Blake Gopnik is very impressed in his Sunday Arts review of a very interesting show by Jim Sanborn at the Corcoran (see my Oct 27 post).
Seems like Gopnik is going through some epiphanies lately, as just a few weeks ago he found the worst museum show he'd ever seen at the same place.
I found the review a little too "preachy" in a revisionist sort of way. Nonetheless, in my opinion, this exhibition is exceedingly interesting in that it blends together several genres of the stuff that museum exhibitions (not just "art" museums) are made from.
I'm not even sure that a visual arts critic alone can give an informed review of this groundbreaking Sanborn exhibition, and I hope that some history experts from academia will get a chance to voice their opinions in the Post. This is not just a visual art exhibition, but also somewhat of a history lesson - in fact, it could just as easily have been presented in one of the nearby Smithsonian museums along the Mall that deal with history.
Sanborn's photos of atomic matter and elements are beautiful - no debate about that. But his obsession with reconstructing - well ... in Blake's words: presentation of the Manhattan Project push the overall exhibition into a new realm - it's a well-crafted and re-constructed passion (much like the passion of collectors who collect Nazi or Stasi memorabilia).... but it walks away from just visual art and adds historical visual information and reconstruction - and it opens a new page in contemporary art dialogue - in this Gopnik and I agree (I think).
Why Gopnik recommends that President Bush visit this exhibition often is confusing to me.
The fact that either (a): The Chief Art Critic of the Washington Post apparently thinks that the President of the United States needs to be reminded of the horrors of nuclear devastation because he's a trigger happy person - if that is what Gopnik meant - seems infantile and out of place regardless of one's political leanings and diminishes the work of a serious artist by aligning a unwarranted (in an art review) revisionist view that conveniently forgets that in 1945 thousands of people were dying in order to end a Pacific war that had brutalized, enslaved and murdered hundreds of thousands of people all over Asia and was aligned with the fascist powers of Hitler and Mussolini, and that it took two atomic disasters to force the Japanese to surrender and save countless lives.
Or (b): Maybe I am misunderstanding Gopnik, and he just wants the President to "visit often" in order to realize that what was created at Los Alamos in 1945 (in a race versus Nazi scientists by the way), is still a very real threat to us today if it gets in the hands of terrorists and that Bush needs to devote more time and effort to prevent atomic terrorism?
Either way, I missed the reason for the Presidential call.
This exhibition should get national attention and it will be good for the Washington visual arts scene. It is also good that it is the Corcoran who hosts it, rather than a history museum down the road. My kudos to the artist and to Dr. Jonathan Binstock, the curator.
And when you visit the exhibition at the Corcoran, don't forget that Cheryl Numark Gallery has Jim Sanborn's "Penetrating Radiation" until December 20 and should be seen as well.
Saturday, November 01, 2003
Our annual call for photographers is the Bethesda International Photography Competition, which in 2003 was curated by Philip Brookman, Photography Curator at the Corcoran.
The 2004 exhibition's deadline for entries is February 3, 2004 and information and entry forms can be obtained here. The Best of Show winner gets a cash prize as well as a solo show in 2005 at our Georgetown gallery.
Our annual call for artists is the Georgetown International Fine Arts Competition which in 2004 will be curated by Kristen Hileman, Assistant Curator for Contemporary Art at the Hirshhorn Museum. The deadline for submissions is June 1, 2004 and entry forms and details can be obtained here. The Best of Show winner here also gets a cash prize as well as a solo show in 2005 at our Georgetown gallery.
Some museum exhibition opportunities: The Palm Springs Museum in California has a call for artists for its 35th annual juried exhibition. The deadline for submissions is December 12, 2003. For info contact them via email at info@psmuseum.org or call them at (760) 325-7186.
The San Diego Art Institute's Museum of the Living Artist has a call for artists for its 47th International Award Exhibition. The deadline for submissions is January 9, 2004. You can get the entry forms online here.
For watercolor artists: the Societe Canadienne de l'Aquarelle has a call for watercolor artists (deadline March 1, 2004) for its next juried competition. Selected works will travel to 5-6 cities in the province of Quebec starting in May and ending in October. A full color catalog is produced and usually the shows are visited by around 20,000 people. For a prospectus contact them at 450/678-2234 or email them at info@aquarelle.ca.
The William and Mary Review, a literary and art magazine published by the College of William and Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia, is looking for artwork submissions for its 2004 edition. The deadline is February 1, 2004. For info send them an email to review@wm.edu to the attention of Selina Spinos.
The Department of State's Art in Embassies program is a way for artists to loan works to US embassies around the world. Althought artists do not get paid, there is a travel program associated with it that allows artists to travel to locales to give lectures, workshops and for studio visits. Interested artists should contact Mary Hollis Hughes at 202/647-5723 or visit the website here, as submissions can be made online from your digital files.
Friday, October 31, 2003
Susan Clampitt, executive director at public radio station WAMU, has been fired by American University President Benjamin Ladner.
My favorite WAMU show is the daily talk show by the unflappable Kojo Nmandi. Kojo is one of the rare radio talk show hosts that once in a while actually dedicates air time to our area's art scene. Kojo had me on the air last March discussing DC area art galleries and events, and he's also had the Post's Blake Gopnik a couple of times. Actually, Blake makes a couple of interesting personal observations about his impression on the quality of DC art and artists - listen to it here.
The most disappointing (from a visual arts perspective) WAMU show is Metro Connection, which is well "connected" to music, performance and theatre and loads of DC-centric events, but generally ignores the strong visual arts component of our area's art scene. In fact, so far in 2003 they've done only three shows with some sort of visual art focus. In an ideal world, one would hope that Metro Connection could find air time to do at least one monthly show on a museum show or a gallery show or highlight a DC area visual artist --- in other words, much alike to what they already do for all the other various genres of the arts.
Faith Flanagan organizes MUSE, which is a monthly art salon at DCAC. Each session is an opportunity to talk about contemporary art at a monthly get-together. Each salon features a discussion with a member of the local District, Maryland & Virginia (DMV) arts community, followed by a chance for audience members to show slides or samples of their work.
MUSE's guests for November will be Sarah Tanguy, independent curator and writer and Glenn Harper, editor, Sculpture Magazine. December's guest will be Anne Corbett, Executive Director, Cultural Development Corporation.
Next dates are Sunday, November 2, and Sunday, December 7, 2003 at 7:30 P.M. and the first Sunday of each following month. For more info email Faith at salon@dcartscenter.org.
Michael O'Sullivan, in the Post's Weekend section reviews a very interesting show (I saw it a few days ago) of mechanical constructions by Andy Holtin at Old Town Alexandria's Target Gallery, located on the ground floor of the Torpedo Factory.
While I was around Old Town I realized how much damage Isabel had done. Apparently Gallery West, which is one of the Greater Washington area's oldest artist-run galleries, had sixteen inches of river water inside the gallery at one point and is now being repaired.
Thursday, October 30, 2003
Gil Perez, the doorman at Christie's in New York, is apparently so influential with potential buyers that he has a position on the company's board and reportedly earns $100,000 a year and is now the 50th person in Art Review's annual 100 most powerful figures in the art world.
According to the list, American billionaire Ronald Lauder is the most powerful figure in the art world. I think that he's Estée Lauder's chairman.
Number 100 is a funny surprise.
UPI reports that Mary Boone, the owner of New York's Mary Boone Gallery is suing photographer Annie Leibovitz because 12 years ago Boone apparently paid Annie Leibovitz $197,000 to have Annie take Boone's photograph and 12 years later she's still waiting.
The BBC says that "No modern artist, not even the likes of Damien Hirst or Tracey Emin, divides opinion like Jack Vettriano."
This Scottish painter has sold out every single exhibition that he's ever had, apparently all of them within an hour, and has a waiting list for his next painting of several hundred names, and famous people and celebrities all crave his work. Sounds like the typical British formula for success.
And yet the British critics hate his work and success.
Call for Artists: The Margaret W. and Joseph L. Fisher Gallery in the Rachel M. Schlesinger Concert Hall and Arts Center has an open call for artists. The Schlesinger Center is located on the Alexandria Campus of Northern Virginia Community College. To receive an application to exhibit, please provide your name and complete mailing address to Dr. Leslie White, Managing Director at LWHITE@NVCC.EDU or write to:
Dr. Leslie White, Managing Director
3001 N. Beauregard Street
Alexandria, VA 22311-5097
t: 703.845.6229 or f: 703.845.6154 or lwhite@nvcc.edu
I am sure that it has already happened somewhere, but I am waiting for someone to make a big deal of someone's exhibition of photographs taken with the new photo capable cell phones.
Thursdays is "Galleries" column day in the Post and today Jessica Dawson reviews a library art show.
Jessica reviews Where We Come From - an exhibit of work by Emily Jacir at Provisions Library (formerly the Resource Center for Activism and Arts) in Dupont Circle area.
And a few of days ago, the Washington Times' Joanna Shaw-Eagle reviewed "Himalayas: An Aesthetic Adventure" at the Arthur M. Sackler Gallery
And on Artnet Magazine, former Hirshhorn Museum Press Officer and sometimes curator (and quite an accomplished artist as well) Sidney Lawrence reviews "Beyond the Frame, Impressionism Revisited: The Sculptures of J. Seward Johnson, Jr.," at the Corcoran and offers a slightly different perspective. For my take on this weird show, see my Oct. 24 entry.
The most misused word in the world of art is the word "print," as used in definiting work as "limited edition print," etc.
In the narrow, but true art definition of what an original art print is, a print is a work of art produced from an image worked by the artist on another material, usually a metal, plexiglass, wood, linoleum, plastic plate, etc.
Everything else is a reproduction.
And lawsuits will happen if suddenly a collector discovers that their "print" or "original" is in fact a reproduction.
So if an artist paints or draws an image on any medium, and then has multiple images made from that original by an electro-mechanical or mechanical process using photographic or digital images (such as Iris or Gyclee), those images are reproductions - not prints.
However, because it would really be hard to market an artist's work as "limited edition, signed and numbered reproductions," the word "print" has been kidnapped by the marketeers of art to apply to any set of multiple images - regardless of how they came to be, or what part the artist played in its creation.
It gets a bit murky when it comes to digital art - that is artwork that is created from scratch through the use of a computer or a photograph taken with a digital camera.
Once the file is done and finished and saved, then one can say that the image that comes out of the printer is the "print" in the true sense of the narrow art definition - much like the negative in traditional photography produces the photographic print.
However, a photograph that is taken, developed, printed in the darkroom and then scanned so that Giclees or Iris "prints" can be made from the photographic image means that those are reproductions made from the original photograph. But a photograph taken with a digital camera and then has Iris/Giclees or any other digital prints made from the digital image in the memory card is a "real" print!
So a digital medium like Giclee/Iris can be either a reproduction or a real print - it all depends on what the original source of the image is!
Printmakers are especially sensitive to the misuse of the work "print" to market reproductions of artwork. One of the best places in town to buy true prints from very talented printmakers is the Washington Printmakers Gallery in the Dupont Circle area.
Just back from a visit to Penn State. While there I visited the Palmer Museum and saw a small but very interesting exhibition: Through the Looking Glass: Women and Self-Representation in Contemporary Art. Also saw the faculty exhibition at the Zoller Gallery.
Tuesday, October 28, 2003
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:
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| Cuba: Isla Torturada 1980 mixed media monoprint by F. Lennox Campello |
Monday, October 27, 2003
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).
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.
