Thursday WaPo reviews

Jessica Dawson reviews Hemphill Fine Arts' new floorplan in George's new beautiful space on 14th Street and is also disturbed by Chan Chao's nude photographs currently on at Numark.

I wasn't too surprised that when Jessica first stepped into Chao's exhibition, she "wanted to step right back out" [because]... "Twenty just-over-life-size portraits of naked women ring the gallery's walls. Yet the mood isn't sexy. Or playful. It's utterly vulnerable and uncomfortable. For you and me, for sure, and even more so for Chao's subjects."

I write that I wasn't too surprised because both Dawson and her predecessor in the "Galleries" column appear to me to be rather uncomfortable with nudity. I could be wrong, I guess, but it is something that I've noticed in their demeanor and their writing over the years.

I was also surprised that Jessica writes that Chao "has applied the same clinical, pseudo-journalistic approach he used on the pro-democracy guerrillas of Burma -- those pictures were a hit at the 2002 Whitney Biennial -- to naked women, many of whom are the artist's friends or associates. Despite Chao's attempts at evenhandedness, or perhaps because of them, the results feel exploitative and manipulative."

This is in fact backwards! Those familiar with Chao's photographs before he turned his camera to the pro-democracy guerrillas of Burma, know that prior to that he used to focus on the nude figure, and in fact applied the "same clinical, pseudo-journalistic approach" that he used with his earlier nudes to the pro-democracy guerrillas of Burma, not the other way around.

Chao abandoned the nude for a few years, returned to his native Burma and photographed the pro-democracy guerrillas of Burma. It was a big hit with curators all over the nation, landed him a spot on the 2002 Whitney Biennial and national acclaim. I personally thought those photographs were boring and repetitive; I have, on the other hand, always liked and admired his nude portraits and I think that his current Numark show is spectacular!

Chao has just returned to the nude now; that's all. And I think that Dawson is just uncomfortable around nudes.

I could be wrong. For a different (male) perspective on this show, read Louis Jacobson at the WCP.

P.S. Blake Gopnik also reviews Iraq and China: Ceramics, Trade and Innovation at the Arthur M. Sackler Gallery of the Smithsonian's National Museum of Asian Art.

Why none of ours?

The December/Jan issue of Budget Living magazine has a nice spread on artist Mark Bennett's LA pad. The article mentions his hardworking DC art dealer Conner Contemporary and highlights how his Damien Hirst silk screen just coincidently happens to match his raw-silk sofa that he got for $200 in a Long Beach thrift store. Also shows outsider artist John Patrick MacKenzie's word-play piece that goes nicely with Bennett's sitcom-centric surroundings.

It would be nice if the WaPo (either Style or the Post's Magazine) or Washingtonian magazine, could run more feature articles like this about our area artists and collectors living with their art. Furthermore, it would be nice if the Post would identify the artwork (they never seem to do that in the captions) in any of their glossy features about other locals in their pages.

Charles Saatchi takes on Blake Gopnik

The father of YBA art and one of the world's best-known art collectors is Charles Saatchi.

And the Art Newspaper has recently interviewed Saatchi with questions submitted via email by people from all over the world.

From what DC Art News readers info'd me as they sent emails to the Art Newspaper a few weeks ago through the announcement in this posting, at least two of the questions that Saatchi chose to answer came from DC Art News readers. They are:

Question: Did you personally burn, or did you contract with a professional arsonist to burn, your warehouse filled with your art?

Saatchi: It wasn’t terrifically amusing the first time dull people came up with this. Now it’s the 100th time.

Question: Blake Gopnik, the Chief Art Critic for the Washington Post has stated that "painting is dead and has been dead for 40 years. If you want to be considered a serious contemporary artist, the only thing that you should be doing is video or manipulated photography." Do you agree or disagree and why?

Saatchi: It’s true that contemporary painting responds to the work of video makers and photographers. But it's also true that contemporary painting is influenced by music, writing, MTV, Picasso, Hollywood, newspapers, Old Masters.

But, unlike many of the art world heavy hitters and deep thinkers, I don’t believe painting is middle-class and bourgeois, incapable of saying anything meaningful anymore, too impotent to hold much sway. For me, and for people with good eyes who actually enjoy looking at art, nothing is as uplifting as standing before a great painting whether it was painted in 1505 or last Tuesday.

Ouch! Read all of the questions and answers here.

The Thursday Art Review Starts Tomorrow

Since the Washington Post has decided to reduce its gallery coverage by 50%, starting tomorrow DC Art News will start a weekly Thursday review, in an BLOGish attempt to fill part of the void left by the Post's [we hope] temporary decision to publish the "Galleries" column only twice a month (instead of weekly, as it has been for years).

Thus, I am opening DC Art News to anyone who'd like to email me a review of a visual art show in our area. I reserve full editorial rights.

Art critics, opinionated art fans and art-critic-wannabes: Email me your review!

Tomorrow I will have my review (at last!) of Artomartic 2004.

Philip Barlow's Top 10 Artomatic List

Philip Barlow is a well-known DC art collector, arts activist, a great supporter of our area artists and art scene, and nearly a curator. He is one of the most vocal supporters of Art-O-Matic and after many trips to AOM, he sends in his top 10 list. Barlow passes that he did not consider artists whose work he has collected and most of the artists on his list are artist who are unfamiliar to him (prior to AOM)

1. Elizabeth Lundberg Morrisette
2. Kathryn Cornelius
3. Dylan Scholinski
4. Mary Beth Ramsey
5. Mona El Bayoumi
6. Nader Hadjebi
7. Robert Redding
8. Megan Rains
9. Jeff Wolfram
10. Darren Smith