Tapedude Update

Mark Jenkins on Flavorpill.

Empty wine glasses

Philippa on Gopnik:

Blake Gopnik began a series in this morning's Washington Post on his experiment with "extreme connoisseurship," which entails looking at "a tiny corner of one work. If the art is really good, there will be at least a morning's worth of looking in a few square inches of it." In his first foray, he visits The Phillips Collection to look at the wine glasses on the table at the center of that collection's most famous work, "Luncheon of the Boating Party," by Pierre-Auguste Renoir. Gopnik admits that, "It isn't how most of us look at pictures. It's not even how most critics or scholars get to look at art, most of the time. But give it a chance, and it's the best kind of looking there is."

Read the whole thing here.

I'll have to re-read the Gopnik piece, which at first reading just sounded like art jargon semantic kabuki to me. But a closed mind is just as bad, so I'll give it a try again. The WaPo readers' comments (as usual) are also precious!

Opportunity for Artists

Deadline: January 14, 2010

Searching for God at The Ohio State University at Marion. This exhibition focuses on the visual appearance of, the manifestations of, or the individual explorations of God. Works should address what is the visage of God? How do we search for God? What do we find? And what do these findings reveal? This exhibition is open to traditional and non-traditional systems of belief and also seek those beliefs that challenge the notion of God and religion.

All media considered. Submit work on a CD or DVD and include
1. 10-12 image slideshow in PowerPoint only, each slide labeled with number, artist, title, medium, date, and dimensions.
2. JPG files of each image, 1mb+.
3. For video, submit up to 3 videos as Quicktime files. 10 min max per video.
4. A statement explaining how your artwork relates to the concept of the show, 500 words max, and one-page CV.
5. image/video list.

Searching for God
Kuhn Fine Art Gallery
Attn: Sarah Weinstock
1465 Mount Vernon Ave.
Marion, OH 43302

614-292-5072. Email: weinstock.15@osu.edu

Opportunity for Artists

Deadline: March 5, 2010

The Visual Arts Committee at the University of Minnesota organizes nine solo, group, or theme-based exhibitions per year at the St. Paul Student Center's 520 sq. foot Larson Art Gallery. It also organizes four solo exhibitions at Coffman Memorial Union's Coffman Art Gallery.

To be considered: Please make sure to include all of the following: Note which Gallery you are applying for (Coffman or Larson). 3-5 slides of your artwork or digital images in jpeg format. Artists' statement and contact information. Self-addressed stamped envelope for return of images. Send proposals to:

Visual Arts Committee
University of Minnesota
Coffman Memorial Union RM 126
300 Washington Ave SE
Minneapolis, MN 55455

Miami International Art Fair

Just purchased the tickets and I'm heading back to Miami for the Miami International Art Fair, held at the Miami Beach Convention Center in Miami Beach.

I'll be showing (along with DC's own Tim Tate, Michael Janis and others) with Philadelphia's Projects Gallery. We'll be at booth 520 and also at NG-13.

If you are in Miami anytime from 7-10 January, let me know and I'll see if I can get you a couple of free tickets to the fair.

Opportunity for Artists

Deadline: January 11, 2010.

The Public Trust of Jacksonville, Florida seeks artists. All participants will electronically submit a detailed pencil drawing of one of the three Le Moyne/de Bry original works, together with 4 other examples of your past paintings so the judges can select the ten best artists to be commissioned.

Artists must also submit an entrance form which may be downloaded from their menu under "Art Contest Entrance Form." No entry fee.

If you are selected as one of the ten commissioned artists, you will complete a painting (sized 24" by 30") by June 11, 2010. At that time you will be paid your $2,500 commission and shortly afterward be featured with your fellow top ten artists in showings of all the new art work at two premier art galleries in Jacksonville.

For complete guidelines, please visit this website. Questions? Contact Andrew Miller at adm@publictrustlaw.org or call (904) 247-1972 ext. 418.

Fee free opportunity for artists

Deadline: January 17, 2010

This is the kind of opportunity that I like: absolutely no fees to submit and zero commission on sales: click here for the prospectus.

And, O yea... I'm the juror for the prizes (artists are selected for the show by a separate panel).

Feliz Navidad!

"Family Tree," oil on linen, 24x36 inches by David FeBland

Home cooking

Since tonight is Nochebuena, I've been preparing a classic Nochebuena Cuban feast for the in-laws. One of the key ingredients in the 24 hour marinade for Cuban roast pork is orange juice.

When I was looking for the orange juice (I swear we had some) and couldn't find any, my wife suggested that I substitute it with some diet Pineapple soda that we happened to have in the cupboard.

As I dug out some oranges to get the juice out of them the old-fashioned way, I thought to myself that it is no wonder that one doesn't see too many Swedish restaurants around.

The fare for tonight:

Cuban Roasted Pork
Mariquitas with Mojo Sauce for Dipping
Sweet Corn Tamales
Broiled Yucca with Garlic Mojo
Broiled Ňame with Olive Oil
Moros y Cristianos (Rice and Black Bean Soup)
Cuban Nochebuena Salad

And from our family to all: a Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays and a Terrific 2010 to all!

Cudlin on The Year in Museums

The disconnect comes when one considers the exhibitions that D.C. museums actually offered this year. These mostly reflected the artworld’s fascination with cranky homebodies, curious characters, and misunderstood geniuses—no interactive cafes or love-ins by the balloon tent to be found. 2009 was a year full of retrospectives for artists who stayed home, keeping their distance from the larger discussions that were shaping life and culture around them. These are artists who seem to suggest that art is necessarily a private experience, meant for those who are sensitive to an extraordinary degree.

Jeffry Cudlin offers a very interesting article on our area's museums. Read it in the CP here.

On the subject of the City Paper: I have been stunned to see the huge difference in visual arts coverage that happened to the CP in the three years that I was gone from the DC area.

When I left, one could count on the CP to deliver a constant flow of reviews and mini reviews every week; Cudlin and others covered museums and galleries, and Jacobson covered photography shows.

Now Cudlin does 2-3 articles a year on museums, and the rest of the visual arts coverage has been decimated to a trickle. It is sad to see this happen, because the CP once filled the huge void that is the visual arts coverage by the WaPo and the Times.

Maybe I'm being myopic, but I've noticed no less coverage of music, bars, movies and theatre in the CP, so as usual, I wonder why coverage of art galleries and museums has been reduced so much?

Call For Artists

Hamiltonian Artists is now accepting applications for the So-Hamiltonian Fellowship program 2010.

The application Process opened on December 14th, 2009 and closes on February 28th, 2010. For more information on how to apply, please visit this website.

Wanna see Tim Tate's apartment?

From the Washington Post: Click here.

Dialogues on Mexican Photography at the Mexican Cultural Institute

By Bruce McKaig

The title, Dialogues on Mexican Photography applies to both exhibitions currently at the Mexican Cultural Institute. On the ground floor, there is a sampling of earlier and recent historical works from the Museum of Modern Art in Mexico City. On the fourth floor, there is a selection of contemporary works by artists represented by the Galeria OMR also in Mexico City.

Considered independently, each show examines photographic explorations of place and identity in Mexico. When considered in tandem, they also set a stage to reexamine identity at a more ambitious level.

The ground floor galleries present an exhibition of 60 works by over thirty artists from the collection of the MOMA in Mexico City. Given the vast and deep photographic explorations in Mexico since the advent of the medium, it is no surprise that Osbaldo Sanchez, Director of the MOMA, and Inaki Herranz, co-curator of this exhibition, had access to ample works from which to chose. Nearly 60 works by five contemporary artists are displayed on the fourth floor, curated by Patricia Ortiz Monasterio, director of the prestigious Galeria OMR.

Graciela Iturbide, Mujer Angel c.1980
These hors d’oeuvre exhibitions, independently curated and structured, do not try to exhaustively cover the topics they introduce. When initially shown in Mexico City, the MOMA exhibit included some works that for various practical considerations did not travel to DC. Monasterio curated the contemporary works not from the at-large art world in Mexico but from the pool of artists that her gallery represents.

Both self-sufficient exhibits pack a substantial amount of visual and intellectual dialogue in to just a few rooms. However, an additional dialogue arises if we take a minute to compare and contrast the two exhibitions. The juxtaposition explores more than how photography or Mexico – or Mexican -- has changed over the past one hundred years. It explores how the very concept of identity has shifted from geographically based to time based, a temporal not spatial sense of self.

The wall text for the MOMA exhibit (there is little to no text in the contemporary show upstairs) enlightens the viewer to thoughts, trends, dynamics over the past century that unite or divide artists as they worked and public as they observed. The MOMA images are organized thematically rather than chronologically or geographically. The Language of Pure Forms mentions how photographers sought innovative ways to explore identity and propose, new ways to represent place. The Portrait as Symbolic Act explains that the basic function of a portrait is to introduce ourselves to the larger world. The Eternal Reinvention of the Landscape groups photographs that use the landscape to reflect the intellectual ferment of the time, the existential and political expressions of the era, to nourish codes of identity or geographic mythology. Other themes point out the use of purity versus propaganda, of the photo-story, of performance.

Carry the structure, images, and texts of the MOMA works upstairs to look at the contemporary works and a dialogue between the two exhibitions, and between the past and current centuries, begins. On one level, the contemporary works display a continued international influence, innovative ways to explore identity and purpose, to nourish codes of identity, to use psychology or performance. On a different level, the contemporary works illustrate an international presence not limited to changing content, technique or aesthetic. They also illustrate how international influence itself has become the contemporary reference material for place and identity, how international connectivity provokes more thought about time than place.


Mauricio Alejo, Pinzas, c.2005
The contemporary artists use photography, but only as one ingredient in a multipart recipe of art, technique and thought. Mauricio Alejo’s staged and ephemeral sculptures demonstrate an individualistic gesture in various quotidian spaces, but the works are apparently made to last just long enough to be photographed. These images are not of monuments that exemplify an era’s achievements or failures. They are moments when an individual manifested, as if such a moment is itself monumental, or good enough, self-sufficient. The assumption that none of those spaces persist in that state provokes thoughts on time and how things – the artist, the place, the viewer – have changed since the manifest moment’s demise. Laureana Toledo’s time-lapse videos of building facades certainly do not emphasize the significance of any individual. The pieces do not explore who people are, they explore moments people live – or, better stated, suggest that people are the moments that they live. Period. Rafael Lozano-Henner’s use of surveillance cameras and anonymous performers, while infused with humor, relegates an individual’s presence to a fleeting effort to be seen -- not heard, not counted, just seen. Briefly. “Portrait” here does not introduce oneself to the larger world, it splices oneself into it. Briefly. If one of the many dialogues in the ground floor MOMA works is over purity versus propaganda, both thoughts have slipped through the cracks by the fourth floor, melting into an amorphous foundation whose principle interest is now explored by how it moves, not what it is.

Dialogues in Mexican Photography, in juxtaposing these two exhibits, becomes a dialogue in historical identity, a dialogue more about time than a dialogue over time. Twentieth century artists in Mexico left a rich visual legacy, sometimes stereotypical, sometimes poetic, sometimes prescriptive as much as descriptive, of what made Mexican not, for instance, Bosnian. The contemporary artists’ works are more an exploration of what it is to be in the here-and-now and not, for instance, lasting.

Where: Mexican Cultural Institute 2829 16th Street, NW Washington, DC 20009

When: November 13th 2009 – January 30th 2010, M-F 10am – 6pm, Sat 10am

New Richmond, VA art gallery

Former DC gallerina Heather Russell will be opening Russell/Projects in Richmond, VA this coming January with a show titled VANITAS, the gallery’s inaugural exhibition.

This exhibition acts as the first solo exhibition for emerging artist Helena Wurzel. The artist’s oeuvre includes oil paintings on canvas and handcut paper collages. Wurzel explores the physical and emotional demands and influences of popular culture placed on young women to ‘be perfect’ by transforming every-day moments of herself and her friends into both contemplative and celebratory glimpses of private rituals and relationships.

Receptions for the artist will be on Thursday, January 21st & Friday, January 22nd, 2010.


Do I Look Expensive? by Helena Wurzel

What is disability? An International Call for Postcards

The deadline for receipt of postcards is February 5, 2010.

VSA arts invites your participation in a collaborative art project. They’re taking a creative approach to investigate the different ways people interpret the same word: disability.

The call is open to everyone around the world—people of different cultures, ethnicities, geographic locations, and abilities. You do not have to consider yourself an “artist” to participate. VSA arts will curate an exhibition, both online and in Washington, D.C., to represent the submissions as part of the 2010 International VSA arts Festival held June 6-12, 2010.

Please contact Liza Key, Visual Arts Coordinator, at efkey@vsarts.org to receive a shipment of printed calls for the project (available while supplies last).

Additional copies of the postcard and alternative formats are uploaded to the site: www.vsarts.org/postcardproject

The Camargo Foundation Academic and Artistic Fellowships

The application deadline is January 12, 2010. The Camargo Foundation is now accepting applications from composers, writers, and visual artists pursuing specific projects.

The interdisciplinary residency program is intended to give Fellows the time and space they need to realize their projects. The Foundation's hillside campus overlooks the Mediterranean Sea in Cassis, France; it includes fully furnished apartments, a reference library, and art/music studios. Fellows are provided with self catering accommodation on campus. A stipend of $1,500 is also available. Fellowships are from mid-September to mid-December, or mid-January to mid-April. Qualified candidates from all countries and nationalities are encouraged to apply; proficiency in English is a requirement. For more information, please consult their web site here or write to apply@camargofoundation.org.

Do artists feel isolated in DC?

Good discussion going on the above subject here, with loads of good points and ideas.

In one of the posts in the above subject, a bit of news revealed by Kriston when he posts:

"Regarding the Corcoran: Corc curator of contemporary art Sarah Newman says that the Corc's new contemporary gallery, which opens in the fall with a show of work by Spencer Finch, will not feature DC-area artists as a part of its mission."

There you have it.

Snowcalypse


That's the view in our backyard during the snow storm of '09. And darn it, somehow the Soviet Socialist Republic of Montgomery County got a plow through around midnight on Sunday and now the streets are cleared and I have no excuse to hang around the house all day.

Community

One the artists visited by Mera Rubell during her 36 studio visit has stated that "When she went on about how hard it must for me to be working without a community she said 'by community I mean working without several writers writing about your work'"

See what I mean? This woman already knows one of the key ailments of the DC art scene.

The hottest new thing in painting is 94

After six decades of very private painting, Ms. Herrera sold her first artwork five years ago, at 89. Now, at a small ceremony in her honor, she was basking in the realization that her career had finally, undeniably, taken off. As cameras flashed, she extended long, Giacomettiesque fingers to accept an art foundation’s lifetime achievement award from the director of the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis.

Her good friend, the painter Tony Bechara, raised a glass. “We have a saying in Puerto Rico,” he said. “The bus — la guagua — always comes for those who wait.”

And the Cuban-born Ms. Herrera, laughing gustily, responded, “Well, Tony, I’ve been at the bus stop for 94 years!”

Since that first sale in 2004, collectors have avidly pursued Ms. Herrera, and her radiantly ascetic paintings have entered the permanent collections of institutions like the Museum of Modern Art, the Hirshhorn Museum and the Tate Modern. Last year, MoMA included her in a pantheon of Latin American artists on exhibition. And this summer, during a retrospective show in England, The Observer of London called Ms. Herrera the discovery of the decade, asking, “How can we have missed these beautiful compositions?”

Read the New York Times story about Cuban-born Carmen Herrera, the newly-discovered wunderkind of painting.