Mean, Unfair and Plain Wrong

That's me!

My DC blogsphere colleague Kriston Capps, who just like me every once in a while is very fond of policing other folks' opinions, thinks that I am "mean... unfair... and plain wrong," in my recent rant at Jessica Dawson's inept review of Caitlin Phillips.

And while I respect Capps' right to express his opinions to my response to Dawson's review, I disagree 100% with his insinuation that a critic's interpretation of a body of works, absolves them/us of having a responsibility or need to gather information about an artist's intent; especially if they are preparing to deliver a public question or opinion that suggests that an artist is denigrating herself via that same body of works.

Let's be clear: Critics don't have to ask questions or gather information for every thing, even intent.

But if they're going to make the leap and portray an artist as denigrating herself because of what the images convey to the critic, at the very least they should try to find out what the artist thinks they're conveying or was trying to convey.

It just makes sense to me.

In this case, I think Dawson blew the review, and erred in her (let's assume) interpretation, because she didn't know (or cared to know) the photographer's intent - even if Phillips didn't deliver it very clearly, as could be the case - and although Dawson was keen enough to make a harsh interpretation about the intent, she wasn't curious enough to try to gather the easily available information.

And boo hoo... now I also think that Kriston is just mean, unfair and gets it plain wrong when he interprets that my post is suggesting that critics should go "around asking artists to tell them what to write in their reviews."

Especially since he knows me, and knows well that I would never suggest such an idiotic thing.

That makes two critics who should have asked a question before making such a knuckle-headed leap.

Read Kriston's opinions here.

DC Shorts Film Festival 2007

September 13 – 20, 2007 at Landmark’s E Street Cinema (11th and E Streets)

DC Shorts turns the spotlight on truly independent short films from all over the globe, created by new and established filmmakers in an era when the art of filmmaking is opening to all. They select films from every genre for their competition screenings — with a special focus on films created by metropolitan Washington, DC-based directors and writers. After each screening, filmmakers have the opportunity to speak to the audience as part of a moderated panel.

This year, they will present 89 films and seven live script performances, culled from 14 countries. Once again, their venue will be the Landmark E Street Theatre in DC's Penn Quarter. With new specialty competitions — High Definition Shorts and the Live Script Reading Competition — DC Shorts is growing into one of the most influential film festivals in the country.

For festival and ticket information visit www.dcshorts.com

Interview: John Anderson on Adrian Parsons

Anderson: Several months ago I contacted Adrian Parsons, shortly after he circumcised himself during a performance for the exhibition entitled Supple, at the Warehouse Gallery. He seemed agreeable to answer some questions, either in person or over e-mail. I shot the questions to him and waited for a response. At the beginning of August, he finally got back to me.

Adrian Parsons with his foreskin hanging on the wall
Parsons: Hello, wanted to take some time to separate the act from the hype. So here is the interview way, way post facto.

An earlier piece that I see documented on your blog involved inviting people to pull your mustache out of your face, one hair at a time, until it was gone. What is the basis for this work?

The idea was to take off the genetic predisposition for where my beard and mustache would be, to take the hairs and redistribute them. Once all the hair was off we were to mix it with melted wax and pour that on to the mold, that is, my face. The fact that I could rework a hairline with my hand and not my fathers was a weird, fun one.

Since you began Shrapnel (I am assuming this is the title) by pulling hairs from your face, is the act of auto-circumcision an extension of this previous piece? How do the two relate apart from self-mutilation (or invited mutilation to yourself)?

Both works come across chance and randomization. I was trying to get around my genes in Plucky, to disorder what is predetermined. But Shrapnel takes on the chaos of a suicide bomber, his body is distributed in to the walls of buildings, the skin of people. This kills random people, suddenly the attackers bone, physical matter, are implanted willfully in to another person. I read an account of a journalist who was nearby a suicide bomber and lived. He carries the bone of this guy in his body, his DNA's sitting right there next to his own. It's an incredible "fuck you."

How large was the audience?

30 people or so but it thinned out fast.

I was having video problems and was unable to gauge audience reaction. What was the response to you exposing yourself, removing a pocket knife, and the act of cutting? OR, were you even aware of it?

People were curious, kind of readying themselves, making small talk. Then when I started to rip out some of my beard and place it in to the wall they seemed to get that this was going to be something bloody. After the first cut, there were two responses, leaving the room or whipping out the cell-camera. You hear an ex of mine slip an "ohmygod" out of her mouth.

I would imagine this act required some psyching-up; what prepared you?

A friend said, "how'd you get the balls to cut your dick off?" Since I was going to the hospital right after I couldn't get wasted and I couldn't take vicodin or oxycotin or even smoke. If I'd come in to GW messed up I would've spent the night in the psych ward. Pulling the hair and the skin off my face helped get my adrenalin up, though.

Why a pocket knife? Why not something more medical, or kitchen-oriented?

This was a Swiss army knife that was given to me by my brother-in-law. It's only significance to the piece was that it was sharp. When people ask why I used a "dull, rusty knife" I say it took 5 cuts because it was a really sharp knife, not a dull one.

Looking at the Thinking About Art Interview from last year, you cited Jason Gubbiotti as an influence. And food. I'm going to admit I am having trouble seeing a connection in your (current) work. How is he an influence?

Food makes you go, it's the only thing you get to utterly chemically transform. It's a wonder that you masticate and acid bathe something and get to move, think and have sex because of a bowl of Chex and 1% milk. Every gesture in art is because you've got a calorie to spend.

Gubbiotti's altered canvasses, which aren't as big a deal for him now, are what I was referring too. He's got these gigantic color spaces, very placid, and then they just get completely shorn off by this violent jutting and curving wood. His paint reaches the edge of the canvas the way you might encounter the edge of the earth in some pre-Eratosthenes view of the world.

How's your dick? or have you seen a doctor since the act?

My cock is 100% thanks to Erin Krill, on-call urologist extraordinaire.

Ice Stories

To create her Ice Stories, artist Lisa Sheirer takes photographs of natural landscapes through ice coated windows, and then manipulates them to create abstracted compositions, which then she prints with archival ink onto watercolor paper.

The opening reception for her solo exhibition at Hillyer Art Space in DC is Friday, September 7th, from 6 pm to 8 pm and the exhibition goes through October 25, 2007.

The Fells Point First Friday

Try saying that fast!

This Friday, September 7th is Fells Point’s First Friday Art Walk event in Baltimore.

Don’t miss your last chance to meet the various artists featured in "Moving Beyond Craft: Artists of the Washington Glass School." The exhibition will be on display through Saturday, September 8th at the Patricia Touchet Gallery.

Civilian on Friday

DC's Civilian Art Projects opens its Fall season this coming Friday with the opening of Noelle Tan's solo "from here to the Salton Sea," and and Erick Jackson's "Vlad's Crib." From 7-9PM and the exhibition goes through Oct. 20, 2007.

The Last ArtRomp

ArtRomp XX - the Grand Finale - opens this Friday at the soon-to-close/move Warehouse Gallery in DC. Opening party is 6pm til late. This last show includes work by all the artists who have exhibited in past ArtRomps over the years. Through Sept. 30, 2007.

Smaller and Smaller

As I've noted before, lately I've been drawing in a very small scale - and I showed you this drawing ("A Rabbi, slightly upset because he's just been told that his glasses are very trendy these days").

Below is "Eyes of John Fitzgerald Kennedy," which is is about half an inch high by one inch long.

"Eyes of John Fitzgerald Kennedy"
Charcoal on Paper, c. 2007 (0.5" x 1")
F. Lennox Campello
It was picked up last weekend by a private collector who was visiting my studio.

New Gallery Opens this Friday

Oerth Gallery, located at 420 S. Washington Street in Old Town Alexandria and owned by sisters Lorraine Oerth Kirstein and Linda Oerth Musselman, has its grand opening this coming Friday from 7-9PM with works by Ross Merrill. Merrill is a popular DC area art teacher, and conducts workshops throughout the United States. He also works as a Conservator at The National Gallery. The paintings will be on display from September 7 to October 28, 2007.


The gallery includes a first floor crafts gallery, a second floor fine arts gallery and a pottery studio. The building itself is an important historic property in Old Town, because it is the only freestanding Victorian building of its kind in Old Town.

Artists interested in portfolio reviews should contact Linda Musselman at 703-836-3784.

DC Gallery Moves

Leigh Conner and Jamie Smith have announced the purchase of 1358-1360 Florida Avenue, NE, Washington, DC as the new location for Conner Contemporary Art and *gogo art projects.

The property, a former auto body shop, is a 12,000 sq. ft. complex with two interior levels as well as an enclosed outdoor area for the exhibition of large-scale sculpture, video projections and installations. Conner Contemporary Art and *gogo art projects will occupy the 6500 sq. ft. ground floor space featuring two exhibition areas and a permanent video/sound room. The 4300 sq. ft. second-floor space is currently being developed.


During the renovation work this fall season, they will be open by appointment Monday through Friday 10am-6pm, while concentrating on participating in art fairs (Pulse London: October 11-14, 2007 and Pulse Miami: December 5-9, 2007).

The new gallery is accessible from the New York Avenue and Union Station Metro stations. On-site parking will be available by reservation and complimentary shuttle service will be provided from Union Station during certain hours.

$100M

"Damien Hirst, the U.K.'s wealthiest artist, is selling his diamond skull to an investment group for $100 million, said Frank Dunphy, Hirst's business manager.

The platinum skull, studded with 8,601 diamonds, has been on the market at least since June 3, when it went on show at London's White Cube gallery.

Dunphy, reached by telephone, said the price hadn't been discounted and would be paid in cash, though he wouldn't say over what period, or identify the investment group."

Read the story by Bloomberg's Linda Sandler here. By the way, I think that the title of the "U.K's wealthiest artist" does not belong to Damien Hirst, but to Scottish bad boy painter and worldwide king in the world of posters Jack Vettriano, but I could be wrong.

Scotland is planning to "devolve" from the British union and regain its independence one of these days, but so far, as far as I know, they are still part of the U.K.

In The Flesh

The new art shows and openings coming up over the next two weeks are so numerous that I will try to list 3-4 everyday for the next few days.

In Alexandria's Target Gallery, Tim Doud, who is in the Art faculty at American University has selected a show titled "In the Flesh" that opens Sept 13 from 6-8pm and runs through October 13, 2007. It includes work by DC area photographer Danny Conant, who is without a doubt one of the most innovative photographers in the region, and whose work has been often (in the past) an inspiration for several of my own drawings.

"Tearing the Sky"
Polaroid Transfer by Danny Conant

Ask a silly question...

The WaPo's freelance galleries critic writes in a review of sub-text at Randall Scott Gallery:

At Randall Scott, Caitlin Phillips's work proves particularly enervating. She's an attractive woman, slender and young, and she takes pictures of herself. In one picture she wears a simple dress and cute shoes and holds a tea set while looking blankly at the camera. In another, she stands on a beach, masked and perfectly still, dressed in a flowery shift. In a third, she's nearly naked, in curlers and hose, pouting for the camera.

What possesses a woman artist to denigrate herself like this? Photography, in its many forms, dominates artmaking. But can artists use it wisely?

Here's the question that her editor should have asked the critic: "Since you are asking the readers this question, did you ask the photographer?"

Of course not, Dawson's vitriol is generally reserved for the written word, and as most DC area gallerists know, and in my experience, she rarely asks questions when visiting a show, or even speaks, other than the social "hello," when she first arrives, and the occasional "ahah" when spoken to.

In the past this lack of asking questions (that she clearly has about the work, even rhetorical questions easily answered) has bitten her back, evidenced by some rather monumental errors in her writing, and in this case the answer to her question was easily available in the gallery's website and the obviously un-read news release about the exhibition; Caitlin Phillips writes:

During the summers when I was seven, eight, nine, I remember waking next to my grandmother in her heat soaked room, the bedding scarce, as we had tried to cool ourselves the night before. These humid mornings, which I recall vividly, were often spent admiring the photographs and the painted portraits that lined the faded wallpaper of the bedroom. Elegant, Victorian women gazed back from the walls, their pale skin accented by feathery dresses, my grandmother’s room, a modest representation of her own Victorian ideals. These summers spent at my grandparent’s home, my sisters and I feverishly practiced and displayed the ladylike talents my grandmother instilled and insisted upon us, naively mirroring our companions hung on the wall.

My photographs and videos attempt to discuss my current notions of lineage and posterity through deliberate manipulation of memory and dissection of my personal history. The imagery creates a mise-en-scene derived from personalized romance and girlhood nostalgia. It is a visual investigation of the conflicted self: a state of reflection glimpsing into the progression of feminine identity through years of experience, growth and longing.

Does that sound like a woman denigrating herself?

Abu Ghraib paintings to be donated to Berkeley Pentagon?

The series of paintings done by Colombian artist Fernando Botero based on the Abu Ghraib photographs may become part of the permanent collection of the University of California, Berkeley... or maybe not.

UC Berkeley chancellor Robert Birgeneau has tentatively agreed to accept the gift, the monetary value of which experts peg at $10 million to $15 million.

“We have a gentleman's agreement,” said Birgeneau, who saw the works when the exhibition opened at Cal's Doe Library in January and was impressed by “their emotional impact and technical brilliance. I've written the artist saying we'll accept them, subject to us being able to work out a reasonable set of conditions.”

Botero, who said he would never sell the jarring Abu Ghraib pictures, turned down an offer from the Kunsthalle Wurth museum near Stuttgart, Germany, to build a wing to house them.

There's a lesson in marketing there somewhere for all artists. And also a lesson on the power of representational visual art to drive home a point - a political point in this case - by using the narrative powers of representational art to underscore an issue.

These images, in a sense, were already part of our visual art scene.

After all, it was the photographs upon which they are based upon that exploded into our collective eyes when they were first released.

By basing his works on them, Botero skilfully recognized that in the 21st century painting is still king, and lifting an image from a photograph to create a painting still "elevates" that image to a higher fine arts realm in the minds of many people.

They're no longer just photos in our computer screens and newspapers; they're now fine art.

And it also brought Botero back into the fine arts limelight and contemporary dialogue and away from fat people paintings.

By the way, my good friend Jack Rasmussen over at the Katzen Arts Center scored a major coup a while back, as he will be bringing the first United States exhibition of the complete series, both paintings and drawings to the Katzen in November.

It sounds like Birgeneau has just written to Botero and nothing has been heard back from the wily Colombian.

Which gives me an idea.

I think that the best place for these paintings is not Left Wing Nut U in California, but right here in Washington, DC.

And not as part of the permanent collection of any of our great DC area museums, most of which already have Boteros in their collection, but as part of the permanent collection of the Pentagon.

As many of the people who have taken the free Pentagon tour know, the building has a really impressive art collection on its walls. As one would expect, it is mostly military subjects and historical paintings.

I think that the Abu Ghraib paintings belong on the Pentagon walls - not to "shame" our Army personnel, but to show the world that we're still the only nation not only willing to show pride in our successes, but also strong enough to recognize our mistakes and learn from them.

Abu Ghraib was the result of an Army which hadn't handled foreign prisoners in many decades and a handful of improperly trained, misassigned miscreants in the wrong place at the wrong time, and certainly nowhere near a representation of the quality soldier that makes up our all volunteer Army.

And definitely nowhere near the level of torture that takes place in silence on a daily basis in places like Cuba, Iran, Sudan, China, many, many Arabic nations and ahem, Colombia, but Abu Ghraib was definitely a low point and a harsh learning experience for our men and women in uniform as we learn to fight a new kind of war. As a veteran I am proud of our Armed Forces and how they respond to the spectacular demands made of them.

Put them on the Pentagon walls to shout out that we understand and learn from our military mistakes just as well as we are proud of our military successes.

I call on Renée Klish, Army Art Curator, U.S. Army Center of Military History, or whoever is the curator for the Pentagon's art collection to write a letter to Botero and have Botero donate the Abu Ghraib paintings to the Pentagon.

And I also call for Botero to now turn his formidable painting and marketing skills to create a new series of paintings about the daily torture going on in Castro's miserable prisons in Cuba (a nation that has refused to allow Amnesty International to visit since 1988), and then seeing if the Cuban dictatorship is willing to accept those paintings and hang them where their military and their citizens can see them every day.

Opportunity for Artists

Deadline: September 3, 2007

The new Workhouse Art Center at Lorton, VA is now reviewing portfolios for the studio rental jury process and Workhouse Artist Association membership. Submittal deadline: postmarked by 9/3/07. Download application at www.lortonarts.org or send a request to:

Lorton Arts Foundation
9601 Ox Road
Lorton, VA 22079

Next Friday

Next Friday generally marks the unofficial "opening" of the new art season along the galleries of the Mid Atlantic area, and there are a ton of openings coming in the next two weeks.

Here's an early look at a good one:

The Women’s Caucus for Art of Greater Washington, DC is presenting "Women’s Reflections - Visual Reflections from Washington, DC artists and 'Katrina Diaries' from New Orleans artists" at the Dennis & Phillip Ratner Museum in Bethesda, MD. This is a joint exhibition of paintings, printmaking, collages, photography, and fiber art by women from both the Washington, DC chapter and the New Orleans chapter of the Women’s Caucus for Art (WCA). In Katrina Diaries these New Orleans artists express their reaction to the devastation and loss caused by the hurricane.

Opening Reception: Sunday, September 9, 1:30 – 3:30pm and the exhibition goes through Sept. 25, 2007.

Sleepless in Media

I've had a brutal 48 hours with over 600 miles driving and four hours of sleep.

More later...

Baltimore Antique Show

By Shauna Lee Lange

Today was opening day at the Baltimore Antique Show which runs through the weekend at the Convention Center which is again hosting a gaggle of galleries and dealers. And noticeably this year there are several dealers fom London. This is my third year attending the show, and on this visit I found the line at the door much shorter, the food service slightly improved, and the air conditioning more manageable.

Other than some stunning very large floor mirrors, a $60,000 fun antique casino-type gaming piece, and remarkably breath-taking silver, the show is sadly predictable. Oh you'll find your antiquarian books, jewelry galore, and your historial pieces (be sure to check out the gun canes and the chandeliers)... but if you've been attending these shows as I have, it all becomes standard fare (except perhaps for the lovely display by New York's China Gallery or the ancient wood block reliefs also from China.)

Standard fare too are the highly marked up prices. I saw a piece earlier this year at the Big DC Flea Market with today's tag more than triple the asking price - so shop around! The range of art is a bit impressive, however I'm talking about the artistry in apparel of the wanna-be-wealthy-posers. Pink Ralph Lauren pants and black leather dress shoes sported by a very tan romance novel hero were outdone only by the tall blonde Barbie with the brown bareback cocktail dress.

Excuse me, I didn't know we were having drinks. Ahem.

Bring comfortable shoes; the concrete floor is brutal. And carry lots of dough; my parking, entrance fee, and lunch alone killed a $50.

Meredith Springer Award Winners Exhibit

Works by the Meredith Springer Award winners. Maria Barbosa, “Trip,” a walk-through installation and Steven Dobbin, “As I See It,” sculpture and mixed media. Opening reception Sept 1 from 3-5pm at the The Delaplaine Center in Frederick, MD.

Gould on galleries and emerging artists

The CP's Jessica Gould delivers another superb piece discussing the role of some galleries in helping to develop the young artist.

Read it here (Scroll down past the H Street stuff).