Artist Looking for Cigarrettes

DC area artist Jackie Hoysted has recently started a new blog to document her visual arts project "The Psychology of Smoking & Quitting."

Jackie writes: "I have smoked cigarettes for over 20 years and am a cigarette and nicotine addict. On July 9th I quit smoking for what I hope is the last time and plan to document the process, my feelings, etc., through posts to the blog and the creation of related art work over the course of thirteen months. Two paintings that I created for this project, using cigarette butts and ash entitled Destruction I and II can be seen as DCAC Wall Mountables Exhibition until Sept. 6th.

I am also asking other smokers to participate in the project by asking them to send me their Last Cigarette so that I can include it in my artwork.

The blog is jackiehoysted.com/ashestoashes/.

DC area Studio Space Available

Studio 4903, a working artist space focusing on contemporary art jewelry, has space available for an artist, graphic designer, or other creative type. Each person has a space, but there are no walls dividing the room. The 1500 sq ft. studio is open, filled with light, hardwood floors, and 7 windows. Rent is $420 and includes all utilities, insurance, alarm, trash, wireless internet, and 24-hour access. We are located at 4903 Wisconsin Ave., 2nd floor, between Tenley and Friendship Hts. metros.

The Studio hosts regular arts-related events to create community and gain exposure. A good candidate would be serious about his art, want to grow and expand her business, and be eager to participate in events (past ones have been: live music, poetry reading, artist slide show & lecture, dance party, art shows and sales).

If interested, please contact Gayle at gaylefriedman@aol.com.

Mitchell on What Makes Good Art?

Reader Kevin Mitchell opines on the question and debate of "What Makes Good Art?"

We're all going to be a little wrong and a little right on our definitions of art especially since we're trying to arrive at a singular definition that art should be held accountable to.

Just when I had fashioned what I regarded as a prized response to art nitwitism a newsflash saved me some time. I could literally sit here forever refuting the changing idea of art but I'd be fighting with words a visual argument. The true testament to a work's greatness is that no amount of words can assail it... unless its premise is vocabulary, such as modern art.

Both Cudlin and Boyd could be refuted in instances but in the end as this thing of exploring new frontiers goes, why? As an artist, I didn't grow up interested in Greenberg or his principles and upon being force fed them and regurgitated in every other academic argument because justification has to refute, I still don't care.

Rosenberg, I don't care and if to understand a lot of the work of this genre, I have to read Rosenberg then it seems like he was part ring master and was able to create his own niche.

Which is why I agree with Boyd's last paragraph that art criticism currently isn't doing its job, even at a personal look at me level. If everyone is and can be an artist or it's learned or a matter of ideas, how come critics aren't artists?

Greenberg couldn't paint flatness? How come he couldn't be or convey his own ideas? It's worthless this definition thing.

I understand the purist way of thinking about materials and usage but in the words of a past teacher, stop headf'ing your canvas.

I think it's such a small market here that every word and every paragraph count in each write up whereas when I'm in Chelsea, I'm confronted with everything in its hordes and it's all accounted for.

If I had to fashion an argument it would be against styles. The progressive form of art is ended as soon as a style or label is applied, thus tying it to the past, regardless as to its completion or prospects. Rothko's are Rothko's and demonstrate Rothko qualities so they are no longer exploring or pushing. Art is the unknowing.

Having said this, I want nothing to do with this definition. Nobody can afford to sit in their studio not knowing what they're doing and effectively afford their studio. Art ended and renewed with the acceptance of the urinal.

See what you’re getting into... before you go there.

- Kevin Mitchell

Wall Mountables at DCAC

Around DC, anytime that you have an open show (meaning a show without a juror or curator), the local critics tend to immediately savage it. This seems to be a predictable critical analysis somewhat unique to the capital area's visual arts and artists as viewed by most of DC area critics.

Once a year, the District of Columbia Arts Center (DCAC), through a show called "Wall Mountables," allows any and all artists to hang anything they want, so long as it fits within a two square foot space. It's usually one of my favorite shows and a terrific opportunity for artists to exhibit and sell their work.

DCAC will be accepting and allowing artists to hang their work today July 19th 3-8pm, and tomorrow July 20th 3-6pm. Spaces are available on a first-come basis. Details here.

The opening reception is Friday, July 20th 7-9pm. This is a great opportunity to obtain original artwork at very affordable prices. The show runs through Friday, Sept. 7, 2007.

The Beat Goes On

This is what makes creating, editing and publishing a good art blog interesting. Intelligent voices discussing and treating a very difficult question: "What makes good art?"

Recap: On the air, at the Kojo Nnamdi show, WCP art critic Jeffry Cudlin offered a live, on-the-air opinion of what makes good art. A reader then emailed me and asked if I could get Jeffry to put his words into text and Cudlin expanded a bit on his off the cuff opinion here.

Then Mark Cameron Boyd responded with a view of his own, and now Jeffry in turn responds to the points raised by Mark, who teaches art theory at the Corcoran.

1) "The growing specialization of the arts is due chiefly not to the prevalence of the division of labor, but to our increasing faith in and taste for the immediate, the concrete, the irreducible. To met this taste... the various modernist artists try to confine themselves to that which is most positive and immediate in themselves, which consists in the unique attributes of their mediums. It follows that a modernist work of art must try, in principle, to avoid communication with any order of experience not inherent in the most literally and essentially construed nature of its medium."
- - Sculpture in Our Time, Clement Greenberg, from The Collected Essays and Criticism, Vol. 4: Modernism with a Vengeance.

In any event, I mentioned Greenberg because obviously nobody buys this position anymore -- at least not the way it came to be framed. There's generally a consensus that Greenberg's arguments for art boiled everything down further and further -- until you reach the Minimalist art that Greenberg couldn't bring himself to accept, despite the fact that in so many ways it seemed like a perfected expression of his operating principles.

Here's the key point: I'm NOT saying that the HOW trumps the WHAT. Does the medium help or hinder? That's exactly the question I'm driving at. Apologies if I wasn't able to make that more clear.

2) Oh, the confusion over talent and creativity. Maybe it's the word "mastery" that's sending you into a tizzy: By quoting Ruskin, I'd hoped to avoid that -- thinking specifically here of On the Nature of Gothic, from The Stones of Venice.

3) As for the relation of the work to manifestos, the necessity of the critic to intervene --- Mark, you more than anyone should know that this is up for grabs.

We can describe how the mechanisms work, how the positions within the discourse seem to relate to one another -- but it's a fluid dynamic.

There's what the artist says in the work through representation, and what s/he says in the work through execution or style -- two kinds of content, in sympathy or not. The what and the how, as you say, and both are important.

There are also statements, and essays, and installations of the work.

The critic tries to determine both the content of the work by itself, and whether or not that can be reconciled with the rest.

It's imperfect; the critic is one voice among many, and s/he attempts to nudge the discourse as best s/he can. Doesn't mean the critic is the final arbiter, just one of many gatekeepers and interpreters -- fallible, human, making arguments rooted in a particular historical moment. So it goes. Doesn't mean that the job's not worth doing, or that it can't significantly add to -- or help sort out--this business of cultural production.

-- Jeffry Cudlin

Cudlin on Miner

Not to make this blog a Cudlinfest, but Washington City Paper art critic Jeffry Cudlin has a really good look at A.B. Miner's solo show at H & F Fine Arts.

Read it here.



By the way, as a devoted fan of the sensuality of the line, which I consider one of the most powerful assets that a good painter can use, or the key between a good drawing and a so-so drawing, I disagree with Jeffry's negative view on the line as used by Miner. It is precisely the palpable sensuality of Miner's ever changing, shifting, dancing line in his paintings and drawings that take them from flat surfaces to a mental place where sex and art live together in moist confidence.

Miner's show at H&F Fine Arts runs through August 4, 2007. Miner has been one of my "buy now" artists for a long time. I get paid to to this sort of recommendation, so take the tip and go spend some Samolians on this really talented painter.

Tolbert on What Makes Good Art?

Bethesda Painting Awards semi-finalist Susan Tolbert opines on the issues raised by Jeffry Cudlin's on-the-air, and off-the-cuff answer to the question "What Makes Good Art?"

Tolbert writes:

When Robert Hughes was asked this question by Charlie Rose last year, he had a very short response: Passion and Organization.

Hopper's work fits this criteria nicely. Art stands the test of time, and Hopper is still standing despite the fact that he wasn't a very good painter.

And I always liked Tom Wolf's (the first one) "Slave to fashion, whore to time."

Susan Tolbert