The Power of the Web

A while back I put out a fun request as a call for this blog readers' favorite artworks, based on an idea triggered by the Washington Post's art critic Michael O'Sullivan's "Conversation Pieces" in which he listed some A-list folks' favorite art in the Greater DC area.

Since then I have been slowly but surely publishing them -- to those who have sent them in: patience! I am way behind and on holiday in the mountains.

And today I received an email from a publishing house interested in pursuing the effort in a book form, with an expanded format to be discussed!

I will be mulling that idea for a while, as I have a super busy January coming down the pike, but I am pretty sure that I will do the project if I can fit it into what's already looming as a super-busy 2008 for me.

Is that great or what?

More later...

Martin Irvine's Favorite Artwork

DC area gallerist Martin Irvine quickly established Irvine Contemporary as one of the leading Mid Atlantic art galleries and has led the way in bringing the super hot Chinese art to the DC region. He responds to my call for readers' favorite artworks and writes:

I was just in the NGA-East and was impressed by the nice little suite of works they have up from 1962, the turning point year in pop. I love Andy Warhol’s “200 Campbells Soup Cans” (1962): it’s entirely hand painted with some cut stencil work, and made before the now iconic soup cans from silk screens. Andy started silkscreening in 1963 after learning it from Gerard Malanga. The 200 hand painted soup can painting on canvas seems even more subversive because he made a painting that looks commercially made, a repetitive series of logos and product graphic design ubiquitous in every supermarket, but rendered back into a painting made by hand. The outrageousness of that — in 1962!

200 Campbell’s Soup Cans, (detail) 1962 (Acrylic on canvas, 72 inches x 100 inches), by Andy Warhol

Art Job

The Mint Museums, comprising the Mint Museum of Art and the Mint Museum of Craft + Design in Charlotte, NC, is looking to hire a Director to oversee responsibilities for the development, care and presentation of one of the finest collections of contemporary craft and design within the United States.

The collection's history begins an exciting new chapter as The Mint Museum breaks ground for a 145,000 square foot building that will be the centerpiece of a thriving cultural district in the city of Charlotte. The anticipated opening of the new facility is fall 2010. The museum will provide over 18,000 square feet dedicated to the Craft and Design Collection and special exhibitions

The successful candidate should have a minimum of five years professional curatorial/management experience within a museum environment. Salary and benefits shall be commensurate with experience. Submit application letter and resume to: Caroline Schuster caroline.schuster@wachovia.com (Job Code Reference: MM0107).

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.