Opportunity for Sculptors:
Deadline: January 15, 2004.
For renovated lobby of DC Courthouse - Theme: "Family" - Budget: $100,000. Eligible: Artists from Maryland, the District of Columbia and Virginia. To receive a detailed prospectus contact: Francoise Yohalem at 301 816-0518. Or by e-mail: Francyo@earthlink.net.

Opportunity for Press Photographers:
Deadline: 15 January 2004.
World Press Photo has their annual competition to select the world press photo of the year. Eligibile are press photographers and photojournalists throughout the world who can then participate in the 47th annual World Press Photo Contest.

This competition accepts press photographs taken during 2003 and intended for publication. There is no entry fee. Single pictures in all categories must have been taken in 2003. In the categories Spot News, General News, People in the News and Sports Action. All pictures in the stories must also have been shot in 2003. Picture stories/portfolios in the remaining categories must have been completed or first published in 2003.

The award carries a cash prize of EUR 10,000, and an invitation to Amsterdam to attend the awards ceremony in April 2004 (including one return flight ticket and hotel accommodation). At this ceremony the first exhibition of the season is officially opened. The winner of the World Press Photo of the Year 2003 Award is also offered an exhibition of his or her photojournalistic work, to be opened simultaneously in Amsterdam. There are also 1,500 EUR awards in each of the categories. Eligible photographers can download all the info here. See last year's winners here.

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For Ibero-Latin American Press Photographers.
Deadline: 28 February 2004.
Open to the American continent's and the Iberian peninsula of Europe's press photographers of Spanish or Portuguese language publications. Sponsored by the Fundacion Nuevo Periodismo Iberoamericano in Colombia. One $30,000 prize and several $25,000 prizes to the winning photographers. Entry rules and forms here.

Today's Washington Post has a story by Philip Kennicott that somewhat echoes what I discussed briefly in yesterday's posting.

As one looks at this desolate new photo of Mars, taken by the Spirit's Rover at the Mars landing site on Monday, I wonder what the first ever photos of the Red planet will fetch in vintage art auctions in a couple of hundred years (the vintage moonlanding photos already fetching quite a nice price).

I was also struck how the new photo of Mars looks a little like a Richard Misrach, but more brooding and less "landscapy" and "pretty."

Click on the photo above to visit the NASA website. It's a spectacular presentation of the Mars mission. Check out this breathtaking photograph of the Olympos Mons volcano - the largest in the solar system.

NASA is sort of re-inventing photography, as these images are not truly "photographs" but are created after processing thousands of laser altimeter elevation measurements taken by the Mars Global Surveyor. Then a computer back here puts it all together and creates a 3-D image - but this is definately art as the output of machines.

Finally ArtsJournal.com has a visual arts BLOG! It's Artopia - John Perreault's Art Diary.

John Perreault has been writing about art for many years, including art criticism for the Village Voice, ArtNews, Art in America magazines, and others.

He is currently an associate editor and writes regularly for both N. Y. Arts Magazine and American Ceramics; he is also on the editorial advisory board of Sculpture magazine and is a trustee of the Tiffany Foundation. He has also been president of the American Section of the International Association of Art Critics.

Perreault has also written a book for Abrams on the watercolors of Philip Pearlstein and is now editing a three-volume anthology of his collected writings. He has also been a museum curator, an arts administrator, and professor of art history and is thus superbly qualified to offer us a great insight via his BLOG/Art Diary into the visual arts in New York and elsewhere.

Bookmark Artopia - John Perreault's Art Diary and visit often.

The Art League will be having their 37th Annual Patron's Show, and tickets go on sale on January 15.

If you don't know what the Patron's Show is, then let me tell you.

If you are crazy enough to be hanging around Old Town Alexandria about 4 in the morning on January 17 you will notice people forming a long line in the cold outside the Torpedo Factory. They will be waiting for a chance to get original art for their collections - or even starting a collection.

"A line for art?" you must be asking, "who is crazy enough to freeze lining up at Oh-dark-thirty just to buy artwork?"

Hundreds!

They will be lining up for one of the great art deals of the year: the 37th Annual Patron's Show. It's very simple: artists donate original artwork to the Art League, who inspects it, selects it and often frames it.

It is generally good art to suit all tastes, ranging from huge abstracts to delicate pencil drawings. Usually about 600 pieces are donated and hung, salon style in the Art League's gallery on the first floor of the Factory.

Then raffle tickets go up for sale at 10 am on the 17th, and they usually disappear and are sold out within an hour or two, and each ticket is guaranteed a work of art.

The drawing is on Sunday, February 15, and about 1500 people crowd into the main floor of the Torpedo Factory. They bring picnic baskets, wine, beer and all kinds of foods and goodies. It's a really cool time, a unique art scene in the area - far more popular and vociferous than some of the more stuffy art raffles held at other places.

On Sunday, February 15, the tickets are drawn at random, and as they are called, ticket-holders select a piece of art from the work on display on the walls and take it with them. It is without a doubt, the most sought after art ticket in town, and often incredible acquisitions are made. If you are a budding collector, don't miss it!

Washington's own seminal art BLOGger, Tyler Green has a very interesting and eloquent article on artnet.com.

Green makes an interesting (and valid) point about the fact that video art demands, and sometimes steals time from the viewer, as opposed to the viewer deciding how long to look at a painting or print.

It's true! In fact, regardless of the fact that 99% of most of the "video art" that I've seen are essentially rather forgettable artsy home movies, even the worst of them seems to have an invisible ability to keep the viewer plugged in watching. Even in sleepers like most of Tacita Dean's videos, one keeps a vigil, perhaps hoping that something interesting will eventually happen. At the other extreme, in the classical pre-video ancestor of video art (known then as "movies") Un Chien Andalou Buñuel and Dali­ have disconnected scenes that make no sense and yet glue the viewer from beginning to end.

Example: a few years ago I recall seeing a video at a Corcoran exhibition; I think it was a student graduate show. In the video, two girls, wearing large goat masks were butting horns (like mountain goats do) over and over again. Even though it was a repetitive, and after a while boring motion, I recall spending more time than planned just viewing it. This experience has repeated itself many times (before and since) with video art.

Why?

Green gives us his opinions as to why. And they are good observations. I also think that the fact that we are very much a television-obsessed society, and (as Harlan Ellison noted in the 60s), the glass teat is above all adictive; we have no choice! It's on a TV screen or being projected as a movie and thus the mind goes on automatic: one must watch.