Congrats!

To New Yorker Matt Murphy, who dived into the scrum and came up with the ball from Barry Bonds' historic and record-breaking 756th homerun.

With 250 San Franciscans and one New York Mets fan fighting for the ball, it was a no contest for the Mets' fan to come up bloodied but hanging on to a ball that will bring him around $300,000 to $400,000 bucks; the Bay Area fans had no chance.

I know this because even though as a child my family lived in Brooklyn, once I graduated from Our Lady of Loretto School, I went to Aviation High School in Queens, and my High School was only a few subway stops away from Shea Stadium, so every year I'd watch 30-40 Mets games. Half the fun was watching the fights in the stands, so Matt, as a Mets fan, was well-trained.

Back then people would order a beer, which came in a plastic cup, and then they'd start stacking the plastic cups atop each other as they drank more and more. At some point in the game, usually towards the later innings, the cup stack could be dangerously high and wobbly, which could cause it to tip over and spill on the guy sitting in front of you, which more often than not meant that he'd come up swinging and then the melee would start.

If the game went into extra innings, then fuggedaboutit; it was guaranteed automatic brawling in the stands as drunks got drunker and plastic cup stacks higher. I have even seen an outfielder get distracted watching a really good fight and miss a fly ball. Or even some players come out of the dugout to watch a really good brawl in the expensive seats.

The funny thing was that when the cops would show up, the fighting would magically stop a few seconds before the cops actually arrived and then nobody seen nuthin' and the fight would be over.

So Matt was well trained, as I imagine that the brawling tradition in Shea Stadium continues to this day.

If I was Matt I'd sell that ball pronto, as in about five or six years, when A-Rod overtakes Bonds' record, it will surely drop in value as the new record baseball is caught by some other fightin' New Yorker somewhere.

Congrats!

This coming Saturday

We're big fans of student work, and in DC Irvine Contemporary has Introductions3 opening this coming Saturday. This exhibition is a selection of recent graduates from leading national and international art schools.

This third year of Introductions at Irvine Contemporary is the first gallery exhibition of its kind. Over 250 artists from 60 different art colleges were reviewed for Introductions3, and final selections were made with the advice of a panel of art collectors, rather than curators or gallerists. Introductions3 has grown to an inclusive “MFA annual” that brings the best rising artists to Washington, D.C. Participating artists are listed below with their most recent college or institute affiliation. Opening reception with artists, Saturday, August 11, 6-8 PM.

By Akemi Maegawa
Look for the work of Akemi Maegawa (Cranbrook Institute, Sculptures and Installation) and Sarah Mizer (Virginia Commonwealth University, Sculpture and Installation) to stand out.

Modern Living in DC

William Hanley with a good read on some DC area art exhibitions in ArtInfo.

Read the reviews here.

Curiouser

A couple of days ago I told you about the curious statement by The Philly Inquirer's art critic Edward J. Sozanski, who in his recent review of "Kiefer, Polke, Richter" at the Philadelphia Museum of Art writes:

"One doesn't hear much about Kiefer these days, or Sigmar Polke, Gerhard Richter, A.R. Penck, Georg Baselitz, Jorge Immendorf, or any of the other so-called neo-expressionists. While their moment dominated a good portion of the 1980s, an especially vigorous decade for new art, it's long past."

A good DC friend writes: "I don’t know what planet the Philly critic is on, but I was at the Venice Biennale and visited the Berlin Hamburger Bahnhof museum on the same trip in June, and Kiefer and Polke are still very much forces to be dealt with and creating powerful new works. A series of large indigo ground and silkscreen paintings by Polke at Venice, and a huge installation of Kiefer’s paintings and sculptures in Berlin (taking over the equivalent of the real estate in the main entry hall in our Union Station)."

Easy to do if you're already famous

Several of London's leading artists are setting up their own galleries. Damien Hirst has reportedly bought a series of railway arches in Vauxhall in which he wishes to open a gallery and restaurant, rumoured to be opening next year. Jake Chapman is also said to be negotiating a lease for his own permanent gallery site. Already up and running is Wolfgang Tillmans, who opened the exhibition space Between Bridges in east London last year. Tillmans says that the gallery, which focuses mostly on political art, "is for art that doesn't necessarily have a voice because the artists are either dead or of no commercial interest. I want to do things other galleries wouldn't be interested in doing."

Read the Guardian article here.

What Degas Saw

(Tks Rev!) The WaPo has apparently moved its Arts coverage to the Health section, but it is nonetheless a fascinating article on what Degas actually saw and how his vision may have affected his painting style.

Read it here.

And then there were two?

It has nothing to do with the visual arts, but much ado has been made of the fact that Bill Richardson is a "Hispanic" candidate for the Presidency. I'm still mulling his "Hispanicity," a label that most of you know I have some issues with...

I recently heard on some radio show that Mitt Romney's parents were born in Mexico, not from Mormon missionaries who were visiting Mexico as part of their Mormon mission, but born from Mexican-born Mormons who had been living in a Mormon colony called Colonia Juarez, which his great-grandfather had helped to create 122 years ago.

South Americans by the millions who are of Italian, Japanese, or German ancestry are still labeled "Hispanics" because they're born in a Spanish-speaking country. Thus we have Alberto Fujimori (former Peruvian President and son of Japanese immigrants) and Alfredo Stroessner (former Paraguayan strongman and son of German immigrants) as "Hispanics."

I know it's silly, but I didn't make the rules - I think the Nixon administration was the one which invented the term back in the 1970s. Before that we were Mexican-Americans, Cuban-Americans, etc.

But, since Mitt's grandparents were Mexican, does that make him a Hispanic? If you say no, because theirs and Mitt's ancestry is "American," then that immediately disqualifies loads of people from this curious cultural misnomer?

Like Fidel Castro, whose parents were Galicians, and although Galicia is geographically located in Northern Spain, their people are not ethnic Spanish, but Galeg, with a different language, culture, etc. Galicia is one of the remaining Seven Celtic Nations.

Or maybe Shakira (Shakira Isabel Mebarak Ripoll - born in Barranquilla, Colombia. She is the only child of Nidia del Carmen Ripoll Torrado, a Colombian of Catalan-Italian descent, and William Mebarak Chadid, an Arab-American of Lebanese-Catholic extraction).

Otherwise Mitt is a "Hispanic" and so is Senator John E. Sununu of New Hampshire. After all, his father, John H. Sununu (White House Chief of Staff for Bush The First and three-times NH Governor) was born in Havana, Cuba to Victoria Dada (a lady born in Central America) and John Saleh Sununu, a Boston-born businessman then living in Cuba.

I hate the labelling of people, and thus why I am wasting your time this Tuesday with this silly issue.

Only in America can a made-up cultural misnomer grow into a label which sometimes passes for cultural, and sometimes for ethnic, and sometimes for racial, depending on the ignorance or agenda of the user.

We wouldn't call a full-blooded Apache person an "Anglo-American," but we call the full-blooded Mayan person doing your landscaping or cleaning your house, a "Hispanic."

Fun with Lenny and silly labels.