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.

In the current issue...

American Craft magazine's current issue has a gorgeous multi-page piece on DC artist Tim Tate and his recent collaborations with Marc Petrovic:

Ask Tim Tate about the origin of his recent collaborations with Marc Petrovic - if you can beat him to the punch. The friendly, boisterous artist has a habit of plunging into stories, leaping ahead and around, as if his brain were a rocket fueled by honesty.

Read the article online here.

Tate's solo show at Chicago's Catherine Edelman Gallery opens next May 6; check out the new work here.

The curious case of Gov. LePage and the labor mural

For the most part I try really hard to keep politics out of this blog, and being a very proud independent able to discern the usual double standards of both the vast left wing nuttery and the even vaster right wing conspiracy, I think that I do a pretty good job of that task.

Except when politics cross over into art.


The above image is a 36-foot-long mural depicting Maine's labor history. The mural used to hang in the lobby of that state's Department of Labor.

Last weekend, Maine Governor Paul LePage ordered the mural removed from the Labor building. According to LePage spokesman Dan Demeritt, the administration felt that the mural depicted "one-sided decor" not in keeping with the department's pro-business goals.

"The message from state agencies needs to be balanced," said Demeritt, adding that the mural had sparked complaints from "some business owners" who complained that it was hostile to business.

The mural (which apparently will be relocated to the Portland City Hall) was created in 2008 by Maine artist Judy Taylor via a $60,000 Maine Arts Commission grant. There are excellent details of the mural in the artists' website here.

Politicians (and locally some museum executives) just don't seem to learn the lesson that every time they try to mix politics with art censorship, they lose.

And this ability to make these boneheaded decisions is not just restricted to local government, as both the Clinton and Bush administration found out when they both covered up the 1934 WPA murals on the 5th floor of the Ariel Rios building here in Washington, DC.

The Taliban tears down and destroys art; the brutal Castro dictatorship censors art and punishes artists; the ChiCom government censors art; the nut with the Elvis hairdo in North Korea decides what art is and artists there better toe his Soviet-realism line... What do all of these regimes have in common? They are all dictators.

But in our society, anytime that a politician enters into this arena, he or she is bound to lose. We don't suffer dictator-like behavior around here.

And hopefully Maine's governor and self appointed chief interior decorator now realizes that not only did he make a stupid (and needless) decision here, but also managed to paint himself (pun intended) in a really negative light to all of us, who will never accept art censorship, no matter from which nutty wing of the right or left it comes.