DC BLOGs on AOM

City Desk: The Progressive Review on Artomatic. Read it here and here.

Conspiracy of Sound on Artomatic. Read it here.

Art of the Possible on Artomatic. Read it here.

DC Musica Viva on Artomatic. Read it here.

Photo Net on Artomatic. Read it here.

And... the Art-O-Matic artists on Artomatic. Read it here.

Dealing with the WaPo

Today is the day that the Post is supposed to cover our area galleries in the Style section. And yet there's nothing. You better get used to it.

As reported here, the Style section has decided to cut its "Galleries" column to twice a month, rather than every Thursday.

And yet (and these are the kind of things that make no sense to me), there's a pretty good piece by a freelancer named Andy Grundberg on Six Centuries of Prints and Drawings: Recent Acquisitions at the National Gallery of Art. Grundberg is the Chairman of the Photo Department at the Corcoran and certainly quite qualified to augment either the museum or gallery review scene at the Post.

So the Post has decided to reduce their already measly gallery coverage in half because one of its two gallery art critic freelancers has quit; rather than just seek the services of another freelancer or give the assignment to people already in their freelance art stables, such as Grundberg apparently is!

Oh yeah... there's also piece in Arts Beat about art by prisoners on exhibit at a Lutheran Church somewhere.

Makes my head hurt.

What can our visual arts community do? It is so obvious that we're dealing with a mindset at the newspaper that is not very concerned with our area's galleries, artists and other visual art spaces that do not happen to be large museums. At least not in the same coverage proportions to what the Post already does for theater, music, books, TV, etc.

Their cultural apathy seems strictly dedicated to our area's galleries and artists.

I am told that the WaPo takes every letter received on an issue and multiplies it by 1500 readers who feel the same way, but who do not take the time and effort to write an old-fashioned letter.

So if you feel (like I do) that it is completely unacceptable for the Washington Post to only publish the "Galleries" column twice a month, even on a temporary basis (can you imagine the uproar if they decided to review only two movies a month? Or two restaurants? Or two theatre plays? Or two concerts? Or two books? D'ya get the point!!!)... then write the paper's editor a letter (a proper letter, not an email; and please be respectful, intelligent and civil) and let him know:

Leonard Downie
Editor
Washington Post
1150 15th Street, NW
Washington, DC 20071

Here is an example of a letter that I wrote to the Post's editor in 1999 bitching about their galleries' measly coverage and making some suggestions (one of them - the mini reviews - was eventually implemented and O'Sullivan has drastically improved gallery coverage in his Weekend On Exhibit column) to improve their coverage. Sad to think that the coverage back then was twice of what it is now (both the "Galleries" and the "Arts Beat" columns used to be published every Thursday back then)!

Chris Shott in the current issue of the WCP on Blake Gopnik:

MUSEFUL CRITIQUE

For all his ranting about "bad" art projects in the District this past year, Washington Post critic Blake Gopnik hasn’t actually done much to stop them. In fact, the Oxford University–educated art historian has done just the opposite.

To wit: Last spring, Gopnik ripped the D.C. Commission on the Arts and Humanities’ "exciting public art project," PandaMania. In fact, he likened the task of painting blank panda statues to filling in a coloring book. "It would take a really skilled contemporary artist to turn a coloring book into something worth an art lover’s time," Gopnik wrote in a May 30 Post critique. "There probably aren’t more than a half-dozen artists in this city who could do it."

Oh, but Bethesda, Md., painter Marsha Stein thought she could find a few. So she formally challenged Gopnik to hand-pick a team of artists to compete against hers. Each team would paint a blank two-foot cube, with the public voting on the best one.

Gopnik politely declined the challenge. But that didn’t stop Stein: Her project has since evolved into a multiteam competition—albeit sans cubes—that D.C. filmmaker Nigel Parkinson is shooting for a documentary. Or maybe a reality-TV show.

"He just pushes people’s buttons," Stein says of Gopnik. "He does my job for me. He couldn’t have fueled this competition any better than by writing that article."

More recently, Gopnik issued a scathing critique of Artomatic 2004, the exhibition of works by some 600 area artists now showing in the former Capital Children’s Museum. In a Nov. 11 Post piece, he called the show "the second-worst display of art I’ve ever seen. The only one to beat it out, by the thinnest of split hairs, was the 2002 Artomatic, which was worse only by virtue of being even bigger and in an even more atrocious space."

"Artomatic isn’t only good for nothing," Gopnik concluded. "It’s bad for art that matters."

Again, artists responded. For starters, there’s The Official Artomatic 2004 Boo Blake Wall, an installation papered with angry letters from Artomatic exhibitors and dotted with Travis Miller– designed stickers that read: "Blake isn’t only good for nothing. He’s bad for art that matters." And sculptor Mark Jenkins has posted a phony news story reporting Gopnik’s kidnapping by "human figures made of packaging tape."

The wall is also splashed with red paint, some of which drips down into a plastic bag taped to the ground. "Somebody said it looks like bullet holes and blood," notes Artomatic executive-committee member Jim Tretick.

A less ominous homage to Gopnik appears at Artomatic’s Overlook Bar: A case of warm beer wrapped in white paper and labeled "One vintage case of Icehouse from Artomatic 2002: The worst beer from the worst show."

"That case of beer has been sitting in my basement for two years," says Tretick. "We were saving it for a special occasion."

Right beside the beer is a brand-new Clue game wrapped in a plastic bag for Gopnik. And the artists aren’t done yet. McLean, Va.–based graphic designer Jesse Thomas is now putting the finishes touches on a new collage inspired by Gopnik.

The tributes to Gopnik come as news to the critic. "I didn’t know about any of the Artomatic responses," he writes via e-mail. Gopnik’s own response? Something in Latin about judges and matters of taste: "De gustibus non...I guess."

Article copyright Washington City Paper.

The other day I walked into a Whole Foods supermarket to buy some olives and some Manchego cheese. As I strolled by Whole Foods' fantastic deli, I noticed that in this store they had signs in both English and Spanish.

I almost died laughing when I saw how the Thanksgiving turkey special had been translated! In English, the word "turkey" is the same for the country that spans Europe and the Middle East and for the Thanksgiving bird.

But in Spanish, the word for the country Turkey is Turquia, and the word for the bird is "pavo."

Guess what this store was selling as their Thanksgiving bird? Turquia! What a bunch of turkeys...

Happy Thanksgiving!

Corcoran Screws Up (Again): Twice in One Go

As I mentioned last night, there's another mess at the Corcoran, this time dealing with their ill advised (and now cancelled) decision to host "An Evening at the Cuban Interests Section."

Both sides of this issue astonish me: (a) that the Corcoran decided to host this event in the first place and then (b) that they bowed to indirect governmental pressure to cancel it.

Today's Post article by Jacqueline Trescott discusses that the Corcoran decided to postpone the event under some indirect pressure from the State Department.

I hope that they postpone it until that brutal, racist, and homophobic bastard who oppresses that poor island with a bloody boot is six feet underground.

This is a dictatorship that sends librarians to jail for twenty years for the crime of having Orwell's 1984 in their possession.

A homophobic regime that sends gay Cubans to jail for four years for the crime of being gay.

A merciless regime where anyone who tests positive for AIDS is immediately locked away in Los Cocos.

Jails that have been off limits to the International Red Cross since 1989.

No doubt that the Corcoran really blew it in even thinking about this idea as an event in the first place. According to Trescott's article, Margaret Bergen, chief communications officer for the Corcoran says that the Corcoran sponsors 130 public programs a year and about a dozen are of them held at embassies. She adds that the discussions don't discount politics, but politics aren't the primary focus, Bergen adds that "We are trying to have a dialogue about art."

You don't "dialogue about art" with dictators who crush and destroy artists in their own homeland. If anything, you try to reach the artists and dialogue with them directly. I can guarantee to the Corcoran that the Cuban Interests Section will not assist them with that.

Now that I got that off my chest...

Now I am disturbed by the fact that they blinked when the State Department put a little pressure on them.

Sorry guys: Now you're damned if you do and damned if you don't. That's what happens when you make stupid decisions in the first place and then lack the cojones to stand up to pressure.

Washington Post to cut in half its gallery coverage

Today I called the Style desk at the WaPo and discovered that the Washington Post intends to reduce their already measly gallery coverage to only twice a month. This is a reduction from their one weekly column: "Galleries," which is published on most Thursdays, a day which according to the Style section's banner, is supposed to be a day focused on "Galleries and Art News."

Yeah...

"Galleries" has been written for the last few years by freelance writer Jessica Dawson (that's right... Jessica is not an employee of the Post, but a freelancer assigned that column). The task of writing a weekly column to review area shows is not an easy one, and it takes a lot of time, effort and driving around to see a lot of gallery shows in order to pick one or two a week. So Jessica wanted some time off, and thus the Post hired Glenn Dixon a few weeks ago.

The idea was for Jessica and Glenn to share the column and each write a review every two weeks and thus cover the gallery scene with a review a week. Measly coverage in comparison to the Post's excellent and in-depth coverage of our area's theater, music, clubs, dance and other performace art... but better than nothing.

But then something happened, and Dixon and the Post had a dispute and Dixon quit.

And now, someone at the Post has made the decision to cut down the column to just twice a month. I don't know if this is a temporary decision or not. I have emailed Gene Robinson (editor of Style) and Chip Crews (temporary Arts Editor while John Pancake, the Post's Arts Editor, is away on a teaching gig).

I am hoping that this is a temporary situation while the Post finds another freelancer to augment Dawson's biweekly coverage. I cannot, even in my darkest Post-bitching mood, fathom that the Post's editor would think that it is OK to write two columns a month to cover the nearly 100 new visual art shows that our area's galleries and artists offer each month.

Let's keep our collective fingers crossed. More on this issue as I find out more.

UPDATE: Chip Crews (who is the Post's acting Arts Editor) tells me that the decision about the "Galleries" column "may change at some point but there's no timetable. Our arts editor, John Pancake, is on sabbatical until mid-January, and it's highly unlikely any permanent action will be taken before then." I volunteered my services, but it was declined until Pancake returns to make a decision.

Michael O'Sullivan's Artomatic List

If anyone truly knows Washington art spaces, art scene and artists, it is Washington Post art critic Michael O'Sullivan. And in addition to his review of AOM, he submits the following list and notes about his top choices for this year's Art-O-Matic:

Michael O'Sullivan's Artomatic List

Best installations: Ira Tattelman/Kathryn Cornelius
Best Abstract Paintings: John Adams/Louise Kennelly
Best Portraiture: Allison Miner/Ian Jehle
Best Serendipitous Pairing: Kelly Towles/Dale Hunt
Best Thematic Spaces: Eye Candy/Girlz Club/Washington Glass School
Best Photography: Matt Dunn/Dennis Yankow (aka Dns Ynko)
Best Sculpture: Liz Duarte/Betsy Packard
Best Found-Object Sculpture: Elizabeth Lundberg Morisette/Joroko
Most Searing Use of Autobiography: Dylan Scholinski

And a couple of Bests (some of whom I [O'Sullivan] mentioned in my article) that aren't on anyone else's list:

Lynn Putney
Gregory Ferrand
Ben Claassen
Jen Dixon
Dave Savage
Kevin Irvin

...and finally, a special thanks to Brash, the poet who goes around writing
diamond-hard little poems in response to Artomatic artists, and then taping
them to the walls.