New York art dealer accused of being Bernard Madoff's middleman
A prominent New York financier and art collector, Ezra Merkin, has been charged with a $2.4bn fraud for collecting money from clients under false pretences and secretly handing it to the jailed fund manager Bernard Madoff.Read the NYT story here.
2009 Guggenheim Fellowship Winners Announced
The John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation has announced the recipients of the 2009 Guggenheim Fellowships.
Ranging in age from 29 to 70, the hundred and eighty U.S. and Canadian artists, scientists, and scholars were selected from a group of almost three thousand applicants on the basis of outstanding achievement and exceptional promise for continued accomplishment.
For a complete list of this year's fellows, visit the Guggenheim Foundation Web site here.
Artists Websites: Sophie Tuttle
Sophie Tuttle is one of those hard-working artists who puts her creative energies into every facet of art: sculpture, drawing, painting, photography, illustration, etc.
You can check out her stuff online here or see it in person at the Warrenton Wine and Arts Festival in Warrenton, VA. There are going to be lots of artists selling their work and prints there (including Sophie)... in fact they're still looking for artists, so contact them if you are interested. It's allfor a good cause (benefiting St. John's School). It's going to be on April 25th and 26th and details are here.
The Gray Arm of the LawIf you take a photograph in a public place, and then publish it commercially, can the people in the photo successfully sue?
See the answer (or lack thereof) here.
Painting Bread Correctly
If you ask the guards at the NGA which painting in the collection they think is the most popular, often you will hear many of them point out Dali's The Sacrament of the Last Supper.
"People are always asking 'where is it?'"
The reason for this could be that the Last Supper, in a typical act of perhaps arrogance, for many years was hung in the NGA's coat check room, and currently is at the exit of the old wing, just before the connecting tunnel to the newer East wing.
I say arrogance because I once asked a guard (often the best sources of info in any museum) the reason for the placement. "This wing is for masters," he said, "and this Dali painting was donated to the NGA as part of the Dale Bequest in the 1960s, but with the condition that it had to be placed with the old masters."
The NGA complied, but couldn't or wouldn't cross the line and instead of hanging the Dali in one of the galleries, for years hung it in the coat room, where it attracted too many crowds and made that room a mess, and subsequently moved it to its present location, technically in the West building, but not really "in it."
A few years ago I asked the NGA for confirmation of this story, but my request was never answered.
But this post is not about Dali or the NGA, but about most "Last Supper" paintings that I recall seeing. More specifically about the bread in the paintings.
This week I was invited to a Seder meal by a friend who is also quite a well-known Philly area artist and an even better known curator. Somehow the conversation turned to Christ's Last Supper, which of course was a Seder meal and she observed how most paintings depicting The Christ's last meal showed regular bread instead of the unleavened bread required by Jewish tradition to celebrate the passover.
This is very interesting to the pedantic part of me, already troubled by the fact that nearly every depiction of The Christ that was presented to me in art school depicted mostly Northern European-looking Christs, rather than the Semitic Middle East Israelite that He was.
And now I wonder, are there any contemporary depictions (or any depiction) of the last supper which depict this last Seder for Christ in a more historically correct perspective? I want to see The Christ as a Semite and I want to see the middle of the matzot on the Seder plate broken in two with the larger piece hidden, to be used later as the afikoman.
Artists' Websites: Denee Barr
Denee Barr is a fellow art blogger and an award winning and very hard-working Maryland photographer.
No hot sauce allowed
When I was in my late teens, my parents took their first ever (and only one as far as I know) vacation, and went to Mexico City for a couple of weeks. They liked it so much that they ended up staying almost a month and I joined them for a week.
Besides my well-documented discovery of Frida Kahlo during that trip, I also recall my dad's first ever exposure to Mexican food.
There are many people in this great nation who (if you live in any American state except Florida, New York and New Jersey) think that all of Latin America is like Mexico, both in culture, appearance and culinary offerings.
Of course, nothing can be farther from the truth, and (for example) Argentina is as different from Mexico as Italy is different from South Africa. In fact, most of the twenty or so nations south of the border and in the Caribbean are not only vastly different from its two giant northern neighbors, but also quite different from each other.
And their national cuisines are also quite different. Not everyone in Latin America eats tacos, and if you order a couple of tortillas in Cuba, you'll get two omelets and an odd look at your excessive dining peculiarities.
Anyway, I recall my father working his way through the menus in his discovery of Mexican food, from his first experiments with huevos rancheros, the subsequent alarm at the heat of the hot sauce, followed by a trip to the restaurant's bathroom to rinse his mouth, to his delight in discovering the less fiery carne asada and carnitas.
If you read this blog regularly, then you know what a pedantic geek I can be at Hollywood's barbarity when it comes to cultural stereotyping (this one is the worst one ever). And these days, through the wonders of FiOs and DVR digital recording, I more often than not find myself in pedantic hell.
You see, I have my DVR set to record programs keyed on a variety of keywords, one of them being Cuban cooking.
Recently, my DVR picked up a segment of Louisiana chef Emeril Lagasse's entertaining cooking show. It was focused for that day on Cuban food.
He showed his audience how to cook a fish, ropa vieja and pork chops. And the processes involved in those three dishes seemed authentic enough, until the hot sauce came out for all three recipes.
I don't watch Emeril often enough to know if this Louisiana native resident puts hot sauce on all his dishes, and if he does, then maybe it's a Louisiana thing.
Perhaps he puts hot sauce on pizza, and matzoh ball soup and haggis, etc.
But no authentic Cuban recipe calls for the fiery, Louisiana or Mexican or Texan style hot sauces that brings tears to your eyes, torments to your tongue and sends Cuban men rushing to the bathroom to rinse their tongues.
So if you ever see that show, and follow the recipes, skip the hot sauce for an authentic taste, and then add it after a few bites, if you want to Mexicanize your ropa vieja.
Wanna go to an opening at Alexandria tonight?
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 opening reception is tonight, April 9, 6-8pm and there will be a gallery talk at 7pm.
Out of this world
On April 11:
"This event incorporates a gallery show, music, and performance as a gateway to celestial celebration."Details here; artwork by:
Chris Bishop
Stephen Blickenstaff
Scott Brooks
Chis Chen
Jared Davis
Alan Defibaugh
Dana Ellyn
Elstabo
Greg Ferrand
Todd Gardner
Linas Garsys
Emily Greene Liddle
Peter Harper
Rob Lindsay
Marina Reiter
Bill Remington
Dave Savage
Matt Sesow
Jon Shipman
Jason Snyder
Steve Strawn
Andrew Wodzianski
Fufú: This is how you do it
That image to the right is not a banana, but a plantain (in Spanish platano).
The plantain is most commonly eaten as a side dish in many Latin American cuisines, where it is simply boiled and then served as a side dish with perhaps a little olive oil and salt to add some flavor, especially if it's a green plantain, which are rather tasteless by themselves. The ripe ones are quite tasty and sweet, and are usually served sliced and fried.
A few years ago you could only find them in Latin American bodegas, but now most major supermarkets carry them.
But let's look at the green plantain. In most Latin American restaurants where it is offered, it is offered as a boiled side dish. In Cuban restaurants (and many Miami art galleries) it is also served as tostones, which essentially involves slicing up the plantain, frying it in olive oil for a while, taking it out and crushing it, and frying it again. Add salt and you're done.
But Fufú is the real king of plantain dishes and it is rarely seen in any restaurants, even Cuban ones. I think that maybe it is because Fufú possibly developed in the eastern part of Cuba (a province once called Oriente), and it may not be as well known or served in Havana, which is the only place that most tourists visit.
With its massive forests and mountains, a large African population from Spain's terrible slavery trade, coupled with its large French immigrant population which migrated to Cuba after the Haitian independence wars, and its concentration of Galician, rather than ethnic Castillians, Catalans, or Andalucian Spaniards, Oriente evolved into a very distinct region in Cuba, quite different from Havana and the other Cuban provinces, and so did its cuisine.
Oriente is where Bacardi rum was invented, and where Hatuey beer was created, and where the mojito and Daiquiri were invented... get my drift?
And in Oriente the humble plantain is eaten as a very delicious side dish called Fufú, with the accent in the last "u" like in Hai-ku.... foo fú!
Start with a couple of green plantains. Wash then and cut out the tips of the plantains but leave the skin on.
Cut the plantains into three equal pieces per plantain and bring to a boil in water and boil for a few minutes until the green skins start to peel away.
While they are boiling, in a frying pan heat a generous dose of olive oil with a seasoning dash of salt and pepper (or Goya Sazon is you really want some exotic spices).
Add chopped fresh garlic and chopped (very small pieces) onions to the hot olive oil and fry the garlic and onions; lots and lots of garlic.
While the onions and garlic fry (don't overcook), the plantains should be ready, so pull them out, throw away the green skins and put the cleaned hot plantains on a large flat plate and mash them as you would do for mashed potatoes, but not to an extreme - they should be lumpy.
Once they are broken up some, add the frying pan mixture of oil, garlic and onions and mash it all into the plantain mixture.
Salt to taste and this culinary work of art is ready to eat!
Opportunity for Artists
Deadline: May 15, 2009 5 P.M.
Boston's Fort Point Arts Gallery is seeking proposals for 2009 group shows and performances. Proposals are open to all media and shows will be selected by guest juror, Heidi Kayser, the founding director of both the Axiom Center for New and Experimental Media and the newly formed Art Technology New England Consortium.
Submissions are due at the gallery by 5pm on May 15th.
You can email questions to: gallery@fortpointarts.org.
Robin Rose
In each major city around the world there are a limited number of artists in that city's art scene who can be best described as "firsts among equals," in the sense that their presence and influence goes beyond just being a painter or a sculptor, etc. to being a major part of that city's art tapestry.
Such an artist for the Greater Washington, DC region is Robin Rose, and although I haven't seen the show yet (but I will), I am hearing some good things as well as surprise, from his current show at The American University Museum at the Katzen Arts Center.
Titled Robin Rose: Cypher, the exhibition opens today, and there will be an artist's reception on April 23 from 6-9PM. The show will remain on view through May 17, 2009. The show at AU is concurrent with Robin Rose: Endeavor at Hemphill Fine Arts, which represents the work of Robin Rose.
The reason that his AU show is raising eyebrows from those who have seen it (someone described it to me as "out of the box!") is that what AU has on display (described as "aggressively altered found object assemblages") is so different and so very far from Rose's well-known and beautiful abstraction, that people are doing a double take.
I am also told that a lot of it is just plain funny!
I have never hidden my opinion that artists should always explore all facets and experiences and visual offerings of their artistry, rather than just deliver cookie-cutter art based on one concept.
I love seeing a single Mondrian, but lose interest when I see a dozen of them all in one room.
The way to see Robin Rose in the next few weeks is to visit his show at AU to discover this new side of this influential artist, and then drop by Hemphill Fine Arts to see what's new with his well-known encaustic on aluminum panel paintings.
Wanna go to a Bethesda opening this Friday?
Award winning artist Kristy Simmons opens her solo art show, Inklings to showcase her latest paintings exploring the intersection of the material world with virtual, or nonmaterial, reality. Thin glazes of underpainting are overlaid with thick brushstrokes, applied to both canvas as well as sheets of plexiglass on top of canvas – to give the audience the "inkling" of their combined and interdependent existence.
Orchard Gallery
7917 Norfolk Avenue
Bethesda, MD 20815
Orchard Gallery located at 7917 Norfolk Avenue. The opening reception is April 10, 6 – 8:30pm, and is part of Bethesda's monthly "Arts Walk."
Wanna go to an opening at UM tomorrow?
The University of Maryland's Stamp Gallery has an opening of the first ever solo show by Ding Ren.
Titled Here/There, the show is curated by Megan Rook-Koepsel and Jennifer Quick. Exhibition Dates: April 8 - May 6, 2009.
Opening reception: Wednesday, April 8, 6-8pm (with performance by Ding's band, Bible Kiss Bible.
You gotta listen to this
Amazing musical videoworks! Let it play at leat a minute... you'll be hooked: Click here.
NGA Partnership Encourages Children Artists
By Prelli Williams
Last March 5, it seemed that the National Gallery of Art moved to J.C. Nalle Elementary School in Southeast Washington as attendees marveled at the student Art exhibition of clay sculptures created by fifth grade students while the fourth graders recited Haiku poems as they stood beneath Drip paintings in the main corridor.
Principal Kim Burke said that a team of fifth grade teachers had submitted a proposal to the NGA, then the school was interviewed, and were finally selected out of eleven other schools that went through the process leading to a partnership between J. C. Nalle Elementary School and the National Gallery of Art.
Sara Mark Lesk, Coordinator of Art Around the Corner said that Nalle students visited the National Gallery of Art multiple times to experience works of art, develop their critical thinking skills through active looking, and explore creativity through art making. All lessons complied with the DCPS curriculum.
Student Brianna Hooks delivered the Welcome Address and the Gallery teachers presented certificates to eighty-six fourth and fifth grade participants. “This is awesome,” said Prelli Williams of Ward 7 Arts Collaborative to teachers Ms. Jones and Ms. Preston as Dr. Buaful, Ms. Staffer, Ms. Surles watched the fifth grade perform “A Day at the NGA” inspired by Art Around the Corner, and directed by Ms. Bailey.
A family activity making Clay Creatures ended with a dessert reception. The Mark and Carol Hyman Fund, The Mead Family Foundation, and the Janice H. Levin Fund made Art Around the Corner possible.
First Rocky, now...
A corner of Philadelphia's Ben Franklin Parkway lost all of its Alexander Calders this week.Read the Peter Mucha Inky story here.
For more than four years, sculptures by the inventor of the mobile adorned the grassy, tree-dotted Calder Garden bordering 22d Street - a two-acre plot once eyed for a Calder museum.
A few years ago, 11 works - 10 stationary ones called stabiles and a hybrid with a movable top - were scattered there.
As of Sunday, seven remained, including the bright-orange Jerusalem Stabile.
Yesterday morning, the last piece was carted away, and the Calder Garden was no more.
Do this: lottoHEART
Deadline to register: April 10th, 2009
CAMP Rehoboth in Delaware is an awesome GBLT advocacy group has grown up from a grassroots effort reacting to a health epidemic to a powerhouse fighting for human equality.
For the eighth year, my good friend Sondra Arkin is the co-chair of their annual art event and they’ve made some big changes this year! And both her and I are inviting you to be part of this project.
We are asking Mid-Atlantic artists we admire to create two original, postcard-sized (5" x 7" exactly) works in any medium. All works are donations and will be sold for $100 — the catch is that your identity will not be known by the buyer until after the purchase. Also, the order in which a buyer gets to select their art is random and will be pulled off as part of a lively night of entertainment. One piece goes into the LottoHEART where the buyers select at the event (July 3rd), and the other will go into our Blind Date group (literally wrapped and random) for buyers who might not want to choose or who may not be able to come to the event.
While the exhibition is anonymous, they will heavily publicize the names of the participating artists and provide a web catalog immediately following the event. There is no theme — just stick to the size restriction. To help with this, they will provide you with two 5 x 7” hardboards free of charge if you would like. Please indicate that you would like them on your registration form or in your registration email.
You may mail or fax in the form or register at this website.
The deadline for registration is April 10th — but since the project is limited to 200 artists, I urge you to sign up today. Your work is due by June 15th.
If you have any questions, please feel free to contact Sondra at (202) 588-1764 or at heart@camprehoboth.com.
Review of my last curatorial task
"Even in the world of visual art — where originality is routinely faked or manufactured when it cannot be had by honest means — the Cuban-American artist, critic and frequent National Public Radio commentator cuts an unusually distinctive figure.Art critic Mark St. John Erickson reviews Norfolk's D'Art Center's annual Mid Atlantic Competition and has some very nice things to say about both the exhibition and yours truly. Read it here.
You can hear it in the streetwise mix of Latin and Brooklyn cadences with which the former Navy man — whose career included stints as both an officer and an enlisted man — sizes up and translates high-art themes in his thoughtful videos and radio narratives. You can trace it in the muscular leaps of taste and logic found in his pioneering art blog, where the one-time student of the great African-American artist Jacob Lawrence and devotee of visionary Mexican painter Frida Kahlo shows he's capable of embracing old-school aesthetic values, a populist kind of viewer's stance and the contemporary fondness for quirkiness in the very same sentence.
You can also see it in the 19th Annual Mid-Atlantic Art Exhibition at Norfolk's d'Art Center, where Campello's online prominence and long experience as a juror drew nearly 625 entries from 17 states, then distilled them into a formidable show of 61 pieces."
The Declaration of Arbroath
Americans have not been the only people who have fought English armies for independence. England's own neighbor to the North, Scotland (where I lived for three years and visit often and love dearly) has fought English aggression for centuries.
Today marks the 1,690th anniversary of the Declaration of Arbroath, or the Scottish version of their Declaration of Independence, dated the 6th of April of 1320. It is addressed to the Pope:
Freedom does not come easily.To the most Holy Father and Lord in Christ, the Lord John, by divine providence Supreme Pontiff of the Holy Roman and Universal Church, his humble and devout sons Duncan, Earl of Fife, Thomas Randolph, Earl of Moray, Lord of Man and of Annandale, Patrick Dunbar, Earl of March, Malise, Earl of Strathearn, Malcolm, Earl of Lennox, William, Earl of Ross, Magnus, Earl of Caithness and Orkney, and William, Earl of Sutherland; Walter, Steward of Scotland, William Soules, Butler of Scotland, James, Lord of Douglas, Roger Mowbray, David, Lord of Brechin, David Graham, Ingram Umfraville, John Menteith, guardian of the earldom of Menteith, Alexander Fraser, Gilbert Hay, Constable of Scotland, Robert Keith, Marischal of Scotland, Henry St Clair, John Graham, David Lindsay, William Oliphant, Patrick Graham, John Fenton, William Abernethy, David Wemyss, William Mushet, Fergus of Ardrossan, Eustace Maxwell, William Ramsay, William Mowat, Alan Murray, Donald Campbell, John Cameron, Reginald Cheyne, Alexander Seton, Andrew Leslie, and Alexander Straiton, and the other barons and freeholders and the whole community of the realm of Scotland send all manner of filial reverence, with devout kisses of his blessed feet.
Most Holy Father and Lord, we know and from the chronicles and books of the ancients we find that among other famous nations our own, the Scots, has been graced with widespread renown. They journeyed from Greater Scythia by way of the Tyrrhenian Sea and the Pillars of Hercules, and dwelt for a long course of time in Spain among the most savage tribes, but nowhere could they be subdued by any race, however barbarous. Thence they came, twelve hundred years after the people of Israel crossed the Red Sea, to their home in the west where they still live today. The Britons they first drove out, the Picts they utterly destroyed, and, even though very often assailed by the Norwegians, the Danes and the English, they took possession of that home with many victories and untold efforts; and, as the historians of old time bear witness, they have held it free of all bondage ever since. In their kingdom there have reigned one hundred and thirteen kings of their own royal stock, the line unbroken a single foreigner.
The high qualities and deserts of these people, were they not otherwise manifest, gain glory enough from this: that the King of kings and Lord of lords, our Lord Jesus Christ, after His Passion and Resurrection, called them, even though settled in the uttermost parts of the earth, almost the first to His most holy faith. Nor would He have them confirmed in that faith by merely anyone but by the first of His Apostles -- by calling, though second or third in rank -- the most gentle Saint Andrew, the Blessed Peter's brother, and desired him to keep them under his protection as their patron forever.
The Most Holy Fathers your predecessors gave careful heed to these things and bestowed many favours and numerous privileges on this same kingdom and people, as being the special charge of the Blessed Peter's brother. Thus our nation under their protection did indeed live in freedom and peace up to the time when that mighty prince the King of the English, Edward, the father of the one who reigns today, when our kingdom had no head and our people harboured no malice or treachery and were then unused to wars or invasions, came in the guise of a friend and ally to harass them as an enemy. The deeds of cruelty, massacre, violence, pillage, arson, imprisoning prelates, burning down monasteries, robbing and killing monks and nuns, and yet other outrages without number which he committed against our people, sparing neither age nor sex, religion nor rank, no one could describe nor fully imagine unless he had seen them with his own eyes.
But from these countless evils we have been set free, by the help of Him Who though He afflicts yet heals and restores, by our most tireless Prince, King and Lord, the Lord Robert. He, that his people and his heritage might be delivered out of the hands of our enemies, met toil and fatigue, hunger and peril, like another Macabaeus or Joshua and bore them cheerfully. Him, too, divine providence, his right of succession according to or laws and customs which we shall maintain to the death, and the due consent and assent of us all have made our Prince and King. To him, as to the man by whom salvation has been wrought unto our people, we are bound both by law and by his merits that our freedom may be still maintained, and by him, come what may, we mean to stand.
Yet if he should give up what he has begun, and agree to make us or our kingdom subject to the King of England or the English, we should exert ourselves at once to drive him out as our enemy and a subverter of his own rights and ours, and make some other man who was well able to defend us our King; for, as long as but a hundred of us remain alive, never will we on any conditions be brought under English rule. It is in truth not for glory, nor riches, nor honours that we are fighting, but for freedom -- for that alone, which no honest man gives up but with life itself.
Therefore it is, Reverend Father and Lord, that we beseech your Holiness with our most earnest prayers and suppliant hearts, inasmuch as you will in your sincerity and goodness consider all this, that, since with Him Whose Vice-Regent on earth you are there is neither weighing nor distinction of Jew and Greek, Scotsman or Englishman, you will look with the eyes of a father on the troubles and privation brought by the English upon us and upon the Church of God. May it please you to admonish and exhort the King of the English, who ought to be satisfied with what belongs to him since England used once to be enough for seven kings or more, to leave us Scots in peace, who live in this poor little Scotland, beyond which there is no dwelling-place at all, and covet nothing but our own. We are sincerely willing to do anything for him, having regard to our condition, that we can, to win peace for ourselves.
This truly concerns you, Holy Father, since you see the savagery of the heathen raging against the Christians, as the sins of Christians have indeed deserved, and the frontiers of Christendom being pressed inward every day; and how much it will tarnish your Holiness's memory if (which God forbid) the Church suffers eclipse or scandal in any branch of it during your time, you must perceive. Then rouse the Christian princes who for false reasons pretend that they cannot go to help of the Holy Land because of wars they have on hand with their neighbours. The real reason that prevents them is that in making war on their smaller neighbours they find quicker profit and weaker resistance. But how cheerfully our Lord the King and we too would go there if the King of the English would leave us in peace, He from Whom nothing is hidden well knows; and we profess and declare it to you as the Vicar of Christ and to all Christendom.
But if your Holiness puts too much faith in the tales the English tell and will not give sincere belief to all this, nor refrain from favouring them to our prejudice, then the slaughter of bodies, the perdition of souls, and all the other misfortunes that will follow, inflicted by them on us and by us on them, will, we believe, be surely laid by the Most High to your charge.
To conclude, we are and shall ever be, as far as duty calls us, ready to do your will in all things, as obedient sons to you as His Vicar; and to Him as the Supreme King and Judge we commit the maintenance of our cause, csating our cares upon Him and firmly trusting that He will inspire us with courage and bring our enemies to nought.
May the Most High preserve you to his Holy Church in holiness and health and grant you length of days.
Given at the monastery of Arbroath in Scotland on the sixth day of the month of April in the year of grace thirteen hundred and twenty and the fifteenth year of the reign of our King aforesaid.
