Is there a personal "feud" between the Washington Post's chief art critic Blake Gopnik and the Corcoran?
Washingtonian magazine usually has very limited visual arts coverage, and it has always been a mystery to me why they do such a good job of reviewing books, music, restaurants and theatre and yet (with some rare exceptions) ignore our museums and galleries and artists.
However, the current November issue has a very interesting article by Henry Jaffe, who writes a column titled Post Watch.
This month's column is titled Too Much Poison in Art Critic’s Pen? and it's all about the "feud" between the Washington Post's chief art critic Blake Gopnik and the Corcoran.
Washingtonian doesn't archive their articles, so go buy the magazine or read it online, as it will be gone next month.
Jaffe writes that “A lot of people are concerned about the state of art criticism at the Post,” says one museum official, echoing the view of others. None would speak on the record. “He [Gopnik] seems to be very personal. It’s always about his perspective rather than a broader, critical look at the subject.”
And Corcoran director Davy Levy is quoted as calling "Gopnik’s review “unethical” and says the critic often displays “immodest immaturity” in his reviews."
Jaffee also writes that "Levy and the Corcoran were especially steamed that Gopnik ended his review with a dig at the museum, whose “reputation has slipped badly over the last few years.”
Says Levy: “A couple of people Blake talks to don’t appreciate what we do.”
Says Gopnik: “I could get 20 quotes off the record and five on from people who agree with me.” The Corcoran has exhibited “a pattern of terrible shows.”
I am curious as to what people think about this issue. Please email me with your thoughts on this subject.
Tuesday, November 04, 2003
I know it's silly, but it bugs me that this TV movie critic has a news segment titled Arch on the Arts, when it should really be called "Arch on the Movies" or perhaps "Arch on the Performing Arts."
Arch Campbell, whom I've met a couple of times, is a very nice guy and a terrific movie reviewer. But he certainly does not cover the "arts."
Wouldn't it be nice if one of our local TV stations news programs dedicated just thirty seconds a week on a gallery opening, or a museum show?
And don't even get me started on WETA's Around Town, which is by far the best (and really the only) DC-centric cultural TV show around. But AT also has a very strong focus on movies and theatre, and of all the critics on AT's Panel, the visual art critic (Bill Dunlap) certainly gets the least amount of air time.
Maybe the addition of Janis Goodman means that Around Town will attempt to expand its visual arts coverage.
In response to my Oct 31 entry complaining about the lack of visual arts coverage by WAMU's Metro Connection, I've received a very nice email from David Furst, who is the show's host, who promises that he'll "try to make sure our coverage of the arts is as wide ranging as possible in the future."
David also passes that Arts Editor Peter Fay is on the show this week and Fay will be talking about two visual arts events going on right now. Peter will be discussing The Himalayas at the Arthur M Sackler Gallery and Jim Sanborn's "Critical Assembly" at the Corcoran.
My thanks to David for his quick response and we'll be listening.
The Hirshhorn is the final venue for this internationally-touring exhibition organized by LA's Museum of Contemporary Art.
Here's a review of the LA show which gives us a preview of what's coming.
Selecting artwork for an American public collection is a fine art in itself, as the artwork has to avoid the appearance of remotely insulting anyone or making any sort of social statement that may be offensive to any segment of the public. Thus we usually end up with a lot of abstract, non representational art in most public venues, and nudity needs not apply - I have called it "airportism" in the past.
The Washington Convention Center will unveil its art collection to the public on Monday, November 10, from 6:00 - 8:00 pm. They will introduce the largest public art collection in Washington, DC. Over 120 works of art, sculpture, paintings, photography, graphics and mixed media. They spent around four million dollars, of which half was allocated to DC area artists.
Location: 801 Mount Vernon Place, NW, Washington, DC. Please use Mount Vernon Place entrance. The Washington Convention Center is accessible by the Mount Vernon Place/7th Street - Convention Center or Gallery Place/Chinatown Metro Stations. Parking is limited in the surrounding areas. R.S.V.P. 202-249-3449.
And for artists who are interested in getting more involved in competing for public art commissions, the Washington Glass School is offering a seminar for artists titled: Public Art: Putting the Art in ARchiTecture - A Seminar for Artists, Architects & Design Professionals - DC and it will be offered on Wednesday, November 12, 2003, 7-9 pm.
This seminar will focus on successfully winning public commissions. Panelists include: Francoise Yohalem - Public Art Consultant and Curator of Eleven Eleven Sculpture Space, Sherry Schwechten -Art in Public Places Manager, DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities, Jennifer Mange - Public Arts Coordinator of the Baltimore Office of Promotion of the Arts and Jennifer Riddell - Public Arts Curator / Arlington County, VA.
Cost: $25 donation in advance/$30 at the door. Where: Washington Glass School, 1338 Half Street SE, Washington, DC 20003 (1 1/2 blocks from Navy Yard Metro stop). Phone: 202-744-8222.
Creative Capital will award grants to individual artists in the fields of Visual Arts and Film/Video in 2004-05. Visual arts may include painting, sculpture, works on paper, installation, photo-based work, contemporary crafts, and interdisciplinary projects. Film/video arts are all forms of film and video, including experimental documentary, animation, experimental media, non-traditional narrative in all formats, and interdisciplinary projects. It;s very simple to apply online: To apply, artists must complete an online inquiry form, which will be available at www.creative-capital.org on February 16, 2004. The deadline for completed inquiry forms is March 15, 2004. Those invited to make a final application will be notified in June 2004.
Monday, November 03, 2003
Photo of the Week: The Washington City Paper's art critic Glenn Dixon posing in front of Olympia's boudoir.
And here is Dixon's review of "Beyond the Frame, Impressionism Revisited: The Sculptures of J. Seward Johnson, Jr.," at the Corcoran. This show has been trashed so much and so widely, that it has become sort of a cult must-see here in Washington.
A rehash of my Oct 27 posting: The show 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 sculptures) 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 figures).
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.
Sunday, November 02, 2003
George Mason University has a very strong visual arts program, and their 2003 Faculty Show is on exhibition now at GMU's Atrium Gallery until December 17, 2003.
GMU's College of Visual and Performing Arts also has one of the strongest reputations as an art school with a solid (and rare) representational painting focus. This was in part due to the many years that professors such as Margarida Kendall Hull (now retired) put into the effort.
GMU's art faculty now includes what I think are two of the best figurative painters in the nation: Chawky Frenn (who I think is probably the last DC-area artist in my memory to have received a huge review in the New York Times) and Erik Sandberg
The book is Landscape : Photographs of Time and Place and signed copies can be obtained from Hemphill Fine Arts.
Among the photographers included in the book are masters like Ansel Adams and Alfred Stieglitz, along with contemporary photographers, such as Richard Misrach and Sally Mann.
Saturday, November 01, 2003
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.
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.
