The Super Art Thief Goes on Trial

Thirty-something French waiter Stephane Breitwieser has admitted stealing 239 works of art (including several priceless masterpieces) in seven European countries between 1995-2001.

It gets better... His mother is also on trial for having destroyed more than 200 of the works stolen by her son, who apparently stored them at her home.

Read it and weep.

P.S. Does anyone named Breitwieser live in Reston?

The Thursday Reviews

The WaPo's Jacqueline Trescott usually writes about museum news and issues. Today she has a piece that covers some museum going-ons dealing with special exhibits around Dubya's inauguration.

Jessica Dawson does something that rarely happens in the WaPo: She reviews an artist who was already reviewed last week! No doubt that Kelly Towles is hot! The review is (as usual) all over the place, sometimes doling out the feeling that it is a good review, other times throwing a bucket of cold water all over the reader. She also covers and offers a description of Time and Materials at Irvine Contemporary Art.

I'd like to see the WaPo's first threepeat and hereby call for Blake Gopnik to also review this show. Maybe a second visit to a single and talented Art-O-Matic artist will cause a shift in Blake's rootcanalization of AOM?

In the WCP, Louis Jacobson reviews "The Staged Body: Contemporary Photography," (which Jessica reviewed December 16) at Andrea Pollan's Curator's Office.

Hemphill Fine Arts has an opening this Saturday, January 8, of two of my favorite DC area artists: Martin Kotler and John Dreyfuss.

These are two of my favorite area artists. I included Kotler a few years ago into a massive show that I curated in 2001 for the Athenaeum in Alexandria. The show was titled "A Survey of Washington Area Realists" and had over 120 artists hanging salon-style in that beautiful Greek Revival building that is so architecturally out of place in Old Town Alexandria. He's an intelligent and gifted painter.

Dreyfuss' sculptures (and the studio where he makes them) have to be seen to be believed, from the massive plum bob that he last exhibited at Hemphill's old Georgetown space, to small, delicate neo Classic pieces that are all over his studio space. He will have seven new sculptures in this show.

The reception is Saturday, January 8, 2005 from 6:30 - 8:30 PM.

SYNERGY: DC Artists Unite!

Call for Artists
Deadline: March 15, 2005

Synergy is a collaborative community art project that will bring artists of the DC/MD/VA area together to create unique works of art. Synergy will revive and inspire an entire new art scene for the Washington D.C. Metropolitan area.

Evolving Perceptions (EP) is seeking teams of 2-4 artists to submit submissions for consideration. A jury panel will select the final teams and each team will receive a stipend for the artists as well as for materials. The teams will be asked to create a work of artwork(s) within a 6 week period.

The process of creation among the team artists’ will be documented and shared as part of the final exhibition. The exhibition will launch in Fall 2005/Winter 2006 at a local gallery in Washington D.C.

ELIGIBILITY: Visual artist(s) working/living within a 50 mile radius of Washington D.C. No age limit, encourage teams to include artists of diverse cultural heritages and artists with disabilities.

ENTRY INSTRUCTIONS: Artists may submit as:
1) teams of 2-4 artists
2) individuals who would like to be placed on a team
3) art organizations, galleries, museums who would like to submit a team, i.e., "the Torpedo Factory team"

To obtain an entry form please email Marsha Stein, Synergy Coordinator at marshasart@aol.com.

Each artist(s) on a team or applying as an individual must submit:
1. Resume
2. Statement about Why the collaborative art process is of interest to you? What do you hope to contribute and gain from this experience?
3. SASE
4. 5 Slides or digital images on a CD-ROM with print outs

POSTMARK DEADLINE: March 15, 2005
Teams announced in May 2005

Please send your submission to:

Synergy
11118 Lakespray Way
Reston, VA 20191

I'll be away most of the day today, and will be posting later in the day. Don't forget that tomorrow is the first Friday of the month and thus the Dupont Circle Galleries will be having their openings and/or extended hours from 6-8 PM in most cases.

Numark Gallery also has an opening tomorrow night from 6:30-8PM: Sharon Louden: The Motley Tails and also David Ryan: Batteries Can't Help Now in the gallery's Project Room.

Sharon Louden's installations and drawings "give character to individual
gestures through the illusion of movement, placement, and direction of marks.
The Motley Tails, Louden's second one-person exhibition at Numark Gallery, features a large-scale installation. A garden of hanging, hairy anthropomorphic and jungle-like forms, assembled with thousands of strands of monofilament (fishing line) clamped by cage clips, hangs from the ceiling of the main gallery space and brushes along the floor."

Las Vegas-based artist David Ryan creates his three-dimensional painted wall
constructions by referencing the design of mass-produced industrial products, automobiles, home stereos and computers.

A couple of days ago I had the honor to jury the annual monthly juried show for the 1600 plus artists who are members of the Art League.

About 600 works in all genres and medias were submitted for my review and I selected 120 of them for exhibition in the Art League Gallery on the first floor of the Torpedo Factory in Old Town Alexandria.

Jurying an art show is a very time consuming, and arduous task. There were some absolutely brilliant works, a lot of OK work and a few head scratchers. But the sublime pleasure of being surrounded by artwork from artists of all ranges, ages and skills, is unequaled. This is what the love of visual arts is all about!

As I've noted, seldom is the task of jurying an art show an easy task, and even though I have juried many shows over the last twenty years, I always approach the task with the realization that a lot of effort and work must be delivered in order to do a proper job.

And jurying a show for The Art League must be one of the most challenging tasks that a juror in our area faces. With such a rich pool of artists, by far one of the largest in the nation, abounding with talent, creativity and intelligence, a juror must come prepared to work hard and smartly.

And I’ve prepared for this task for many years and through many ways. As I've noted, I was a member of The Art League when I first moved to the Washington area many years ago, and believe me: I know first-hand the elation of being accepted and the sighs that accompany being rejected.

Then, as an art critic, I have been visiting and writing about Art League shows for many years. I know first-hand the amazing variety of art and artists, of styles and genres, of creativity and intelligence, as well as their weaknesses. And finally, as an art critic and curator, I have curated and organized over 100 shows in our area, and have been thus exposed to the work of many Art League members that way. I was ready for this task.

If you were accepted: Congratulations! It was a challenging task.

By far, you’ll see that most of the work that I selected falls within the representational genre, which I allow to dominate my personal dialogue with art. I admire technical ability, but usually when properly coupled with smart composition, good visual ideas, intelligence and creativity. The award winners all in one sense or another pushed some of these buttons, from the spectacular simplicity and elegance of Jim Steele’s photographs, to the bubbling burst of prowess of the very young Jenny Davis’ watercolors, to Jackie Saunders’ mastery of the figure.

The Art League’s monthly competitions are excellent ways to sharpen your artistic muscles, to learn to accept rejection, and to hone your instinct and experience in the art world. The best thing for art is more art – keep creating!

Oh yeah... the photo on the left won the First Prize!

How to Achieve Instant World Fame

Warning: If porn offends you, even "fine art porn," do not visit any of the links below.

Terry Richardson is one lucky stiff (pun intended) who becomes famous in the rarified upper crust of the art world while getting his fine art porn exhibitied in New York, London and Paris.

I'd love to see what would happen if one of our museums or galleries had a Terry Richardson exhibition around here.

In fact, it would make Richardson world famous on a level achieved by the Mapplethorpes and Serranos and Ofilis of the past. I am sure that the exhibition would be most likely shut down by the DC cops, which would bring the ACLU into action and thus Congress would have a collective heart attack, and start trying to pass all kind of laws, etc. You can't buy publicity like that.

Hey, at least we'd get some bi-partisan work!

A Terry Richardson exhibition in Washington, DC would make the Mapplethorpe controversy pale in comparison, of that I am sure.

In fact, this is such a good idea for a local up-and-coming struggling art space: instant fame through fine art porn!

In fact redux, I've got a couple of tentative places (cough, cough) in mind that could use the bright angry light of the public's ire and salacious mentions in the Congressional record.

Washington, DC making an artist world famous!

Terry baby... call me; I'll tell you how to get a show in DC.