Perfect example...

The current candidates for President in Peru are a brilliant example of the cultural sillyness of the term "Hispanic" or "Latino."

Running for that Spanish-speaking nation's top office are Ollanta Moisés Humala Tasso - an indigenous Peruvian from one of the Native American tribes of that nation.

Also former president Alejandro Toledo, and lawmaker Keiko Sofía Fujimori Higuchi, a Peruvian lawmaker of full Japanese ancestry and daughter of former Peruvian President Alberto Fujimori, and lastly former prime minister Pedro Pablo Kuczynski.

Humala, Toledo, Fujimori and Kuczynski... all good Hispanic names... Humala is expected to win, but I'm betting on Fujimori.

Call for artists

Deadline: Wednesday, May 18, 2011

Public Talk: Monday, April 18, 2011, 4‐6pm with Alyson Baker, Executive Director, Socrates Sculpture Park and Dan Steinhilber, 2010 Public Art Residency Artist, at the WPA Office at 2023 Massachusetts Ave. NW.

Washington Project for the Arts (WPA) and the DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities (DCAAH) have announced the 2011 Public Art Residency (PAR) Program, in partnership with Socrates Sculpture Park (SSP, the Park) in Long Island City, NY.

Now in its second year, the PAR Program is designed to instruct and inform artists about practical and conceptual issues related to the creation of public art. Through this program, artists will learn the fundamentals of developing a proposal for public
art work, identifying sources for materials and funding of projects, and access a support network for technical assistance and future opportunities related to creating and presenting art in the public realm.

One artist who resides in the District of Columbia will be selected to receive a two month paid residency and exhibition opportunity at Socrates Sculpture Park. The work will be exhibited under SSP’s “Open Space” program from September 10, 2011 to March 2012 (exact end/deinstallation date to be determined and agreed upon by the artist and SSP). Once the exhibit has ended, the artist will re-fabricate or re‐install, in Washington, DC, the work made through the residency. The artist will be required to give a public presentation about his or her residency experience and may also be asked to advise WPA on other public art initiatives.

Details here.

I think this is supposed to be a joke...

In reaction to the Paul Gauguin masterpiece at the National Gallery of Art that was attacked last Friday by yet another idiot, the very weird article "Three Works at the National Gallery We’d Have Defaced Before Gauguin" is a post in the Washington City Paper where CP art critics Kriston Capps, Jeffry Cudlin and John Anderson each pick a work of art at the National Gallery of Art they'd rather see "defaced."

I know these three guys, and I think that this is supposed to be an attempt at humor... but from reading the comments, it seems that a lot of readers missed the joke and some of the words in the article read to me as contemptuous (or as commenters noted) "openly hostile", and as "stuffy cultural elitism."

Apparently, the LA Times didn't think it was a joke and they write:

If she is deranged, one wonders: What is the excuse for the Washington City Paper, which Tuesday published a story with the headline "Three Works at the National Gallery We’d Have Defaced Before Gauguin"?

The alternative tabloid proceeded to "recommend" three works in the museum's collection more suitable for trashing than the Post-Impressionist picture, which is on loan from New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art to a popular traveling exhibition. One of the three writers even explains, "Actually, I've been defacing a work of art very subtly since September last year," claiming to regularly add colored pencil marks to a Sol LeWitt wall drawing at the museum.

So, dear readers... what do you think? Should these erudite and gifted writers hang up their Onion-wanna-be aspirations? or is this just a case of the WCP's "inject irony into everything" approach?

Personally I think that these three guys are pretty good art critics and really suck as comedy scribes.

And by the way, I know John Anderson well enough to know that he would never, ever actually deface any artwork, no matter how much it sucks.

And my good bud Jeffry Cudlin responds here.

When tyrants rule...

The Chinese artist Ai Weiwei, who disappeared into police custody in Beijing after he was arrested on Sunday while trying to board a flight for Hong Kong, is a fully 21st-century figure, global-minded, media-savvy, widely networked. He is also the embodiment of a cultural type, largely unfamiliar to the West, that dates far back into China’s ancient past.

Read the NYT article here.

Wanna go to a Bethesda opening this Friday?

Friday 8 April from 6-9PM.

More TV Drawings

These are all pen ink and then smeared with my wet finger; they are all done while watching TV and most likely than not, somewhat influenced by whatever I am watching...

Woman Carrying Pig
Done while watching Julia Roberts in Eat, Pray, Love


Woman Howling (Homage to Paula Rego)
Done while watching a documentary on Paula Rego


Rock Devil
Done while watching the National Geographic channel


Woman with Crow
Done while watching the new Camelot series on Starz


Woman Sewing Her Own Wound
One of those commercials for anti-depression drugs... I think


Woman Carrying Pig on Her Head
Done while watching Julia Roberts in Eat, Pray, Love

ChiComs Arrest Artist

Chinese artist and designer Ai Weiwei was detained by police at the Beijing airport before he could take a flight to Hong Kong yesterday. Even if you haven’t seen his current exhibition at London’s Tate Modern or those at Munuch’s Haus der Kunst and Tokyo’s Mori Art Museum, you still may know his work. Ai Weiwei helped design the “Birds Nest Stadium“ for the 2008 Olympics, the National Stadium of the People’s Republic of China.

Read Mike Licht's report here.