Job in the Arts

The Washington Project for the Arts (WPA) has a good job opening; check it out here.

Gopnik on Eva and Franco Mattes

Blake Gopnik has a really fascinating article here.

It's not easy to impress an art critic these days.

So how about a piece of contemporary art that consists of fragments stolen from priceless major modern works? My head's still spinning.

As my good bud Bailey says, I find it interesting that Blake seems to be suggesting that since these artists have stolen artistic materials to create their own work of art from those materials, that it will no longer be necessary for others to do the same thing.

We both think that the fact that the Mattes did this is now an open invitation to other artists to one-up them.

Fascinating nonetheless...

Last weekend opening at Conner

Great pics of the Janet Biggs and Mary Coble openings at Conner Contemporary here.

Mid City Artists Open Studios

Twice yearly, the artists in the neighborhood between Dupont and Logan Circles invite visitors into their studios. Next one is May 22nd and 23rd.

Plan your visits in advance by flipping through the artists' pages online to see what you like, who is new, and who is participating. You can also download a map to plan your route in advance and guide you along.

Some of the artists participating are: Sondra N. Arkin, Chuck Baxter, Jane Cave, Groover Cleveland, Robert Dodge, Thomas Drymon, Gary Fisher, Glenn Fry, Charlie Gaynor, Betsy Karasik, Hannah Naomi Kim, Joren Lindholm, Regina M. Miele, Lucinda F. Murphy, Mark Parascandola, Rebecca Perez, Dave Peterson, Brian Petro, Peter Alexander Romero, Nicolas F. Shi, Richard Siegman, George H. Smith-Shomari, Isabelle Spicer, Bill Warrell, Mike Weber, Robert Wiener, Colin Winterbottom and others.

Opportunity for Artists

Deadline: Oct. 31st, 2010

Art House sends you the sketchbook, then you make the art. Then Art House is taking all the sketchbooks on a 6 city tour to galleries and museums across the U.S. The goal of the exhibition is to encourage anyone to create artwork and build a collective of sketchbooks made by artists from all over the world.

Sign up at www.thesketchbookproject.com.

Art House Gallery
309 Peters St.
Atlanta, GA 30313

McKaig on Eadweard Muybridge

Helios: Eadweard Muybridge in a Time of Change
By Bruce McKaig

Seen with 21st century eyes, the images and objects in this exhibition linger in a romantic, comfortable past, but their significance and impact on photography and cinema give the show a peculiarly contemporary presence, a mute visit from the past that coyly unveils the building blocks for much of photography and cinema today.

Eadweard Muybridge, a, walking; b, ascending step; c, throwing disk; d, using shovel; e, f, using pick. Plate 521, 1887. Collotype on paper. Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, d.c., Museum Purchase, 87.7.477.
A comprehensive retrospective of Eadweard Muybridge’s explorations in locomotion and photography is now at the Corcoran Gallery of Art through July 18, 2010.

Organized by the Corcoran and curated by Philip Brookman, chief curator and head of research, Helios: Eadweard Muybridge in a Time of Change includes numerous vintage photographs, albums, stereographs, lantern slides, glass negatives and positives, patent models, Zoopraxiscope discs, proof prints, notes, books, and other ephemera. The exhibit runs chronologically from his earliest works in stereo photography (3-D glasses are provided) to his landscapes of the American west, his surveys and work from Alaska to Panama, ending with extensive samples of his animal and people motion studies.

Looking at the beautiful albumen silver prints is a treat for anyone who stares at a computer screen much of the day. The material quality of the vintage prints is nothing short of majestic, with all the serenity and fortitude the glorious west of the past is expected to have. They only become melancholic, or tragic, if a viewer compares these images to contemporary aerial photography that shows the state of the land today.

In Muybridge’s motion studies, the subject matter is usually less majestic than Yosemite or the Pacific Coast. Although the motion studies were technical extravaganzas to achieve, the subject matter is simple and straightforward, often boring and banal. Frozen in time-lapse sequences, people and animals parody gestures that will never headline at Cirque du Soleil – tossing a hat, pouring a cup of tea, walking up and then down steps (OK, there are some more gymnastic gestures). In his efforts to document the mechanics of movement, Muybridge proceeded by splintering the movement into chunky slices. They might have been made as quasi-scientific motion studies, but when viewed based on how they look not why they were made, there is an edgy pathos to these flickering slices of movement, a futility akin to the myth of Sisyphus. It’s difficult not to contemplate the images based on how they look. Despite sporadic controversies about the quality of programming and leadership, the Corcoran is a museum of art.

Whereas movement can be equated with change, involving departure and arrival, these short flipbook-like clips endlessly loop through the same futile gestures, never leaving or arriving or sustaining – just moving. In the 1920s, Frank and Lillian Gilbreth attached glowing lights to wrists, arms, and legs of workers then filmed them working in the dark. These films were tools for consulting work on movement and efficiency. (Observing that surgeons spent too much time digging for tools, they suggested that surgeons keep their eyes on the patient and ask for tools as needed, thus, “Scalpel please.”) Like Muybridge’s locomotion studies, Gilbreths’ films, when contemplated for how they look not why they were made, evoke more misery than celebration, not the stuff for a propaganda campaign promoting the work ethic.

The exhibition ends with the brilliant idea of installing a few contemporary works whose influences can be traced to Muybridge. His influences spread over painting, photography, and cinema. Included in this part of the exhibit are works by Mitchell F. Chan and Brad Hindson (Canadian team), Stacey Steeks, and DC’s own William Christenberry, to name a few. The motion picture industries, motivated by commercial interests more than scientific study, have turned Muybridge’s chunky movements into fluid blockbusters. Last summer, I participated in a video piece by then-local artist Lisa Blas (currently living in Belgium) that directly references Eadweard Muybridge. In the piece, called The Jump (in progress, not included in this exhibition), Blas, replete with skirt and heels, repeatedly walks down the sidewalk and leaps over a pile of books on the history of art.

Eadweard Muybridge, Valley of the Yosemite. From Mosquito Camp. No. 22, 1872. Albumen silver print. Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, d.c., Museum Purchase, 2007.003.
There was a great deal of mobility in Muybridge’s life, both geographically covering vast regions of the planet, and professionally interacting with numerous individuals also working on photography, motion, and cinema. Born in Great Britain, Muybridge (1830–1904) first came to the United States in 1855 and worked as a publisher’s agent and bookseller. A few years later, following a serious stagecoach accident, he returned to Great Britain and learned photography. When he returned to San Francisco in 1866, he quickly established himself as a qualified photographer, working mostly with landscapes and architecture. These images were published under the pseudonym “Helios,” which, in Greek mythology, is the name of the god of the sun.

In 1872, businessman and race horse owner Leland Stanford – former Governor of California – hired Muybridge to use photography to answer the question: In full gallop, do all four horse hooves leave the ground at the same time? Unaided human observation cannot answer the question. Muybridge spent several years perfecting techniques to produce a series of photographs that do capture a moment with all four hooves in the air. Technically, this involved developing faster shutter speeds and faster emulsions to register the fleeting activity.

In 1874, Muybridge shot and killed his wife’s lover. Though he confessed to the crime, the court acquitted him, labeling the crime a “justifiable homicide.” Stanford had paid for his defense, which included a failed attempt to plead innocent by reason of insanity, claiming that the earlier stagecoach accident had damaged his brain.

After the trail, Muybridge traveled and worked in Central America before returning to the US in 1877. Between 1883 and 1886, he worked with the University of Pennsylvania and produced over 100,000 locomotion images. In 1893, Muybridge gave a series of lectures on the Science of Animal Locomotion in the Zoopraxographical Hall at the World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago. He used his zoopraxiscope –“animal action viewer” -- to project his moving pictures, the first commercial movie theater. In 1894, he returned to England, published a couple of books, and died in 1904 at his cousin’s house where he had been living.

A catalog will accompany the exhibition, and with essays by Philip Brookman, Marta Braun, Corey Keller, Rebecca Solnit, and an introduction by Andy Grundberg.

Following its debut at the Corcoran, Helios: Eadweard Muybridge in a Time of Change will travel to Tate Britain in London from September 8 through January 16, 2011, and to the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art from February 26 through June 7, 2011.

For more information about the exhibition, visit the Corcoran's website here.

For more information about Bruce McKaig, check out www.brucemckaig.com.

Cabaret [re]ReVoltaire

Mark your calendar on May 17th for night 2 of Cabaret [re]ReVoltaire!

Washington Project for the Arts and The Pink Line Project present Cabaret [re]ReVoltaire, curated by my good bud Alberto Gaitán. Join them for four evenings of food, drinks, art, poetry and performances.

Cabaret [re]ReVoltaire celebrates the historic Cabaret ReVoltaire series which was presented by WPA in 1992.

Night 2: May 17, 2010
Time: 6:30 - 9:30pm (doors at 6:00pm)
dinner style seating, food and drink available for purchase
ticket price: $20 (50 available tickets)

Emcee: Dody DiSanto
House Band: Bob Boilen

Performances by:
Bradley Chriss,
Happenstance Theatre,
Karin Abromaitis, Kristina Bilonick & Tzveta Kassabova,
Reuben Jackson,
Kristin Garrison,
Jim Hesla,
Prosser Stirling,
and Matthew Pauli

Videos by: Anarchy in the Kitchen, Ayo Okunseinde, Vin Grabill, Champneys Taylor, and original footage of Cabaret Re-Voltaire from 1992 shot by Matt Dibble and edited by him and Linda Lewett

Tickets can be purchased here.

Note: You MUST have a ticket in advance. Tickets will not be sold at the door.

Ryan Hill opens at Civilian

Opening Reception: Friday, May 21, 2010

Civilian Art Projects artist Ryan Hill continues his process of exploring the contemporary cultural imagination through found images and word associations. The works on paper found in “SuperFacial” play with ideas of the spectacular, the facial and glamour. Drawings based on images of spa treatments, facebook profiles, fashion magazines, and entertainment websites ask the question “how do we look at faces?” “what happens if we are not sure if we are looking at a face at all?” and “what do faces mean to us anyway?”

Ryan was initially inspired to make this series of related works by a friends wedding reception on Halloween’s eve at a New Orleans mansion.

The artist found interacting with the masked wedding guests both confusing and exciting since he couldn’t read the social cues from people’s faces when they spoke or reacted to his responses. Also, the artist wore a range of fake noses and teeth throughout the night, evolving them from smaller to larger prosthesis as it progressed. This social experiment gave the artist both a sense of glamour and invisibility, allowing his face to be read in ways unfamiliar to him. People projected their fantasies on his new features in ways that allowed him to maintain a comforting sense of anonymity. He found parallels to this process of masquerade on social networking sights, celebrity discussion forums and even in the act of how the public interpretation of art is a private act done in public.

Images are drawn onto the paper with some areas blocked out by frisket. Ryan then sprays layers of washes over the drawing and works back into them with ink and brush.

Ryan's textworks are enlarged from copious notes he takes while drawing. Words are often drawings in themselves or overlaid on top of images as a way of complicating meaning.

He presently experimenting with cutting out text and hanging them sculpturally on the walls. Like previous exhibit, "Everything Must Go," the nature of the textwork are based on personal anecdotes and imaginary personas.

The artist will also show his related collages and textworks along with a video collaboration with local DC area experimental filmmaker Rob Parrish.

Wanna go to an opening tomorrow?

One of my favorite artists on this planet is Mary Coble and her solo show "Source" and performance at Conner Contemporary Art in Washington, DC opens tomorrow, Saturday, May 15th, 6-8pm.

Important News follow: Mary Coble's performance begins at 2pm and will continue on into the opening which is from 6-8pm. Coble will also be showing video, photography and an installation piece as part of the exhibition.

New video and photographs by New Yorker Janet Biggs in an exhibition titled Nobody Rides for Free will also be on display. This is Biggs' first solo exhibition with the gallery.

Be there!

This weekend: go to Reston

Check out the artists juried into the 19th Annual Northern Virginia Fine Arts Festival.

This is one of the best outdoor art festivals in the nation. It takes place on the streets of the Reston Town Center — Reston, Virginia, May 15 & 16, 2010. 10am — 6pm daily.

50,000 people will show up to look and buy art. Drop by and say hi at Booth 204.

Tomorrow: Gateway Open Studios

The many talented artists around the Gateway Arts District are having a joint open studios day tomorrow. You can also join the Washington Glass School as it celebrates its 9th Anniversary tomorrow with an Open House and Artwork Sale - art and craft from over 20 studio artists and instructors will be available.

WGS artists exhibiting include: Michael Janis, Tim Tate, Erwin Timmers, Syl Mathis, Robert Kincheloe, Jessica Beels, Nancy Donnelly, Sean Hennessey, Rania Hassan, Jennifer Lindstrom, David Pearcy, Anne Plant, Cheryl Derricotte, David Cook, Allegra Marquart, Chris Shea, , Nancy Krondstat, Kirk Waldroff, Allison Sigethey, and more! Torchwork demonstrations, discounts on class registrations, music, food & fun!

The surrounding artist studios (Red Dirt Studio with Margaret Boozer, JJ McCracken; Flux Studios with Novie Trump, Laurel Lukaszewski; Ellyn Weiss Studio) will be participating in the huge event, along with the Gateway Arts District’s Mount Rainier Day events along Rhode Island Avenue.

A free shuttle bus from the West Hyattsville Metro station will loop through the area beginning at 11:30am with a last run at 5:00pm. For more information and a PDF map go to the Gateway CDC web site here.

While you are in the area, check out the exhibition "Space / Place" which opens this Saturday, May 15th, from 5-7 PM, at the 39th Street Gallery within the new Gateway Arts Center in Brentwood, MD. The show will present the work of painter Matt Klos, draftsman Matt Woodward, and photographer Andrew Zimmermann. The work of each of the three artists presents a different concept of space and of how that space is used to describe a particular place.

It's all free and open to the public.

Opportunity for Artists

The WPA announces:

About the project:

In September 2009, the Washington Convention and Sports Authority (WCSA) and the DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities, DC Creates! Public Art Program (DCCAH) partnered to create an innovative approach to public art by transforming retail windows into a street side art exhibition entitled Windows Into DC. These temporary art spaces are popular ways to energize storefronts and windows, while drawing in visitors. For phase one of Windows Into DC, 14 DC artists were selected to paint on the storefront windows and install original works in the display windows. Now in phase two, the project looks to activate the space with incubator space, street festivals, a neon installation, portraits of DC residents, and original works of art in the display windows.

Washington Project for the Arts (WPA), through the support of DCCAH and WCSA, is inviting artists to submit proposals for Arcade, a street-level window gallery that will transform the Convention Center display windows along M Street NW between 7th and 9th Streets NW into showcases for art. Six windows will be available for the creation or installation of artworks, selected from artist proposals.

Artwork:

Creative use of the window space is expected. Painting, three-dimensional work, multimedia, photography, graphic design and site-specific installation are all welcome for consideration. Video will not be permitted for this phase. Artists should take into consideration the location and size of their preferred window in their proposal, and are strongly encouraged to visit the Washington Convention Center, located at 801 Mt Vernon Place, NW, to view the windows before submitting their application.

Submissions Requirements:

To apply for the Arcade exhibition opportunity, please send a brief written description and 1-2 images of your concept or the work you wish to submit for consideration (with dimensions) to submissions@wpadc.org with "ARCADE EXHIBITION PROPOSAL - YOURLASTNAME" in the subject line. Please be sure to include your name, address, website URL, and telephone number in your submission.

Schedule:

Deadline for proposals: Sunday, May 16, 2010, midnight
Artists notified: Friday, May 21, 2010
Installation dates: Friday, June 11, 9am through Monday, June 14 at noon
Exhibition opening: TBD
DCCAH/Mayor's RibbonCutting Ceremony: TBD
Exhibition run dates: June, 2010 through March 30, 2011
De-install dates: March 30, 2011 (subject to change)

Submission guidelines can also be found here.

For questions, please email submissions@wpadc.org or call them at 202-234-7103.

Art in Embassies Program

Established by the United States Department of State in 1964, the ART In Embassies Program is a global museum that exhibits original works of art by U.S. citizens in the public rooms of approximately 180 American diplomatic residences worldwide. For more information, contact artinembassies@state.gov.

19th Annual Northern Virginia Fine Arts Festival

Check out the artists juried into the 19th Annual Northern Virginia Fine Arts Festival. This is one of the best outdoor art festivals in the nation. It takes place on the streets of the Reston Town Center — Reston, Virginia, May 15 & 16, 2010. 10am — 6pm daily. 50,000 people will show up to look and buy art.

Pencil it into your schedule this weekend and drop by and say hi at Booth 204.

Commercials imitating art?

Am I the only one who thinks that the current AT&T commercial where they wrap up everything (buildings, beaches, etc.) in orangey material is a direct rip off of the whole Christo art legacy?

Remember when Mickey D's ripped off former DC artist Thomas Edwards?

Donnelly on Gopnik

Is there room for delight in the vocabulary of art? Perhaps. Sometimes perception is actually bigger than the current vocabulary of criticism. Not everybody wants always to be striving for a leg up, or to express anger or despair. Other sides of human experience are also valid, and a great relief.

DC artist Nancy Donnelly argues that there is room and therefore disagrees with WaPo Chief Art critic Blake Gopnik. Read Donnelly's argument in the Post here.

Wanna go to an artist talk tonight?

The join "a pop up project" for a memorable artist talk starting at 6 pm with Margaret Bowland, whose work in the current show there is my favorite. She will be discussing her Murakami Wedding series, an artwork of which is currently featured at National Portrait Gallery and her series of powerful Thorny Crown drawings, exclusively available at the pop-up project exhibition.

Artist Talk and Reception
Wednesday, May 13, 2010
6 pm
625 E St, NW
Washington, DC 20004

Project Create

Hillwood has a new director

Ellen MacNeile Charles, president of Hillwood Estate, Museum and Gardens, announced today the appointment of Kate Markert as executive director. Currently the associate director at The Walters Art Museum in Baltimore, Markert will succeed Frederick J. Fisher, who has led Hillwood as executive director for over 20 years and has long planned to make 2010 his final year heading up the former estate of Marjorie Merriweather Post in northwest DC. Markert, who will be Hillwood’s second professional director since its founding in 1977, will assume leadership on August 2.

Markert is co-author of The Manual of Strategic Planning for Museums (Altimira Press, 2007), which has become a trusted guide book for many museum directors and boards.

Art that sells itself

On Jan. 28, while on a business trip to Chicago, Terence Spies used his iPhone to monitor an eBay auction. He was trying to outbid a couple of rivals to win a black plastic box that was at the time on display at an art gallery in Seattle. Spies had read about “A Tool to Deceive and Slaughter,” as the piece is called, on a Reuters financial blog. That’s a strange-enough place for a collector to learn about art, but Spies’s interest seems even more curious given that the blogger Felix Salmon’s write-up of the piece’s sale was titled “The Uncollectible Artwork.” Even if Spies won the object, created by a young artist named Caleb Larsen, his ownership would be tentative: the technical innards of “A Tool to Deceive and Slaughter” carried a program that would relist the thing on eBay every week, forever. Indeed, the terms and conditions for submitting a bid clearly stipulated that the device must be connected to the Internet, constantly trying to resell itself at a higher price to someone else.

The minimum bid was $2,500. Spies won with a bid of $6,350. “A Tool to Deceive and Slaughter” had generated a fair amount of buzz online when it first went up for sale as part of a show of Larsen’s work at Seattle’s Lawrimore Project gallery. And I understood why people found the concept compelling (or annoying) enough to write about it. But I wanted to know why somebody would find it compelling enough to spend thousands of real dollars to sort of own that concept.

Spies, who is the chief technology officer at Voltage Security in Palo Alto, Calif., describes himself as a collector of “baffling contemporary art.” (He mentions the almost monochrome panels of Anne Appleby and Molly Springfield’s meticulous drawings of photocopies.) He says another collector once advised him to buy art that “people have a reaction to — good or bad.” And “A Tool to Deceive and Slaughter” has elicited reactions ranging from “You’re really crazy” to “You’re slightly crazy.” He’s O.K. with that. It “sets people off,” he continues, “because it’s not even clear what you own.”

Read the NYT story here.