Fun with art

Shanthi Chandra-Sekar's Favorite Artwork

Artist Shanthi Chandra-Sekar responds to my call for readers' favorite work of art and writes:

It is the Chola bronze of Nataraja. I always get inspired when I look at a sculpture of Nataraja. According to Indian philosophy, he represents Space and I love this sculpture for its use of space. It is so totally packed with symbolism and meaning that the more I look at it, the more I learn from it.

I am currently reading a book by Ananda K. Coomaraswamy called The Dance of Shiva in which he describes the symbolism of Nataraja. Coomaraswamy is known for introducing the Nataraja sculpture to the West.

Shiva Nataraja, ca. 990, Indian
Chola dynasty, Bronze, India

Poconoing

In the Poconos for Christmas and the New Year's...

More later, with some interesting exhibition news for 2008 and even more interesting new curating projects...

Blake Gopnik at his best

We all know a few things about Blake Gopnik, the Washington Post's Chief Art Critic:

- He doesn't like painting.
- He especially doesn't like representational painting.
- He very, very rarely reviews his hometown's art galleries, and focuses his reviews on museums all over the nation, biennials, etc.
- Some of his fellow newspaper critics don't think much of him.

But the Anglocentric, Oxford-educated Gopnik is also sharply equipped to skewer, debone and consume his visual art victims when he wants to make a point, and is especially effective when he has a valid one.

And Blake Gopnik makes a very valid point in "The Overripe Fruit of John Alexander's Labors," his current review of the John Alexander retrospective at the Smithsonian American Art Museum (the show will then go on to the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston - remember that).

After decimating Alexander's paintings during the first few lethal word descriptions of some of the work at the exhibition, and after re-channeling some often repeated Gopnikisms about painting and the tired "someone has already done this," or the "masters did it better," blah, blah, blah, Gopnik delivers a superbly clear message about one of the cornerstones of art throughout the ages: it's not just talent that gets ya there, it's also who you know! Gopnik executes the show when towards the end of the review, in discussing Alexander he writes:

I'd place him somewhere up there among the 5,000 or so best artists in the country. Which is more than enough to justify his continuing to paint and collectors' continuing to buy him. What I don't understand is why our national art museum, with such limited exhibition slots and an already iffy reputation for its contemporary programming, would want to highlight such a secondary figure. Alexander has barely had a significant museum show since the early 1980s, when his good friend Jane Livingston first displayed him at the Corcoran, where she was a talented chief curator. Livingston, now working freelance, also organized this show; her boss at the Corcoran, and again for the current survey, was Peter Marzio, now director of the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston.

By curating Alexander into our national museum, Livingston is billing him as one of our next Gilbert Stuarts, Edward Hoppers, Jackson Pollocks or Jenny Holzers. That's more than his modest talent can bear.

Bravo Mr. Gopnik!

Read the whole review here.

Gail Enns Favorite Artwork

California's Anton Gallery's owner and director Gail Enns responds to my call for readers' favorite artwork and she writes

I'll tell you that aside from the new work by Tony Sheeder, I love the work by Brazilian artist, Walter Goldfarb, now on view at MOLAA (Museum of Latin American Art) in Long Beach, CA. Title of the show is D + Lirium and it goes through May 18, 2008. Hope you get to see it.

Merry Xmas

Merry Christmas!


The Giving Season, by David FeBland, Oil on Canvas, 2007

What about art?

This article by the Washington Post's ombudsman Deborah Howell exemplifies the sort of stuff that drives me batty about the Washington Post's coverage of the visual arts.

While one one hand they claim that they deliver fair and appropriate coverage, and while new editors all promise to look into the complaints about lack of appropriate coverage, and while they also promise to expand it, the truth is that it continues to shrink while the WaPo tells us that if we "don't get it, we don't get it..."

Ms. Howell writes an interesting article titled "The Critics Have Their Critics," and it goes along like this:

Who decides whether a play, concert or dance performance gets reviewed in The Post and whether the review is favorable? Readers complain about the absence of a review, an unfavorable one, or a review they think is given insufficient length or prominence.

Post Arts Editor John Pancake says the chief critics, all based in Style, decide what to review and who will review it -- a staff writer or a freelancer. A critic's job is to be, well, critical. While culturally sophisticated people can disagree, the critics' decisions to review and the review itself are The Post's guide to readers in the performing arts. The critics also write news and feature stories.

She then goes on to quote, discuss and explain away the theatre, dance, classical music, and pop music.

Two questions:

What about art?

What about Blake Gopnik, Michael O'Sullivan (not based in Style, but nonetheless a Washington Post art critic) and freelancer Jessica Dawson?

The Post already has the most minimalist of arts coverage of any major newspaper in the US, and its Chief Art Critic is the only one that I know of who is allowed not to report on his city's art galleries, a job and task that he had in his previous art critic assignment for a Canadian newspaper.

Maybe Ms. Howell will soon be doing a separate article discussing the spectacular apathy that the Post exhibits towards its city's art galleries and artists.

Yeah...

Second question: My good friend John Pancake says "the chief critics, all based in Style, decide what to review and who will review it -- a staff writer or a freelancer."

This is interesting news to me, as it reflects a change in how gallery reviews were done in the past, where Jessica Dawson pretty much had a free hand on what she chose to review and who and what gallery she chose to ignore. Apparently, according to Pancake anyway, now Blake Gopnik tells Dawson what her assignment is...

Interesting uh?