off the record? Nothing. On the record? Nothing.”

Kris Wilton reports in artinfo.com.

Do this tomorrow

Tomorrow, Maryland Art Place (MAP) will be accepting artwork for their annual Out of Order silent auction.

Last year, 425 artists participated in Out of Order and several hundred guests attended, making it one of Baltimore’s most important and memorable art events! Check out my drive-by review of that exhibit here. My Best in Show pick last year was Hadieh Shafie, who won one of the major Baker awards a few days ago! Does the kid have an eye or what?

Proceeds from artwork sales will be split 50/50 between MAP and the artists and will directly support MAP’s exhibitions and programs throughout the year. For submission guidelines, please view the artist prospectus here.

I plan to donate work once again.

Out of Order
Auction & Gala: 8pm, Friday, April 3, 2009

Hanging Dates & Times: 24 non-stop hours beginning 9am, Wednesday, April 1, 2009.

Artists' Websites: Janis Goodman



Janis Goodman is not only an accomplished artist, but also one of the key figures in the Greater Washington, DC art scene. Goodman is a Professor of Fine Art at the Corcoran College of Art + Design, and one of the Arts Reviewer for the PBS/WETA, Channel 26, Around Town program. Visit her website here.

Robin Rose at Hemphill

One of Washington's most influential artists, Robin Rose, opens at Hemphill Fine Arts in DC with a show titled Endeavor. The opening reception is Saturday April 4, 2009 from 6:30 pm - 8:30 pm. The show runs through May 30, 2009.

Wanna do some body painting this Friday in DC?

Here's a party you won't want to miss! The closing of the annual 2009 Erotic Art Show at MOCA DC Gallery will begin at 6 pm on April 3 with very special contests for models and body painting enthusiasts and prizes totaling over $1,000 in value.

Models from Virginia, Maryland, Pennsylvania, West Virginia, the District of Columbia, and as far away as Delaware and New Jersey will be on hand wearing the erotic costume of their choice. A panel of judges will select the top three costumes judged on both originality and erotic flare. First, second and third place winners in the model/costume competition will each be awarded an "in-studio," two-hour portfolio-building photoshoots with one of three of the best known DC-area fashion, glamour, and fine art photographers.

Each of the winners will also be awarded a one-hour make-up session with one of three top-notch professional make-up artists! MOCA DC is fortunate to have Jerry Harke of JR Harke Photography, Inc. (Annandale, VA), Mike Cary of Mike Cary Photography (Fredericksburg, VA), and John Korb from John Korb Photography (Fairfax, VA) donate two-hour photoshoots to the winners. And, the three top notch make-up artists are donating their services to the winners.

Winners of the body painting contests will be awarded a cash prize of $50 for the best body painting artist and $50 for the best human canvas.

MOCA DC is located at 1054 31st St. NW in Canal Square in Georgetown, Washington DC, right next to a few other galleries in the Canal Square complex. For details, email Dave Quammen at mocadc01@comcast.net or call 202.342.6230.

Barbaccia and others at Delaplaine

Joseph Barbaccia's "Resonance" opens Saturday, April 4th at the Delaplaine Visual Arts Education Center's Side Gallery in Frederick, Maryland. The show goes through May 17, 2009.

Included are 12 mixed media sculptures created by Joseph Barbaccia, supported by a portrait of the artist holding one of his works by painter Margaret Dowell. Barbaccia and Dowell set an artistic mirror up to the creative personality by reflecting and revealing the artist through their own work, as well as through another artist’s eyes.

At the Center's Kline Gallery, don't miss Linda Plaisted's "The Arborist: Roots, Resilience and Rebirth" (through April 26). Plaisted "layers her original photographs of the trees of Frederick County with textures from her paintings and collected ephemera. The result is a painterly series of work that share a lucid quality illustrating the natural cycle of birth, growth, death and rebirth."

And at the Gardiner Gallery you must also see "States of Mind" by Diane Santarella (through April 26). This series of paintings explores "the graphic, visual experience of meditation, migraines, dreamscapes, and the organization of mental minutiae. Santerella works in mixed media on paper and canvas with a distinct mark that recalls Zen calligraphy and graffiti. The resulting paintings are quiet, complex and subtly challenging."

The Delaplaine Visual Arts Education Center
40 South Carroll Street
Frederick, Maryland 21701

Reclaimed at Target

Reclaimed, an exhibition at Alexandria's Target Gallery focuses on everyday common objects that are reclaimed, recycled, reinterpreted and transformed into art.

From Marcel Duchamp’s “ready-mades” to Robert Rauschenberg’s “combines”, artists have been for years recycling and reclaiming everyday common objects and transforming them into something new and unique. This exhibition was open to all artists nationally and internationally to submit work that has been reclaimed and transformed into their own personal artistic statement. The jurors for this exhibition are gallery owners and collectors, a husband and wife team, my good friends Steven and Linda Krensky.

The exhibition opens on April 1 and goes through April 26, 2009. The opening reception is April 9, 6-8pm and there will be a gallery talk at 7pm.

Another art scam artist...

Body of her email (just as received) below:

Hello.
My name is faith i saw your profile today at (afonline.artistsspace.org) and i love it also became intrested in you,i will also like to know you more,and i want you to send an email directely to my email address so i can give you my picture for you to know whom i am.Here is my email address (faithmbia53@yahoo.co.uk) i believe we can move from here.my love distance or colour does not matter but love matters alot in life.i waiting to recive your lovely reply soon, Yours Love.
Miss faith

New head of PG County Arts Council

(Via Arts & Real Estate) I had heard that my good friend Lionell Thomas had a new job as the head of the Prince George's County Arts Council, but couldn't get the DC Arts Commission (where Lionell worked for many years) to confirm it, and couldn't find anything on the web until now.

Thomas will not only bring a wealth of expertise (much needed by the way) to that Arts Council, but something that money can't buy: energy and true enthusiasm to the arts and to the new job.

2008

I just handed all my 2008 tax paperwork to my CPA and it doesn't look pretty.

Surprisingly though, sales of my own artwork reached an all time high for me. I had not realized this until this week.

In 2008 I had one solo show (of my paintings) and participated in about half a dozen art fairs and about half a dozen group shows.

I seem to do really well in art fairs, where my work has always and consistently sold well in art fairs (although 2009 started with a bummer art fair).

Bottom line: in 2008 I managed to sell nearly 80 drawings! Nearly a third of these were sold in one New York fair.

Most of these were recent drawings, but I also sold a few older pieces to a collector and even several art school works.

2009 started roughly, but I've got some more art fairs already lined up, have work hanging currently in two shows, but I still need to work on a few gallery shows.

Portraitism

With challenging economic times persisting, people are spending more time at home and are looking for affordable luxuries. Portraiture, especially portraits of children is "The New Status Symbol", according to Boston Home Magazine

Absolutearts.com report here and Boston Home Mag's portraits here.

Blue period

Representatives of the arts industries told the House Education and Labor Committee hearing Thursday that the repercussions of the recession go well beyond musicians having to put down their guitars and get "real" jobs. The nonprofit art and cultural industry alone supports 5.7 million jobs and generates $166 billion in economic activity every year, they said.

Read the AP report by Jim Abrams here.

And your art for free

Forbes estimates the personal wealth of Theodore N. Lerner at $2.5 billion, but why spend your own money on art when the taxpayers will commission it for you? The DC Government dead-panned that the baseball art belongs to DC and is only on loan to the Lerners, an assertion worthy of a Larry Neal Award for fiction. The sculpture is site-specific, so saying the art is on loan is like saying you don’t own the fillings in your teeth, you only rent them.

Read Licht on "DC Buys Bronze Bobbleheads for Billionaires" here.

Openness for everyone else but us....

A federal judge in Manhattan has spoken out about a claimant's decision to keep mum about the details of a recent restitution case involving the Museum of Modern Art and the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum.

Last month, the two museums agreed to a settlement under which they would continue to own two Picasso paintings in their collections and would pay the heirs of the works' original owner, Paul von Mendelssohn-Bartholdy, to settle the dispute.

The heirs demanded that the terms remain confidential, a decision the judge, Jed S. Rakoff, questioned when the settlement was announced, citing the museums' public roles and the gravity of the case.

Read the artinfo.com report here.