Jerry Cullum on Kretz's Jollie Painting

Curator and Senior Editor of Art Papers Jerry Cullum adds some insight into the issue of the Kate Kretz painting of Jollie as the Virgin Mary. Read it here.

Deborah McLeod's Top 10 DC Area Show

Deborah McLeod, who used to run (and did an excellent job) the McLean Project for the Arts in Virginia before relocating to Baltimore, where she now reviews art shows for the City Paper says:

I haven't seen most of the D.C. shows that were presented in 2006, but one I did see that I thought deserved mention was the "Sculpture Unbound" juried exhibition at PEPCO's Edison Gallery last Jan-Mar.

It was juried by Glenn Harper, and as you might imagine, he did an acute job of selecting and arguing it. It was a rich, inventive, and satisfying show for the strange object lover.

"Sculpture Unbound" was a joint Washington Sculptors Group and WPA/Corcoran project.

artDC

artDC is next April in Washington, DC and I've yet to hear squat about it from anyone. But I am getting emails from both artists and collectors and a few gallerists asking me what I know about it.

Zip!

Best Salad Bar in PA

I know that this has nothing to do with the visual arts, but the salad bar at Lancer's Diner, 858 Easton Road, Horsham, PA, telephone 215-674-5088, is a work of art!

For an amazingly affordable price, one has a choice of all you can eat supplies of a delicious cold calamari, Greek dolmas, two or three different tomato offerings, garbanzo salad, a couple of bean salads, a couple of potato salads, Greek olives, plus the usual assortment of salady things.

There's also plenty of fresh fruit and a killer bread pudding.

And, if you get a window seat, you can also enjoy the ferocious looking A-10's land and take-off across the street at the Willow Grove Naval Air Station.

Artomatic Events – Bethesda

This January and February, a number of galleries in Bethesda, Maryland will host group exhibitions showcasing works they have selected from artists who responded to a call for entries by uploading their images to the Artomatic virtual gallery at Artdc.org.

These Bethesda venues, with leadership from Catriona Fraser of Fraser Gallery, have worked with the Bethesda Urban Partnership's Arts and Entertainment District members and Artomatic to establish and implement this inaugural Artomatic Associated Events project.

Participating venues are: Creative Partners Gallery, Fraser Gallery, Gallery Neptune, Heineman Myers Contemporary Art, Joy of Motion Dance Center, Round House Theatre, Washington School of Photography/Capitol Arts Network, and The Writer’s Center.

In addition to these group exhibitions (which incorporate the work of 30 painters, printmakers, photographers and sculptors), the January and February events will also cover a vibrant range of performance offerings, including open dance rehearsals and free Salsa lessons, artist talks, "assembly line" portrait sittings, poetry readings, and live music sessions, as well as networking opportunities and portfolio workshops for Metro area creative professionals.

Artomatic Associated Events - Bethesda will kick off with an Artswalk and a variety of opening-related events on Friday, January 12th from 6 – 9 pm.

Further details on the roster of events throughout the month will be available at both Artomatic.org and ArtDC.org. More information about the ArtsWalk may be found at this website.

Cudlin on Gopnikosities

My good friend Jeffry Cudlin, the award winning art critic for the Washington City Paper, offers an intelligent and readable counterpoint to my dissection of Blake Gopnik's comments on the Kate Kretz "Jollie as Madonna" painting.

Read Jeffry's good points here.

I think that the line between illustration and fine art is sometimes real and a lot of times blurred, and many times erased by history, and sometimes entire cultures could be wrong, otherwise we'd still be considering Ukiyo-e as illustrations and manuals, and packing materials for tea vases to be shipped to Europe.

We're both making exagerated claims in a sense... Duchampian followers have a great time spending time deciphering the many stories and angles and intricate issues in Velazquez's "Las Meninas," but the opposite and immediate reaction is delivered equally well and without much deciphering in Goya's "3rd of May."

So the answer is that both can fit into our appreciation of art. And if it wasn't for Rockwell's "The Problem We All Live With," we'd have a very little footprint in contemporary 60's paintings of the Civil Rights struggle.



In some Rockwellian works like this one there's an example of an illustrator whose work crossed over and now - at least that piece and all the works from his civil rights imagery - crosses into fine art. It happened in the 1800s as well - Honore Daumier being the best-known example.



Were Gericault's "Medusa" to be painted today - say with the subject being Abu Ghraib, would that be art or an illustration? Oh wait - it has been done - Botero has done it and it's considered important political art!

In my opinion, and of course I'm opinionated and not necessarily right, Cudlin and many other writers are sometimes too wrapped up in theory and often resistant to just open up and enjoy the possibility of the simplicity of art for the sense of "just because..."

When I first started exploring, creating and writing about art 30 years ago, I too was all wrapped up in theory, and straining to find the meaning, the struggle, the clues, the angst, and the message in all the art that I was seeing. Without a message, the art was useless, I had been taught; if it stands on the shoulders of another artist, it cannot be good.

Among many other events that slowly changed my appreciation of art, somewhere along the lines I stumbled across a book titled: Idols of Perversity: Fantasies of Feminine Evil in Fin-de-Siecle Culture.

And all of a sudden, the vapid, sickly sweet, saccharine Romantic art of the Victorians became a whole new world of clues, deciphering images that had secret meanings to the Victorians, etc.

It was a triumph for what Duchampians believe should be good in art. Yet it was a Duchampian triumph wrapped up in a visual eye candy that looked more like parlor room art than fine art; And it made me realize that both camps could be accepted.

And now I refuse to believe that art has to do this or do that, or delay our reactions, of give us clues, etc. in order to be accepted as high art. Don't get me wrong, there are still plenty of hacks out there producing paintings that sometimes astonish in their vapidity and waste of canvas, but to take the galvanized, one-track train of thought that it's either a Duchampian success or it can't be real art, is a sure way to eliminate a lot of good art which simply may offer nothing but viewing pleasure.

Henri Matisse once said that "there is nothing more difficult for a truly creative painter than to paint a rose, because before he can do so he has first to forget all the roses that were ever painted." I think most painters almost subconsciously do this. In painting anything, unless one is outright copying an existing work (as it is taught in many art schools to teach painting techniques), a good artist is always creating something new. Something that until that moment, when the loaded brush is applied to the canvas and allowed to deliver its content, has never been done in that exact stroke, or manner, or hue, or shape, in the entire history of mankind.

Take a look at the book... it's by Bram Dijkstra, who was a professor of English literature at the University of California.

Pat Goslee's Top 10 DC area art show

Talented DC area artist Pat Goslee is one of the area's most active artists and exhibits widely around the city. She says:

I don't have a top 10 list. I say the ultimate BEST show of 2006 was:

Swarm at The Fabric Workshop and Museum, 3 December 2005–18 March 2006.

The husband and wife curatorial team of Ellen Lupton and Abbott Miller embraced the theme of swarm in an exemplary fashion — presenting a global ecosystem of contemporary art. The BEST example I have EVER seen of a COMPLETE curatorial effort, Lupton and Miller executed every detail with intelligence and precision... down to the t shirt in the gift shop.

Pat at Swarm under the piece called Long Division by Siebren Versteeg - a digital program output to projection on floor