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Who will win $150K tomorrow? Not an emerging artist...

The new Jack Wolgin International Competition in the Fine Arts, at $150,000, is the largest juried prize in the world, and it is supposed to go to an individual emerging visual artist.

Philadelphia banker and real estate mogul Jack Wolgin is a very generous man who wants the prize to be awarded annually, and he wanted it to be "intended for an artist who has not yet received widespread recognition outside of the art world and whose work breaks new ground by crossing traditional boundaries."

Words count. When I first announced the establishment of this new art prize in this blog back in 2008, I wrote:

This is great news for visual artists all over the world and even greater good news for the Philadelphia art scene. I will immediately comment that I am hoping that their selection panel will have the cojones to look truly to nominate artists at "a critical professional juncture" and not just xerox out a bunch of names of the usual suspects.

I remember fondly the days when museums like the Whitney and others would take chances on "new" artists, and as a result in the 80s they would give artists their first museum show ever (from memory I think both Fischl and Schnabel got their very first museum show, both while in their 30s, at the Whitney).

The days when museum curators want to be "first" are long gone, and seldom do we see a major museum take a chance with a "first" anymore. The same lack of cojones seems to have infected the major art prizes of the world, and I for one hope that Tyler and its selection jury get some brass into their system and make a statement with this new and generous prize.

Wishful thinking on my part!

The initial award set of jurors picked to award Mr. Wolgin's money: Ingrid Schaffner, Senior curator at Philadelphia’s Institute for Contemporary Art, Paolo Colombo, adviser to the Istanbul Museum of Modern Art, and Melissa Chiu, director of the Asia Society in New York, have all taken the expected lazy interpretation of the focus of the competition and have selected Ryan Trecartin, Sanford Biggers, and Michael Rakowitz from a larger pool of only 14 nominees.

The nominees were selected by "a group of nine prominent international art world figures from museums and educational organizations, representing the range of media eligible for consideration. The 14 nominees were then invited to submit an application, which was reviewed by the three-person jury."

Ryan Trecartin, Sanford Biggers, and Michael Rakowitz are all terrific and highly accomplished artists, but in my opinion are all artists who have exhibited far too widely (I think that by the time you get to exhibit in London's Whitechapel alongside Shahryar Nashat, you're waaaay past emerging) and are too well known to fit into the category envisioned by Mr. Wolgin.

Remember this prize is supposed to go to "emerging artists."

"There was a great deal of discussion about the term ‘emerging artist,’ ” said Ingrid Schaffner, referring to the competition’s main criteria. But after the lazy jurors had defined their terms, she admitted that they “surprised everyone by coming to a consensus fairly quickly.”

Very lazily if you ask me. I hope that Temple University’s Tyler School of Arts, who hosts the prize, is as pissed off at paying jurors that don't do the expected work, and that Temple has learned a very valuable lesson from this initial go around and realizes that seldom does a museum curator or an advisor to any museum (whatever that is?) is really at the leading edge of knowing who is really an "emerging artist."

In fact, one of the criteria if a museum curator is ever selected for the jury pool again should be: "Have you ever given an artist his/her first museum show?" And maybe even: "How many artists' studios have you visited in the last five years"?

Back in the 80s museums such as the Whitney in NYC used to give artists their first ever museum show. That was the last time that most museum curators actually were deep in the weeds of who was really an emerging artist.

Let's hope that this outrageous failure to focus Mr. Wolgin's initial prize money on the intended pool of emerging artist recipients will put this generous prize back on its intended path. And 2010 jurors, the intended recipients are supposed to be emerging fucking artists!"

The three finalists' work is on view at at the Temple Gallery through Oct. 31, 2009. The prize will be announced tomorrow; personally I am rooting for Ryan, so that at least the $150K loot stays in Philly.

My hopes for 2010 remain grim. Unless Temple learns this lesson, this $150K will continue to go to the usual suspects because it takes a lot of work to do the job right.

How hard? An independent survey sponsored by The International Art Materials Trade Association (NAMTA) and American Artist magazine recently reported that there are 4.4 million active artists in the United States alone (600,000 professional artists, 600,000 college art students, and 3.2 million active recreational artists). That's a lot of artists, 99.9999999999999999% of whom are emerging artists, and at least 16 of them (more than 14 anyway) I bet are breaking "new ground by crossing traditional boundaries."

I hope that Mr. Wolgin is as pissed off as I am; I intend to mail him a hard copy of this post, and then call him, and I hope that he then picks up the phone and tells Temple to get their act right with his prize money in 2010.

Shame on you Ingrid Schaffner, Paolo Colombo, and Melissa Chiu.

WPA Announces New Program

WPA has announced Information Exchange, an informal partnership with the International Studio and Curatorial Program in Brooklyn, NY.

WPA will bring international curators to Washington to discuss ideas and projects in a public forum, followed by a day of one-on-one critiques or portfolio reviews with WPA member artists. The goal of the program is to expose artists and curators to each other's work, spurring new and continuing conversations, ideas, relationships, and projects which will carry on long after the initial exchange. WPA will launch the program's pilot season with a visit by Miguel Amado of Portugal.

Miguel Amado is curator at the Fundação PLMJ in Lisbon, where he develops a collection of Portuguese contemporary art and organizes its exhibition and publication series. Recently, he served as a Curatorial Fellow at Rhizome at the New Museum in New York. Miguel is an adjunct curator at the Centro de Artes Visual in Coimbra, Portugal, where he organizes its Project Room exhibition series and special projects. He is a regular contributor to Artforum and his critical writing has also appeared in magazines such as Flash Art and numerous books and catalogues.

Admission to the public talk is free and open to the public

Artist Meetings at WPA offices Friday, November 13:
Artists who wish to meet with Miguel must email membership director Adam Griffiths at agriffiths@wpadc.org by November 9. They will randomly select 6 artists from email requests. Artists should bring no more than 5-10 CURRENT samples of work to discuss with Miguel.

Artist-Curator meetings will last between 30 and 45 minutes and will begin on the hour starting at 10:00 am. If artists have a preferred meeting time, please note in the email along with a phone number.

Information Exchange
Public Talk: Thursday, November 12, 6:30 – 8:00pm
Artist Meetings: Friday, November 13, starting at 10:00am
Location of events: WPA, 2023 Massachusetts Ave, NW, WDC 20036

Outwin Boochever Portrait Competition 2009

This week the National Portrait Gallery will announce the winners of the Outwin Boochever Portrait Competition 2009 at an opening reception taking place on the evening of Oct. 22. The exhibition will open to the public Friday, Oct. 23 and will remain on view through August 22, 2010.

The show has been juried from 3,300 entries, down to 49 finalists from around the country. Of those 49, seven have been selected for the short list of cash prizes. The top award will win $25,000 as well as a separate commission from the Portrait Gallery. (In May, the museum unveiled Mrs. Eunice Kennedy Shriver’s portrait by David Lenz, Lenz won first prize in 2006). The exhibition will display the works of the 49 finalists.

“The second Outwin Boochever Portrait Competition represents a significant milestone for the National Portrait Gallery,” said Martin Sullivan, director of the museum. “We opened the entries to all visual arts media and received a wonderful response.”

The competition happens only once every three years and demonstrates the new ways artists are working with the figure and creating portraits. External jurors for the competition were Wanda M. Corn, professor emerita in art history at Stanford University; Kerry James Marshall, artist; Brian O’Doherty, artist and critic; and Peter Schjeldahl, art critic for The New Yorker. Jurors from the National Portrait Gallery were Martin E. Sullivan, director; Carolyn K. Carr, deputy director and chief curator; and Brandon Brame Fortune, curator of painting and sculpture.

Portrait Competition Finalists and Shortlisted Artists (the asterisk denotes the artists on the shortlist):

Mequitta Ahuja, Houston
Jason Shaw Alexander, Los Angeles
Jen Bandini, Queens, N.Y.
Margaret Bowland, Brooklyn, N.Y.*
Benita Carr, Atlanta
Laura Chasman, Roslindale, Mass.
Mark Cummings, Newport Beach, Calif.
Yolanda del Amo, Brooklyn, N.Y.*
Armando Dominguez, Miami
Jenny Dubnau, Jackson Heights, N.Y.
Daniel Mark Duffy, Newtown, Conn.
David Eichenberg, Toledo, Ohio
Gaela Erwin, Louisville, Ky.*
Chambliss Giobbi, New York
David Gracie, Omaha, Neb.
Leor Grady, New York
Anne Harris, Riverside, Ill.
Patricia Horing, Larchmont, N.Y.
Kate Sammons, Los Angeles
Philip Schirmer, Sargentville, Maine
Justin Shaw, Lincoln, Neb.
Satomi Shirai, Astoria, N.Y.
Michael A. Smith, Ottsville, Pa.
Ben Tolman, Washington, D.C.
Jim Torok, Brooklyn, N.Y.
Anna Killian, Pensacola, Fla.
Erika Larsen, Hoboken, N.J.
David Dodge Lewis, Farmville, Va.
Lisa Lindvay, Chicago
Francesco Lombardo, Marshall, N.C.
Perin Mahler, Grand Rapids, Mich.
John Manion, Brooklyn, N.Y.
Bruce McKaig, Washington, D.C.
Pavel Melecky, Arlington, Texas
Sam Messer, Brooklyn, N.Y.
Paul Mindell, Norwalk, Conn.
Matthew Mitchell, Amherst, Mass.
Samantha Mitchell, New York
Austin Parkhill, Arvada, Colo.
Sonia Paulino, Los Angeles
Cliffton Peacock, Charleston, S.C.
Stanley Rayfield, Richmond, Va.*
Emil Robinson, Cincinnati*
Margaret Trezevant, Tampa, Fla.
Lien Truong, Eureka, Calif.
Clarissa Payne Uvegi, New York
Adam Vinson, Jenkintown, Pa.*
Dave Woody, Fort Collins, Colo.*
John Randall Younger, Charlottesville, Va.

I am familiar with the work of the two DC area artists on the list, Ben Tolman and Bruce McKaig. In fact, both of them have exhibited at the Fraser Gallery back in the days when I was a co-owner of those two galleries.

Seeking the scent of a white cube

As I mentioned a while back, we have moved back to the Greater DC area and thus once again I can refer to myself (as The Artists' Blue Book does) as a "active" in the District of Columbia.

So now I would like to re-acquire a local DC gallery to represent my work in the Greater DC area. I already have gallery representation in Philadelphia, PA, Richmond, VA and Norfolk, VA, but the vast majority of my collectors are in the Greater DC area, so it makes sense to re-establish a DC area gallery connection.

Since I moved to the DC area in 1992, away in 2006 and back in 2009, I've had a dozen solo shows (Annapolis, DC and Richmond) in the area, the vast majority of which have sold well or sold out plus have received extensive press coverage from the Washington Post, the Washington Times, the Washington City Paper, the Richmond Style Weekly, the Georgetowner, etc. My work gets the press' attention in one way or the other, even if it is to be described as "heavy-handed and irritating", as the Washington Post once did!

My work has also done well in art fairs in New York, Miami, Toronto and Santa Fe in the last few years. In fact, in my last NYC art fair earlier this year I sold about 20 drawings. At Art Santa Fe, which was a really tough fair because of the economy, and with many galleries not selling anything, my work was the only one that sold at the fair by the gallery that took it there.

So I need and want a gallery in the Greater DC area. If you are a gallerist and interested, drop me an email to lenny@lennycampello.com and let's talk.

Ophelia

Another new drawing from my continuous interest in this subject.

The Killing of Ophelia
Charcoal and conte on paper. 4.5 feet by 2 feet. 2009.
F. Lennox Campello

Quite contrary

Shepard Fairey's claim that he had the right to use a news photo to create his famous Barack Obama "HOPE" poster became a widely watched court case about fair use that now appears to have nearly collapsed.

By Friday night, his attorneys — led by Anthony Falzone, executive director of the Fair Use Project at Stanford University — said they intend to withdraw from the case and said the artist had misled them by fabricating information and destroying other material.

Read the story here. That portrait now sits in the National Portrait Gallery.

The National Portrait Gallery had an easy way out of this mess and I offered them the idea here, and even sent it to them, but all that I heard back was this.

Had they taken my idea and run with it, they would be smelling like roses now, rather than having a work in their collection that allegedly violates copyright law.