Isla Torturada

 When I was a student at the University of Washington in lovely Seattle, I was going for a double degree. One was in Mathematics (Numerical Analysis) and the other in Art. Both degrees were part of the College of Arts and Sciences - so together they shared a lot of common courses.

Because of the heavy load, I often did art projects which could be used in two separate classes (drawing with sculptural elements, etc.)  In 1980 I did 100 lithographs - mostly fairly small... around 5x7 inches - they all had the island of Cuba as the central focus, and each was an individually hand-colored and done differently - so each one was unique.

I sold most of them at the Pike Place Market in Seattle, and a to one fellow student (the only other Cuban American whom I knew at the UW). She must have bought 20 of them!

Here's one:

Cuba: Isla Torturada
1980 mixed media monoprint by F. Lennox Campello

Sotheby's has this nice Morris Louis large (85.75 x 54 inches) acrylic up for auction this coming 12 November for only $200-$300,000! Image at right.

It's circa 1961 and was acquired by the present owner in 1976... of course we all wonder how much he/she paid for it.

There's also this nice Kenneth Noland on the left... 45 by 45 inches - circa 1962 and acquired by the present owner in 1963!

This was an art collector with an early Greenbergian eye for the Washington Color School... the Noland is expected to go for $100-$150,000 which is surprisingly low - one would think.

And even more surprising: This Rothko is expected to beat Van Gogh.

OK, OK it's a huge Rothko oil versus a small Van Gogh watercolor....

There are also 128 Whistlers on the auction block (mostly prints).

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The Franz and Virginia Bader Fund invites visual artists (excluding filmmakers, video artists, and performance artists) to apply for grants to enable recipients to develop their talent and concentrate on their art. Artists must be 40 years or older, and must live within 150 miles of Washington, D.C.

Two grants will be awarded in December 2003, one for $25,000, the other for $20,000. Applications must be postmarked no later than November 28, 2003. To obtain a current application form, visit the Fund's website, www.baderfund.org, or write to the Fund at 5505 Connecticut Avenue, NW #268, Washington, D.C. 20015. Send email inquiries to grants@baderfund.org. Telephone: 202-288-4608 and Fax: 202-364-3453

For those a little younger, the DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities's Young Artists Grant Program has a deadline of December 1, 2003. For District residents between the ages of 18 and 30. They can apply for up to $3,500 for community service projects or $2,500 for independent art projects. For more information or to obtain an application form visit the DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities or call 202-724-5613.

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Less than a year ago Dega Gallery, a new gallery and framing space opened in McLean and they have been putting together some pretty good shows. Dega is Korean for "master." They have a group show opening next November 7 which includes several well-known area artists and may be a good excuse to visit this new area gallery. Among the artists in the show are McLean-based printmaker Betty MacDonald and DC artist Kathleen Shafer. Hint for new gallery: Get a website!

Congratulations to DC area photographer Wayne Guenther, who received an Honorable Mention in the 2003 Camera Club of NY National Photography Competition, juried by the great Joyce Tenneson - a "local" who moved to NYC in the 1980s and became a photography superstar. Last year, Tenneson's book Wise Women became the best-selling photography book in the world for 2002. It was her 8th book I believe.

Elizabeth Roberts Gallery is run by the youngest gallery owner in Washington, DC and although it seems to me that she's still trying to find her focus, it was good to see Elizabeth take over and open a new gallery in the same building when Anton Gallery closed. She will have Laurie Monblatt (image on right) and West Virginia painter and printmaker Kathryn Stedham opening on November 4 as part of the first Friday Dupont Circle Galleries extended hours and openings.

Cheryl Numark Gallery has Jim Sanborn's "Penetrating Radiation" until December 20. The show is focused on work that Sanborn has been preparing since 1998 and it has been scheduled to run alongside (for a while) with Sanborn's associated show at the Corcoran titled "Atomic Time: Pure Science and Seduction."

In essence, Jim Sanborn has been creating a series of works and an installation about the Manhattan Project and the associated seminal beginning of the American nuclear program. The Corcoran installation, titled Critical Assembly, and a related series of photographs called Atomic Time, will be shown at the Corcoran Gallery of Art from November 1, 2003 through January 26, 2004.

The show has been curated by Dr. Jonathan Binstock, the Corcoran's Curator for Contemporary Art. While the exhibition is on view at the Corcoran, Jim Sanborn will be a visiting artist at the Corcoran’s College of Art and Design. Several educational programs will be organized to coincide with the exhibition, including a slide talk and gallery tour with Sanborn, a panel discussion addressing issues related to the exhibition and visits by the artist to students’ studios. The Corcoran is planning a two year tour of this exhibition - no other venues so far identified.

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Blake Gopnik has a very readable description and biographical article on El Greco as he writes about the El Greco's show at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.

Gopnik has some excellent points on how El Greco's works were designed to be viewed a particular way, barely lit, often high above and viewed from below, and thus why they seem so unusual to us today in well-lit museum viewings.

As I recall, even during his time he was brought in front of the Inquisition to explain the peculiar elongations of some of his Christ paintings. He must have convinced them, as they didn't fry him for breaking some Inquisition rule about how Christ should be depicted (as the largest figure in any canvas, as I recall).

El Greco is one of my favorite artists of all times, and I also like his commercial acumen. His depiction of Christ Cleasing the Temple was so popular that he copied himself several times and practically every museum in Europe has a version of it - some of which are of dubious pedigree. Here's the NGA's version and the London's National gallery has this one, and the Institute of Arts in Minneapolis has this version and, the Frick has this one and I don't know who owns this one.

In art school, we had a class where we had to copy a master's work, and I painted a huge lifesized copy of The Annunciation, which strangely enough, I sold years later to someone in Spain when I lived there in the mid 80s.

This is one master who would have loved the digital revolution and the ability to make loads of reproductions from your originals!

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Photoworks is another great artist's resource. I've been using them since they used to be Seattle Filmworks and I was in art school back in Seattle from 1977-1981.

As far as I know, Photoworks is the only place around that you can send any roll of film (any type or kind or brand) and get (if so selected) prints, slides, negatives, a CD ROM of the images and a private webpage where all your images reside and you can email them around.

This is a great archiving method for artist's works - you have the CD ROM to stash away, the slides to send around for competitions, reviews, etc., the prints for the album, negs for reprints and a web site to keep records of your images in case you lose all the other stuff.

And it's all done at a really reasonable price - in fact a lot less than if you take them to your local place to get just prints and negs.

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Artnotes has one of the funniest posts (see her Oct 22 post) ever on the subject of ...John Currin, Bea Arthur, and gigantic nipples.

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For anyone who thinks that art critics and museum curators are subjective and look at every show that they review or select with a clear, subjective eye, free from agendas and prejudices: Wake up!

Case in point. Today's Post has a rare Saturday visual arts review by Paul Richard, who retired a while back as that paper's Chief Art Critic.

Richard writes a very good, elegant and informative review of Mississippi artist Walter Anderson (1903-1965) from Anderson's show: "Walter Inglis Anderson: Everything I See Is New and Strange" at the Smithsonian Institution's Arts and Industries Building, on the Mall next to the Castle.

Richard was "amazed" by Anderson's work and writes that "the makers of great American watercolors -- Winslow Homer, John Singer Sargent, John Marin, Charles Demuth -- are a select few. Anderson is worthy of inclusion in that company."

Anderson's life (described well by Richard in the review) reads like a twisted, and odd, and interesting life. His watercolors look like this and the one on the left (copyright family of W. Anderson).

And this brings me to the point of my first paragraph about critics and curators.

First curators: Richard informs the reader that "The Hirshhorn, the Phillips and the Corcoran glanced at the idea of exhibiting the Andersons sent on tour this year by the Walter Anderson Museum in Ocean Springs, but nothing came of it. Their mistake."

My opinion: With the exception of maybe (a looooong maybe) the Phillips, I don't think any dead American artist with Anderson's background and subject matter would ever get a microsecond of interest from the Hirshhorn or the Corcoran, unless there were a lot of other sundry variables in the offer. It's just not where these curators' interest and focus are aimed at the moment.

About critics....

Richard's replacement at the Post as the new Chief Art Critic was Blake Gopnik, who came to the Post from the Canadian newspaper Globe and Mail.

And Gopnik's background, education, training and formation - and thus his subjectivity, agendas and likes and dislikes - are radically different from Richard. This gives us two men who held and now hold the same powerful pulpit with two very different views of what is good art.

I think that the chances that Gopnik would be "amazed" by Anderson's art are about the same as the chances that Laura Bush will elope with Osama Bin Laden. In fact I think that in Gopnik's books, the Anderson show may just beat the J. Seward Johnson show at the Corcoran that Gopnik brutalized a few weeks ago when he wrote: "This is the worst museum exhibition I've ever seen."

And this is where it could be fun (I've rambled too long).

Wouldn't it be fun if the Post sent both Richard and Gopnik to review the same show and then publish the former and current Chief Art Critic's views and points and words about the exact same show? And to make it more interesting - don't let them in on the idea.

It would not only be a great service to readers to see two points of view (like the Editorial page is sometimes supposed to do) applied to the fragile world of art criticism, but also a lesson to all who'll then discover that art critics, like wine critics, are a product of their own tastes, and not arbiters of what is good or bad in art.

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Only a year to go for the exhibition I wish was already here: Ana Mendieta's retrospective at the Hirshhorn. Here's something I wrote about Mendieta and "Latino art" a while back.

Mendieta (in my view) often had an interesting relationship with death - not meaning her unfortunate end.  I met her once at an airport in Chicago.

On the flight to Seattle from Chicago, I wrote this poem on the barf bag (I still have it)... not really because of her, or influenced by her meeting (she was NOT famous when we met by accident)... but it is somewhat ironic how life turned out.  Here it is:

Sleep is the cousin of Death

I'm falling...

It's a dream,

but I'm falling and it's raining.

I'm falling faster than the rain

and when I hit a water drop

it wounds my skin like a bullet

I'm falling...

Why am I falling in this dream?

I've heard that if you don't wake up before you hit the ground...

You die.

You die because sleep is the cousin of Death.
 

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The Corcoran's "Beyond the Frame: Impressionism Revisited, the Sculptures of J. Seward Johnson, Jr." has been brutalized in the critical press practically everywhere, and yet as bad as the show is, there's a conceptual connection between Johnson's work (take a famous Impressionist painting and make it into a lifesized 3-D tableaux of statues) and the Turner Prize-nominated Chapman Brothers in Britain.

Jake and Dinos Chapman's early work was based on Goya's series of etchings, Disasters of War. Initially they used plastic figures to re-create Goya in a miniature three-dimensional form, and like Johnson (later on), one of these 83 scenes became a life-sized version using mannequins (Johnson is a multimillionaire and thus he creates bronze statues).

This sculpture, Great Deeds Against the Dead of two mutilated and castrated bodies, was shown at the famous "Sensation" show in London in 1997.

I suspect that no museum in America would dare to show Great Deeds Against the Dead, but it is remarkable that the connection between Johnson and the Chapman Brothers is so obvious and yet the critical reaction to their work so vastly different.

I also suspect that the sickly sweet overexposure of Impressionism as the subject of Johnson's works has something to do with the negative critical reaction to his work, while the macabre nature of Goya's etchings brought to a life size display, appeals to the gimmick of "shock" that has become the standard and Achilles heel of contemporary British art.

By the way, the Chapman Brothers have moved on, but continue to use mannequins in their artwork, which they say is about "producing things with zero culture value, to produce aesthetic inertia - a series of works of art to be consumed and then forgotten." To me that brings them even closer to J. Seward Johnson.

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On Fridays, Weekend section art critic Michael O'Sullivan reviews area galleries and/or museums for the Post. Today he reviews "Civic Endurance" at Conner Contemporary Art (in my opinion one of area's best art galleries) in Dupont Circle area as well as "African American Quilts From the Robert and Helen Cargo Collection" at the Textile Museum also in Dupont Circle area.

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Busy night in the DC artscene last night with the Colby Caldwell opening at Hemphill Fine Arts, the BLANC opening at the Mexican Cultural Institute and the Whitman-Walker Clinic "Art for Life" charity auction held at the very beautiful OAS building on 17th Street. I was very pleased to see that most pieces of artwork donated auctioned off very nicely, raising much needed funds for the Clinic's Latino services.

Whitman-Walker Clinic is a non-profit community-based health organization serving the Washington, D.C. metropolitan region. Established by and for the gay and lesbian community, the Clinic is comprised of volunteers and staff who provide or facilitate the delivery of high quality, comprehensive, accessible health care and community services, especially committed to ending the suffering of all those infected and affected by HIV/AIDS.

You can donate to the clinic online here.

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Email received asked me if I could provide the artist with a list of local art critics, and I thought that this list would be a good resource for artists trying to get a review or bring their work or show to a critic's attention. Artists should mail their press releases and info to the critic's name in care of the newspaper or magazine that they write for. Of note, the national magazines such as ARTNews or Art in America rarely review area galleries, and when they do so, it is often under the guidance and direction of their New York Reviews editor. Often the "local reviews" in these national magazines are focused on the DC area museum shows. By the way, ARTNews will have a Washington DC City Focus in their December issue. Anyway here's my list of area art critics who are regularly published, if I am missing anyone, please email me:

Washington Post
Jessica Dawson - "Galleries" art critic
Michael O'Sullivan - Weekend section art critic
Blake Gopnik - Chief Art Critic (rarely reviews area galleries and focuses instead on museums)
Paul Richard - Retired former Chief Art Critic (still does a few museum reviews a year)
Nicole Miller - Covers the visual arts for Sunday Source
Jonathan Padget - Arts Beat column - not really criticism, more like news
Maura McCarthy - Visual Arts Editor and Critic for washingtonpost.com

Washington Times
Joanna Shaw-Eagle

Washington City Paper
Louis Jacobson (also writes for ArtNews and Art on Paper magazines)
Glenn Dixon (articles often re-published in Artnet.com)
Robert Lalasz (WCP's new Senior Arts Writer)

Georgetowner
Gary Tischler (museums only)
John Blee (galleries)

Gazette
Dr. Claudia Rousseau

Baltimore Sun
Glenn McNatt

ARTNews
Louis Jacobson
Rex Weil
others ad hoc...

Art in America
J.W. Mahoney
Joe Shannon
others ad hoc...

Art on Paper
Louis Jacobson

WETA "Around Town"
Bill Dunlap

Artnet.com Magazine
Sidney Lawrence
Tyler Green
Glenn Dixon

ArtlinePlus
Dr. John Haslem

Crier Newspapers
Me

DC One Magazine
Me

Artists just trying to get in print somewhere should not just limit themselves to trying to get one of the above very busy critics - in addition to them you should also send the news release of your solo show, etc. to your college newspaper, as well as to any of the many neighborhood newspapers published all around the metro area. In other words, if you live in Bowie and are having a show in DC, there's a pretty good chance that the Bowie Blade will do an article or review for you. Also don't forget that the Post publishes several separate community sections such as Montgomery Extra, Prince William Extra, etc. Those writers and editors may be interested in doing a story on an artist from their community.

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Thusdays is supposed to focus on "Galleries/Art News" in the Post's Style section, and today's "Galleries" column by Jessica Dawson has a couple of reviews as well as some interesting words and comments on the longevity of color photographs.

The archival nature of artwork is an important issue, often ignored by artists and by gallery owners, but more and more of interest to art collectors. The advent of Iris digital reproductions (also called Gyclee) brought many new choices for artists and photographers, and in the early days the issue of color longevitiy was ignored. Several lawsuits later, there are archival inks and pigments now available to the reproduction industry, but it is a complicated matrix of what ink or pigment gives you what longevity on what kind or brand of paper.

The absolute last word on these issues is always held by Wilhelm Imaging Research. They conduct research on the stability and preservation of traditional and digital color photographs and motion pictures. The company publishes brand name-specific permanence data for desktop and large-format inkjet printers and other digital printing devices. Wilhelm Imaging Research also provides consulting services to museums, archives, and commercial collections on sub-zero cold storage for the very long term preservation of still photographs and motion pictures.

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DC area painter Elena Maza emails me about my Oct. 20, 2003 rant about the idea for a new Latino Museum and adds: "I couldn't agree more with you about the "new" Latino Museum idea -- ridiculous. Besides, if we continue to build museums to honor every hyphenated American and cause, soon there will not be a square inch of space left on the Mall or anywhere else in the D.C. area!"

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November 10 is the date that the art collection of the new Washington Convention Center is unveiled with a press walk-through. The Center spent $4 million to create the largest public arts program in a U.S. convention center history. The program was overseen by the DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities with advice from the National Gallery of Art and the Corcoran Gallery. There are around 85-100 works of art distributed throughout the Center and about 50% of the artists are from the Washington area.

I was always sort of curious as to what in the hell does the National Gallery of Art know about Washington area artists? It's not like their curators are scouring Washington area galleries looking for the latest hot artist.

Anyway, as with most public art, I am willing to bet that there will not be a single nude in the entire collection, as it has become that standard of American public art that nudes (or any stuff that can be remotely "offensive" to anyone) is never part of the collection. Nonetheless there are some very good area artists represented in this collection and I am looking forward to seeing the work in place.

Talking about the DC Arts Commission, the call for nominees for the 19th Annual Mayor's Arts Awards is out. Anyone can nominate a candidate and the deadline for receipt of nominations is November 3, 2003. Nomination forms are here.

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One of the most beautiful gallery spaces in our area is the Mexican Cultural Institute and until November 20, 2003 they have a great group show titled BLANC.

BLANC is comprised of a group of Hispanic/Latino/Latin American/Spaniards artists of various nationalities, ethnicities and different generations, including Carlos Ancalmo (El Salvador), Margarita Cabrera (Mexico), Alejandro Cesarco (Uruguay), Asdrubal Colmenarez (Venezuela), Christian Curiel (Puerto Rico), Gretel Garcia (USA/Cuba), Marcela Gomez (Argentina), Joan Ill (Spain), Berta Kolteniuk (Mexico), Yucef Merhi (Venezuela), Gean Moreno (USA/Colombia), Yoshua Okon (Mexico), El Perro (Spain), Luis Romero (Venezuela), Irene Szabadics (Venezuela), Odalis Valdivieso (Venezuela) and Eugenia Vargas (Chile).

The exhibition, curated by Odalis Valdivieso, has been "structured as an open invitation for this diverse group of artist to create works of an experimental and/or conceptual nature that reflect, respond, interrogate or explore white and its almost endless array of associations."

The works on exhibition ranges from paintings to a most annoying (and successful) piece of net-art by Yucef Merhi that (if you visit the project website) takes you to a blank screen that changes randomly every seven seconds, and each screen contains a different meaning of the word white.

Problem is that it does turn your computer screen to white and I couldn't figure out how to get out of it and had to re-boot the browser to get back to a normal screen... almost like virus art???

Like any group show, the approaches are as diverse in success and interest as the participants themselves. This is a very good exhibition at one of our best contemporary art spaces.

The show will travel to the other Mexican Institutes of Culture in Houston, Los Angeles, and New York.

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Plug for our gallery: Dr. Claudia Rousseau teaches art history and also writes art criticism for the Gazette newspapers and before that she lived in Latin America for many years where she was the Chief Art critic for several major Latin American newspapers. She's written a very good review of our current John Winslow show in Bethesda.

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DC area photographer Danny Conant is hot! She's recently had a great solo at the Ralls Collection in Georgetown, then a book about her Tibet photographs published and now has a new solo show opening at Touchstone Gallery on November 14, 2003 and a second solo show currently on exhibit at the Mark Palmer Gallery in Kentucky until November 1st.

Danny Conant’s new works are scrolls that are layered pieces comprised of archival digital prints on fabric multicoated with acrylic paint and hung with bamboo pieces. Some of the images are realistic and others are vignettes composited of multiple sites. The photographs are gathered from her many trips to Asia over the last fifteen years. The exhibition runs until December 7. Last year one of her photographs sold for $2600 at Sotheby's.

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Just found this great resource for artists. It is Slides.com and they can make slides from digital files! Most museums reviews and art competitions still require slides, but if you are like me, I'm always losing them, but have plenty of digital files around. It's a good resource for an emergency.

And if you need a postcard made in a hurry from your slides or digital files, we use Modern Postcard. Hard to beat their prices and stellar service.

By the way, artists looking for competitions, local opportunities, essays on the arts and the business of art, etc. should be familiar with both Art Deadlines and locally with Malik Lloyd's FIND ART information Bank. FIND ART distributes free weekly announcements to the arts community from clients that either need the services of artists or offer beneficial services to artists. To get on the email distribution for it, send Malik an email to FINDARTinfobank@aol.com.

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