Wanna go to a Bethesda opening tomorrow?
Whimsical works of art at AU Museum through August
The exhibitions open to the public on Saturday, June 6 at the American University Museum, Katzen Arts Center.
Garry Knox Bennett: Call Me Chairmaker features 52 one-of-a-kind sculptural chairs created by Garry Knox Bennett, one of the foremost contemporary studio furniture makers in America. Inspired by well known furniture designers and architects such as Frank Lloyd Wright, Charles Rennie Mackintosh, George Nakashima, and Gerrit Rietveld, Bennett makes his wit and imagination come to life with such chairs as the “Great Granny Rietveld” and “Wiggle Wright.” By using bold new forms and constantly expanding traditional boundaries, Bennett makes furniture a form of art and brings new meaning to the words “sitting pretty.” The exhibition closes Sunday, August 16.
The Washington Print Club’s 20th biennal exhibition, Love, Let Me Count the Ways, is a compilation of approximately 100 prints, drawings, and pastels from print club member collections. Images of love range from the maternal and sexual to the mythological, patriotic/political, and psychological. The exhibition includes prints dating from the sixteenth century to contemporary productions. While most of the pieces are by Americans, works on paper by Spanish, German, French, Japanese, English, and Norwegian artists also are represented. The exhibition closes Sunday, August 9.
Robert Hudson and Richard Shaw: Collaborations brings together more than 60 collaborative and individual sculptural works created during the 40-year careers of Robert Hudson and Richard Shaw. Highlighting the unique and inventive partnership of these renowned San Francisco Bay area artists, the exhibition features works in porcelain and glaze that challenge perceptions of art, craft, and the conventional modes of artistic production. Collaborations has been made possible through the support of Braunstein/Quay Gallery in San Francisco, California. The exhibition closes Sunday, August 9.
The museum is open from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m., Tuesday through Sunday. Admission is free.
Glass Art Tours of Artomatic
Meet in the lobby of Artomatic for a guided glass tour. Hosted by members of the Washington Glass School, these informative tour guides will lead you directly to all the great glass on exhibit this year!
Every wonder how a piece of glass art was made or what was the artist's motivation? This is your chance to ask and learn. All tours leave from the Lobby of Artomatic, 55 M Street SE, Washington, DC. Wear comfortable walking shoes and join in the fun!
Saturday May 30, 2009 @ 5:30pm, Allegra Marquart and Lisa Osgood Dano will be your tourguides.
Artomatic Opens Tomorrow!
If you are an artist or art lover reading this post, then chances are that you already know what Artomatic (or AOM) is and all about this amazing spectacle.
But just in case, a little review.
About once a year or so, under the guiding hand of a board of hardworking artists and volunteers, a large, unoccupied building in the Greater Washington, DC area is identified, and eventually filled with hundreds of artists’ works, loads of theatre and dance performances, panels, and everything associated with breathing a powerful breath of energy into the Greater DC art scene.
Let’s review: The idea behind AOM is simple: find a large, empty building somewhere in the city; work with the building owners, and then allow any artist who wants to show their work help with staging the show, pay a small fee and work a few hours assisting with the show itself.
Any artist.
Artists love AOM, but most DC area art critics hate it.
Why?
I think that in order to write a proper, ethical review of AOM, a writer must spend hours walking several floors of art, jam-packed into hundreds of rooms, bathrooms, closets and stairs. And I think that this is one of the main reasons that most art critics love to hate this show. It overwhelms them with visual offerings and forces them to develop a “glance and judge” attitude towards the artwork. It’s a lot easier to carpet bomb a huge show like this than to do a surgical strike to try to find the great art buried by the overwhelming majority that constitutes the great democratic pile of so so artwork and really bad artwork.
Add on top of that, an outdated, but “alive and kicking” elitist attitude towards an open show, where anyone and everyone who calls him or herself an artist can exhibit, sans the sanitizing and all-knowing eye of the latest trendy curator, and you have a perfect formula for elitist dismissing of this show, without really looking at it.
This harsh and elitist attitude towards art is not new or even modern. It was the same attitude that caused the emergence of the salons of the 19th century, where only artists that the academic intelligentsia deemed good enough were exhibited. As every art student who almost flunked art history knows, towards the latter half of that century, the artists who had been rejected from the salons (because they didn’t fit the formula of good art) organized their own Salon Des Refuses, sort of a 19th century Parisian Art-O-Matique.
And a lot, in fact, most of the work in the Salon Des Refuses was quite so so, but amongst the dreck were also pearls like Manet's Le Dejeuner sur 'Herbe (Luncheon in the Grass), Monet's Impression: Sunrise, (and we all know what art “ism” that title gave birth to) and an odd and memorable looking portrait of a young lady in white (The White Girl, Symphony in White, No. 1) by an American upstart by the name of James McNeill Whistler.
Everyone who was anyone in the art world hated and dismissed this anti-salon exhibition; except for the only one that really counts: Art History.
But how does a writer cover an arts extravaganza of the size of AOM once the eyes and mind become numb after the 200th artist, or the 400th or the 1,000th?
As an art critic, I once started a review of a past AOM by complaining how much my feet hurt after my 5th or 6th visit to the show, in a futile attempt to gather as much visual information as possible in order to write a fair review of the artwork. Over the years I have discovered that it is impossible to see everything and to be fair about anyone; the sheer size and evolving nature of the show itself makes sure of the impossibility of this task. But AOM is not just about the artwork.
As a gallerist, I also have visited AOM looking for new talent amongst the vast numbers of artists who come together under one roof. Over the years, together with my fellow DC area gallerists, we have plucked many artists from the ranks and files of AOM. Artists who since their first appearance at past AOMs have now joined the collections of museums and Biennials and have been picked up by galleries nationwide. Names like Tim Tate, the Dumbacher Brothers, Kelly Towles, Michael Janis, Kathryn Cornelius, Richard Chartier and that amazing worldwide phenomenon and best-selling author Frank Warren of PostSecret fame. But AOM is not just about the emerging superstar artist.
As an artist, one year I decided to participate in AOM, just to see what the guts of the machine looked like. "I know the monster well," wrote the poet Jose Marti, "for I have lived in its entrails."
My volunteer hours patrolling the halls on a Wednesday night at midnight, and still seeing people come in and out, and explore art on the wee hours of the morning, also left a footprint on the public impact of the exhibition. Dealing with prima donna artists, recharging my own artistic batteries from hundreds of fellow artists, many of them in their first public exposure, also left an impression. But AOM is not just about the public.
AOM is two things to me:
It is perhaps the nation’s most powerful incarnation of what it means to be a creative community of hundreds of working creative hands all aligned to not only create artwork, but also put together a spectacular extravaganza that re-charges the regional art scene as no museum or gallery show can. AOM is a community of artists employing the most liberal of approaches to art that there exists: the artists are in charge, and the artists make it work, and the artists charge the city with energy and zeal. And these descendants of those brave souls who challenged the academic salons of the 19th century face the same negative eye from the traditional art critics and curators of our museums, who challenge not just the art, but the concept of an open, non-juried, most democratic of art shows: a community of artists in charge of energizing the community at large. All good group shows must be curated! shout these chained critical voices.
And AOM is certainly the easiest and most comprehensive way to discover contemporary art at its battlefront lines, right at the birth of many artists, paradoxically showcasing the area's artworld's deepest and also its newest roots. This is where both the savvy collector, and the beginning collector, and the aspiring curator, and the sharp-eyed gallerist can come to one place with a sense of discovery in mind. And the ones that I missed in the past, and who were discovered by others, are ample evidence of the subjectivity of a 1,000+ group art show.
Viva AOM!
This year’s AOM runs from May 29 through July 5, 2009, and it is located at the new building at 55 M Street, S.E. - essentially on top the Navy Yard Metro - celebrating its tenth anniversary in a newly built 275,000 square foot "LEED Silver Class A building", whatever that means. It is all free and open to the public and all the details and dates and parties and performances and panels, as well as all the participating artists can be found at Artomatic.org.
Artists' Websites: Claudia Hart
The UK comes to Artomatic
Remember Glass3, the international glass show in Georgetown that incorporated artists from the UK's National Glass Centre last February?
Well, they are back!
24 glass artists are part of this year's Artomatic and the DC art extravaganza's first international participants. The artists will be also performing demonstrations of their unusual techniques at the Washington Glass School in Mount Rainier and at DC GlassWorks in nearby Hyattsville.
Saturday, May 30, 2009: starting at 1.30 pm, Phil Vickery and Roger Tye will be glass blowing at DC GlassWorks. RSVP to info@dcglassworks.com.
On Sunday, May 31, 2009, starting at 2:00 pm, Stephen Beardsell and Karin Walland will be demonstrating their techniques at the Washington Glass School.
Karin will show how to cast small objects in frozen glass powder (an alternative to the messy lost wax method). Stephen will be showing and describing his method of creating great depth with frit casting and inclusions.
RSVP to washglassschool@aol.com
Both events are free and open to the public.
Artomatic early report
An artist from AOM writes:
Went around looking at other peoples artwork after finishing install on Monday.
With 8 floors of art to see I went through it all pretty quick - but noticed the following:
(a) still a lot of artists had not set-up.
(b) On level 5, the British artists who are participating in this year's AOM are due in tomorrow (Wed) but all thru the levels there were still untouched walls - hopefully all wait-listed artists are in and working today.
(c) Glad to see Anne Benolken's Kali series is back; Level 2 has some knockout works, with Drew Graham's 3-D tatoo inspired wall sculptures are strong as ever.
(d) Margaret Dowell has a painted portrait of artist Joseph Barbacia holding that penis knife that you had in 'Seven' - creepy cool.
(e) I got tired going down from Level 9, but there was so much on Level 2 that was good, that I'd recommend that one does not overlook that floor .
(f) Many of the Washington Glass School artists are on 8 - Tim Tate, Erwin Timmers, Syl Mathis, Cheryl Derricotte & Michael Janis are all in one bay, facing Laurel Lukaszewski and Novie Trump's setups.
The building is easy to walk thru and see a lot.
Bummer
I'm bummed out because my application to Pulse Miami was rejected. I had applied to bring the work of one of our artists to Pulse.
Young Photographers 2009
Opening Reception and awards ceremony for the "Young Photographers" exhibition is on Saturday, May 30th, 5:00 - 6:30 PM at Photoworks Gallery, 1st Floor Arcade Building in Glen Echo Park, MD.
This exhibition is all about a talented group of photographers from high schools, middle schools and elementary schools throughout the Washington Metropolitan Region.
"What is so gratifying here is to know in one's bones that the young photographers displayed on these walls love the process of making pictures. You don't produce work like this without loving the process -- the physical act of taking photographs."
Frank Van Riper, Juror
Young Photographers Competition
Artists' Websites: Ana Serrano
Came across Ana Serrano's work through Regina Hackett and loved the cardboard work (that's a detail of Serrano's Chalino to the left).
Serrano recently graduated from the Art Center College of Design with honors, and currently resides in Los Angeles.
Visit her website here.
Aqui Estamos talk tonight
If you are around the Northern Liberties' section of Philadelphia later today, drop by Projects Gallery for my talk on the subject of Cuban art.
You can't miss the gallery. It's the one with the giant milk cross by Alejandro Mendoza hanging above it. Talk starts at 6:30PM.
The Power of Democratizing Art
Billed as the first arts competition of its kind to incorporate public voting in an online forum, the inaugural Baker Artist Awards recently invited artists from Baltimore and its surrounding counties to upload examples of their work to a Web site. More than 650 people responded, in disciplines as diverse as drawing, sculpture, painting, photography, video, film, animation, spoken and written word, dance, theater, graphic design and craft.Read WaPo art critic Michael O'Sullivan here.
More than 35,000 visitors to the site then voted on their favorites, narrowing the field to a top 10, from which three were chosen by an interdisciplinary panel of experts to receive $25,000 each, no strings attached. Each of the seven runners-up got a check for $1,000. As with the MacArthur Foundation "genius" fellowships, the judges were anonymous. The money comes from the William G. Baker Jr. Memorial Fund, established in 1964 in memory of a Baltimore investment banker but only focusing on arts and culture since 2007.
And guess what? The results, on view in a bricks-and-mortar showcase at the Baltimore Museum of Art, aren't half bad. You can view, listen to or watch submissions by all 656 artists at http://www.bakerartistawards.org. But to fully appreciate the work of the top three prize-winners -- sculptor John Ruppert, jazz saxophonist Carl Grubbs and Hadieh Shafie, whose works here are in a variety of 2-D media -- you'll need to tear yourself away from your computer.
An ailing art market 
Since the financial crisis began, the art market has taken a series of severe blows and is now subject to various external and internal pressures. In the United States, for example, the fall in private subsidies to the Arts has led to significant personnel reductions at some of the most prestigious museums (the Detroit Institute of Arts and the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles have both cut staff by 20%). At the same time, an enormous volume of cash that was fuelling the market has literally disappeared as the new ultra high net worth individuals in Russia, India and Turkey have seen their fortunes substantially diminished (by the end of Q1 2009, the world counted 300 less billionaires) and the banks have stopped financing acquisitions of art works: the giant UBS has closed down its art advisory pole dedicated to buying and selling artworks.Read the analysis in Artprice.com here.
Opportunity for Artists
The Delaplaine Arts Education Center in Frederick, Maryland is seeking proposals for solo and small group shows. They are currently scheduling for 2010-2011. The Center houses 6 galleries; the shows change on a monthly-bimonthly basis.
All media is considered, a preference is given to regional artists, but every properly submitted proposal is reviewed.
For more information please visit their website and download a prospectus from the bottom of the EXHIBITS page or email Diane at dsibbison@delaplaine.org.
Aqui Estamos in City Paper
The Philadelphia City Paper highlights Aqui Estamos, the Cuban group art show that I curated for Projects Gallery in Philadelphia.
Read it here.
National Gallery of Art Returns a Non-Holocaust Painting
Chaim Soutine’s iconic painting entitled Piece de Boeuf (Piece of Beef c. 1923) is being returned to the Shefner Family in resolution of litigation commenced against the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC. From the news release:
A unique and unusual settlement regarding Chaim Soutine’s iconic painting entitled Piece de Boeuf (Piece of Beef c. 1923) was approved last week by Judge Laura Taylor Swain of the Southern District of New York. Pursuant to the settlement, the painting is being returned to the Shefner Family in resolution of litigation commenced against the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., Maurice Tuchman and Esti Dunow, the authors of the Soutine Catalogue Raisonné.
The settlement is believed to be the first time that the National Gallery of Art has deaccessioned a non-Holocaust work of art from its permanent collection. The stated policy of the National Gallery of Art is not to deaccession any of its permanent collection. In consideration of the unique nature of the settlement agreement and the circumstances surrounding the painting’s return, the parties have agreed that the painting shall remain on loan to the National Gallery of Art for the benefit of the American public for the near future.
“The Shefner Family is pleased to be welcoming this iconic Soutine back to their family,” said Karl Geercken, of Alston & Bird LLP, lead attorney for the plaintiff. “We believe this is a positive outcome for all parties involved.”
Chaim Soutine, a Russian-born French expressionist painter, lived from 1893 until 1943. His series of ten beef carcass paintings are considered to be among his most notorious and controversial works. The majority of the beef paintings are currently in prominent museums. This painting is one of the last in the series to be privately owned.
As noted by the National Gallery of Art, Piece of Beef (accession 2004.126.1) is an outstanding example of 20th century expressionist art that makes “deliberate reference to a long tradition of the subjects of butchers, market-stalls, and game in paintings by Rembrandt, Chardin, and Goya, whose works Soutine studied in his visits to the Louvre.” Soutine’s work has also been described as being especially significant during the 1950s to painters such as Willem de Kooning.
Armed Robbery at Dutch Museum
From the Art Loss Register:
In the first of two robberies at Dutch museums this month, two important 20th century artworks were stolen by a group of masked and armed thieves from the Scheringa Museum for Realism, located about 30 miles north of Amsterdam. The robbery occurred around noon on May 1. The artworks, a surrealist gouache by Salvador Dali and an art deco portrait by Tamara de Lempicka, were among the most valuable pictures in the museum's collection.
The theft coincides with a recent interest in Lempicka's work. Days after the heist, a similar painting by Lempicka sold at auction in the US for $6 million, setting the record for the artist. According to the Art Loss Register's database, Salvador Dali is the fourth-most stolen artist, with over 400 artworks currently missing.
Frida Kahlo on Ebay
Wanna own an original Campello vintage 1979?
This drawing of Frida Kahlo by yours truly just made an appearance on Ebay and is going for $40 - certainly a steal on a 20 year-old Campello original.
It is being sold by Americana Illustration Art. I did that drawing while I was a student at the University of Washington School of Art.
Bid on it here. Hurry, the auction ends May 25.
