UMD Art Honors Exhibition

The 39th Street Gallery, Gateway Arts Center

3901 Rhode Island Ave., Brentwood, MD 20722

(Second floor, 39th street entrance) 

The University of Maryland's Art Honors Exhibition

February 6 - 27, 2016

  

Artist Reception February 6, from 6:00 to 8:00 PM

Free and open to the public

Trial Begins in Art Forgery Case Against Knoedler Gallery

Perhaps the most anticipated trial exploring the art market in recent years began Monday in United States District Court in Manhattan with a lawyer for a couple that bought a fake Rothko asserting in her opening argument that Knoedler & Company, a once-celebrated Manhattan gallery that is now defunct, had deceived its customers while selling them dozens of fake works that it said were by master artists.

Read the NYT story here. There were allegedly more than 30 forgeries sold to collectors over the years. There was even a painting with a misspelled Jackson Pollock name!


Here's the dark truth about art forgeries - they've been around since Roman times (if not earlier) - the Roman forgers would copy Greek statues and soak them in urine to age them, and then sell them to wealthy Romans as "ancient" Greek pieces.


And fakes will always be a part of the art world.


And there are some artists (Rothko is one of them) which are magnets for fakers... there are many, many, many fake Rothkos (most of them in museums) in existence, with shaky provenances often ignored by museum curators.


Other magnet artists for fakers: Wifredo Lam, Picasso, Motherwell, Pollock, Stella, Botero (see a trend here?).


A couple of decades ago, I was sitting at Georgetown's iconic Fraser Gallery when a lady comes in, looks at the artwork and asks me: "Where can I buy a Rothko?" She pronounced it Raath-ko.

I noticed that she has a library copy of Jeffrey Weiss' book about Rothko's work tucked under her arm.


"Usually at auction," I answered. "You do know that they start in the millions."


She didn't blink an eye. "I really like his pictures," she noted. I winced at the word "picture."


I looked at her a little more quizzical; it was clear from her "airs" that money was not the issue.


"Are you looking for an original Mark Rothko painting?", I started, "Or a painting that is in the style of Rothko... that looks like his work?" I was thinking that I could point her in the direction of some of the DMV's great contemporary abstract painters, as the gallery focused strictly on contemporary realism.


She opened her book. "I want a painting that looks like this," she pointed to several works in rapid succession.


"Do you care who the artist is?" I asked.


"I don't even know who Rothko is," she noted, and I noted that she had adjusted and corrected the pronunciation of Rothko's name to match mine. "I just want a painting that looks like one of his pictures."


I winced at the word "picture" once again, and then suggested that perhaps she should contact a local art school and see if they could find an art student interested in accepting a commission from her to "create" some Rothko look-alikes for her. I warned her that copying a Rothko might break some copyright laws, but producing a work that looked Rothkolian was perfectly legal, and in the art world simply called "derivative."


Her eyes lit up; she thanked me profusely and left.


Several months later, Madame X (that was my nickname for her, as she was the spitting image of John Singer Sargent's portrait of Virginie Amélie Avegno Gautreau at the Met in NYC), walked back into the gallery.


"I wanted to thank you," she said with a smile, as she put a giftwrapped bottle of champagne on the desk. "I got a student from the Corcoran and one from Catholic University each to do some Rothkos for me."


She then showed me on her digital camera some very Rothkolian images.


"They are great!", she beamed. "I have had six of them done! And they're huge! Just what I wanted!"


I smiled, my brain beginning to imagine where and what questions these paintings may cause 100 years from now... considering the "provenance" from Madame X.


"And my friends are all commissioning more Rothkos from them!" She finished triumphantly as she waved good bye.


I unwrapped the champagne bottle - it was an Armand de Brignac “Ace of Spades” Rose. She may not have known her Rothkos, but the lady knew her champagnes.

At Zenith Gallery

In Celebration of Black History Month

"FROM HISTORY TO THE DREAM"

Show Dates:  February 5- March 5, 2016
    At Zenith Gallery, 1429 Iris St., NW, Washington, DC 20012

Christopher Malone

Featuring Artists: Doba Afolabi, Mason Archie, Francesca Britton, Margaret DeLorme, Richard Fitzhugh, Robert Freeman, Cassandra Gillens, Hubert Jackson, Gloria Kirk, Christopher Malone, Joyce J. Scott, Karen Starika, and Curtis Woody.

 

MEET THE ARTISTS RECEPTIONS:  Friday, February 5, 4-8 pm, & Saturday, February 6, 2-5 pm

Where: Zenith Gallery1429 Iris Street, NW, Washington, DC 20012
Show Dates: February 5 - March 5, 2016 

Information: Margery Goldberg, 202-783-2963, margery@zenithgallery.com

Gallery Hours: Wednesday - Saturday 12-6 pm, any other times, please call for appointment

The Daphne Series

While I was a student at the University of Washington School of Art (1977-1981), one of my school projects involved taking a mannequin deep into the woods around the Seattle area, and then fixing the mannequin onto a tree.

Once the figure was attached to a tree, I would either cover it in glue, or spray it with photo fix glue, and then cover it in tree mulch, bark, and dirt. Then I would completely glue pieces of bark to the figure, and thus make it "blend" onto the tree that it was affixed to. Eventually, the figure would be (at least visually) part of the tree, as if the figure was growing from the tree itself.

Most of these projects were done in Mt. St. Helen's as I had a school friend whose family lived at the bottom of the mountain, and it was thus convenient as he was my guide around the mountain's ape caves and trails). I suspect that all of them were destroyed by the volcanic eruption of St. Helen's on my wedding day in 1980.

I took many slides of the finished installations, but (because after art school I moved to Europe, and then returned in 1985 to go to postgraduate school, while I was at postgraduate school in California), I put about 30 boxes of books, and photos, and slides and clothes, etc. in storage with my then sister-in-law in Washington state.

Mujertrees
9x12 inches, 1979 Intaglio Etching
by F. Lennox Campello
Edition of 100 sold out

Then, while she was on vacation, a pipe in her house broke and flooded her basement for several days. Not only did I lose many, many slides of artwork, but also lot of art, all of my disco clothes (probably a good thing), plus a couple hundred books, including my copy of a hardbound first edition, first printing of Tarzan of the Apes (now worth a lot of big ones)... and no, insurance did not pay for it; none of it.

I do, however, still have some of the preparatory sketches that I did over the years, and the memories of my student artwork that has been twice wiped out by the forces of nature, as if upset that I was re-arranging and humanizing nature. The etching above - titled Mujertrees - was the start of the idea... I made 100 etchings at printmaking class at the University of Washington and then sold all of them at the Pike Place Market in Seattle.

Over the years since, I've continued the idea; see below:

Mujertree Roots
12x9 inches
1994 Pen and Ink by F. Lennox Campello
In a private collection in Virginia Beach, VA

Mujertree Couple
8x11 inches
1995 Pen and Ink by F. Lennox Campello
In a private collection in Virginia

Mujertree (Assisted)
12x9 inches
1995 Pen and Ink by F. Lennox Campello
In a private collection in Norfolk, VA

Mujertree Forest
8x11 inches
1994 Pen and Ink by F. Lennox Campello
In a private collection in New York

"Mujertree with Broken Arms" (from Daphne series) circa 1980.
Pen and Ink. 10 x 8 inches.
Collection of the Artist

"Mujertree Forest" circa 1995
Pen and Ink. 8x10 inches.
In a private collection in Virginia

"Mujertree Forest"
Circa 2000 - Unfinished
Pen and Ink. 8x12 inches.
In a private collection in California

"Daphne" circa 1995, Charcoal on Paper, 30 x 20 inches.
Private Collection in Richmond, VA

Those nature installations and the subsequent drawings and etchings were part of what I call the "Daphne Series," and which continues to this day, mostly now in drawings and etchings (above and below).

"Daphne" circa 1994, Charcoal on Paper, 40 x 30 inches.
Private Collection in Charlottesville, VA

"Mujertree Rising" (from Daphne series) circa 1996
Charcoal on Paper. 10 x 8 inches.
In a private collection in Chevy Chase, MD

"Daphne"
circa 2004
Charcoal on Paper. 14x9 inches.
In a private collection in London, UK

"Daphne"
circa 2007
Charcoal on Paper. 7x9 inches.
In a private collection in Washington, DC

"Apollo as Daphne (Gaea Missed) - from Daphne series"
circa 2008
Charcoal on Paper. 11x8  inches.
In a private collection in New York

 "Daphne"
circa 1993
Charcoal on Paper. 20 x 14 inches.
In a private collection in Virginia Beach, VA

"Daphne (version II)"
circa 2004
Charcoal on Paper. 16x11 inches.
In a private collection in New York

 "Daphne"
circa 1997
Charcoal on Paper. 16x11 inches.
In a private collection in Reston, VA