Visual Arts

Richard Selden • December 17, 2014

Virgin Most Prudent, Mirror of Justice, Ark of the Covenant, Queen of the Confessors. These are a few of the 50 titles of Mary in the Litany of Loreto, stenciled on a wall in the exhibition “Picturing Mary: Woman, Mother, Idea.”

One of the most ambitious projects in the 27-year history of the National Museum of Women in the Arts, “Picturing Mary” arranges in six thematic sections more than 60 paintings, sculptures and works in other media. Curated by Monsignor Timothy Verdon, director of Florence’s Museo dell’Opera del Duomo, the show is on view through April 12.

It is largely an Old Masters show, with household names such as Botticelli (the captivating “Madonna of the Book”), Dürer (six etchings), Michelangelo (two drawings, one arriving in late January) and Rembrandt (an etching).

Perhaps the most compelling work by a famous artist is Caravaggio’s “Rest on the Flight into Egypt” of 1594-96, from the Galleria Doria Pamphilj in Rome. A big, beautiful puzzle of a painting, it depicts, on its right half, Mary cradling baby Jesus in an arcadian setting and, on its left half, St. Joseph and a brown ox in a barren clearing. Dividing the canvas nearly from top to bottom is a mostly naked angel, back and wings to the viewer, playing a Marian motet on the violin from music that Joseph holds up, every note clearly shown.

This being the National Museum of Women in the Arts, there are works by four women artists: Sofonisba Anguissola (c. 1532-1625), Artemisia Gentileschi (1593-1656), Orsola Maddalena Caccia (1596-1676) and Elisabetta Sirani (1638-1665).

The museum has exhibited Anguissola’s “Self-Portrait at the Easel” of 1556, from Lancut Castle in Poland, once before, but it is an ideal choice for this show, with the artist gazing out as she finishes a painting of Mary nose-to-nose with a young, standing Jesus, Mary’s fingers tenderly touching his cheek and the back of his blond-haired head.

Six paintings by Caccia, an Ursuline nun from Moncalvo (about 30 miles east of Turin) whose father Guglielmo was a painter, are displayed, three of them nine feet in height. The first the visitor encounters, “St. Luke the Evangelist in the Studio” of c. 1625, is probably the finest and most interesting. Modeled on her father, the Evangelist – said to have been an icon painter – is shown working on a sculpture of the Madonna and Child, a painting of them on an easel nearby. The complex composition also includes putti, books, a high window, an ox (Luke’s symbol), a little dog and roses (the symbol of the Virgin) on the floor.

In the gallery titled Mother of the Crucified is a passage from the Gospel of Luke in which Simeon tells Mary that “a sword will pierce your own soul too.” The stenciled excerpt is between a polychromed terracotta, “Madonna and Child” of c. 1430 by Luca della Robbia, and a stained-glass window, “Deposition and Entombment” of 1526 by Guillaume de Marcillat. In the two works, a resigned woman stares out or away, not at her son.

Ari Post • November 19, 2014

National Portrait Gallery

“Out of Many, One” by Jorge
Rodriquez-Gerada
Through Oct. 31, 2015
A grand landscape portrait by Cuban American artist Jorge Rodríguez-Gerada will be placed on the National Mall from Oct. 1 through Oct. 31. “Out of Many, One,” the English translation of “E pluribus unum,” will stretch across six acres of land midway between the World War II and Lincoln memorials along the south side of the Reflecting Pool. The work, built out of dirt and sand, is a composite portrait of several people photographed in Washington. The portrait is an interactive walk-through experience, and is also viewable from the top of the newly reopened Washington Monument.

Time Covers the 1960s
Through Aug. 9, 2015
Time magazine covers from the 1960s were created by some of the foremost artists of the day. This exhibition of original cover art from the museum’s collection will explore the major newsmakers and trends that defined that era, from Kennedy’s inauguration and the civil rights movement, to “one giant leap for mankind.”

American Art Museum

Untitled: The Art of James Castle
Sept. 26, 2014 – Feb. 1, 2015
Since Castle’s work first came to light in the 1950s, attention has focused on his unusual life: Castle was born deaf, remained illiterate, and never acquired a conventional mode of communicating with others. “Untitled” seeks to appreciate the remarkable quality of Castle’s vision as an artist, with subjects that range from farms and family portraits, to snippets of popular culture, and even invented words and symbols, fantastical calendars, and books with cryptic pictorial narratives.

Richard Estes’ Realism
Through Feb. 8, 2015
Richard Estes has long been considered the leading painter of the photorealist movement of the 1960s and 70s, and he has been celebrated for more than forty-five years as the premier painter of American cityscapes. “Richard Estes’ Realism” is the most comprehensive exhibition of Estes’ paintings ever organized, tracing his career from the late 60s to 2013. The exhibition features forty-six paintings spanning a fifty-year career.

The Singing and the Silence: Birds in Contemporary Art
Oct. 31, 2014 – Feb. 22, 2015
Since the dawn of humanity, birds have been a source of cultural, religious, and even political symbolism. “The Singing and the Silence” examines mankind’s relationship to birds through the eyes of twelve contemporary American artists. The opening of the exhibit dovetails with two significant environmental anniversaries—the extinction of the passenger pigeon in 1914 and the establishment of the Wilderness Act in 1964.

The Kreeger Museum

Emilie Brzezinski: The Lure of the Forest
Through Dec. 27, 2014
The Lure of the Forest is an exhibition of monumental wood sculptures by Emilie Brzezinski, which highlights the artist’s fascination with trees and adoration for the environment. The museum pays homage to this masterful sculptor, who for over thirty years has used chainsaws and hand chisels to carve discarded tree trunks into majestic forms.

Freer and Sackler Galleries

Unearthing Arabia: The Archaeological Adventures of Wendell Phillips
Through June 7, 2015
In 1949, Wendell Phillips, a young paleontologist and geologist, headed one of the largest archaeological expeditions to remote South Arabia (present-day Yemen) on a quest to uncover the ancient cities of Timna, the capital of the Qataban kingdom, and Marib, the reputed home of the legendary Queen of Sheba. Through a selection of artifacts, film and photography shot by the expedition team, this exhibit recreates his adventures and conveys the thrill of discovery on this great archaeological frontier.

Fine Impressions: Whistler, Freer, and Venice
In 1887, museum founder Charles Lang Freer purchased twenty-six atmospheric etchings of Venice by the artist James McNeill Whistler, marking the beginning of a long and fruitful partnership between collector and artist. “Fine Impressions” shows how this acquisition came to shape Freer’s legacy as a connoisseur and collector.

Style in Chinese Landscape Painting: The Yuan Legacy
Nov. 22, 2014 – May 31, 2015
Landscape painting is one of the most outstanding achievements of Chinese culture. Key styles in this genre emerged during the Yuan dynasty (1279–1368) and are still followed today. This exhibition includes the earliest work in the Freer|Sackler collections together with later examples tracing the characteristics and evolution of six styles.

The Phillips Collection

Neo-Impressionism and the Dream of Realities: Painting, Poetry, Music
Through Jan. 11, 2015
Famed pointillist painter Georges Seurat and his friends presented Neo-Impressionism, their new style of painting, for the first time in 1886 in Paris, where it drew immediate attention. That same year, a group of writers published a definition of “Symbolism” in literature that called for a focus on the inner world of the mind rather than external reality. This exhibit presents more than 70 works by 15 artists, including Seurat and Camille Pissarro, that reflect the Neo-Impressionist’s preoccupation with the idea, emotion, or synergy of the senses.

Art Museum of the Americas

Modern and Contemporary Art in the Dominican Republic
Through Feb. 1, 2015
“Modern and Contemporary Art in the Dominican Republic: Works from the Customs Office Collection” showcases the consistency, quality and diversity of the Collection of the Directorate General of Customs, which sets the Office apart as an unlikely and important creative space. These works reiterate that the Caribbean is not vernacular, helping illuminate the deeper cultural and social resonance of the islands and its art.

National Gallery of Art

A Subtle Beauty: Platinum Photographs from the Collection
Oct. 5, 2014 – Jan. 4, 2015
With a velvety surface and extraordinary tonal depth, the platinum print played an important role in establishing photography as a fine art during the late 19th century. This exhibition showcases outstanding platinum prints from the 1880s to the 1920s, including works by Alfred Stieglitz, Edward Steichen, Alvin Langdon Coburn.

El Greco: A 400th Anniversary Celebration
November 2, 2014 – February 16, 2015
On the 400th anniversary of El Greco’s death, the National Gallery of Art presents a commemorative exhibition of the artist’s paintings. A selection of devotional works illustrates El Greco’s role as artist of the Counter-Reformation, while others shed light on his commercial practices.

Hirshhorn

At the Hub of Things: New Views of the Collection
In celebration of its 40th anniversary, the Hirshhorn recently completed the first comprehensive renovation of their third level galleries, returning the sweeping spaces to architect Gordon Bunshaft’s original design. The first exhibition in the new galleries, “At the Hub of Things” reveals a fresh perspective on the museum’s collection, accentuating the museum’s role as a dynamic “hub” where diverse ideas converge. Included are favorite artworks that have not been on view in years, such as large-scale installations by Spencer Finch, Robert Gober, Bruce Nauman and Ernesto Neto, as well as paintings and sculptures by Janine Antoni, Cai Guo-Qiang, Alfred Jensen and Brice Marden.

Days of Endless Time
In a world conditioned by the ceaseless flow of digital media and information, many artists are countering these tendencies with works that emphasize slower, more meditative forms of perception. “Days of Endless Time” presents fourteen installations that offer prismatic vantage points into the suspension of time. Themes include escape, solitude, enchantment, and the thrall of nature.
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Ari Post •

“A Tribute to Anita Reiner” at the Phillips Collection (through Jan. 4)

The career of Anita Reiner, one of Washington’s most passionate contemporary art collectors, was given shape by her early experiences at the Phillips Collection. As a young collector, she visited the famous Mark Rothko room when it was first installed in the 1960s. While there, an elderly gentlemen inquired about her response to the work, which she initially dismissed. This stranger told Reiner, “Young lady, you always have to meet new art half way.” She later found out that this man was museum founder Duncan Phillips, and she never forgot his words.

Reiner passed away in August of last year, and this tribute exhibit is the first to explore her landmark collection. At its center is Anselm Kiefer’s “Dein blondes Haar, Margarete (Your golden Hair, Marguerite)” of 1981, recently gifted to the Phillips by Reiner’s family in her memory. The other 12 works in the exhibition, selected from Reiner’s collection, are by Mimmo Paladino, Robert Mapplethorpe, Fred Wilson, Katharina Fritsch, Yayoi Kusama, Wangechi Mutu, Shilpa Gupt, Zhang Huan, Gabriel Orozco, El Anatsui, Shirin Neshat and Lynette Yiadom-Boakye.

www.PhillipsCollection.org

“The Intimate Diebenkorn” and “Sculpture Now 2014” at the Katzen Arts Center (through Dec. 14)

Foremost of the remarkable exhibitions now at American University’s Katzen Center is “The Intimate Diebenkorn: Works on Paper: 1949-1992,” the first show produced by the Diebenkorn Foundation. Richard Diebenkorn (1922-1993) was the painter’s painter. One would be hard pressed to find a working artist today that does not adore this man’s work. It is painting as the idea in itself, which seems to speak about everything – about an artist in his environment, but also about things transcending any singular time, place or individual. “The idea is to get everything right,” Diebenkorn once said, rather prophetically. This gem of a show features 40 of Diebenkorn’s works on paper, most of which have never been publicly viewed. The selected works of pencil and ink drawings, collages of torn paper and watercolors portray a richly intimate glimpse into the artist’s evolution spanning more than 40 years.
Also on view is the Washington Sculptors Group’s 30th anniversary exhibition, “Sculpture Now 2014.” The notion of sculpture has evolved dramatically in the last thirty years. In 1978, the art theorist Rosalind Krauss declared that sculpture as a discipline had collapsed because of the wide range of practices. More recently Johanna Burton remarked that the category of sculpture had not collapsed but was rather “a state of being.” Curated by AU Museum Director Jack Rasmussen, the exhibition endeavors to respond to Krauss and Burton’s speculation with a selection of contemporary sculpture.

www.American.edu

“Eye on Elegance” at the DAR Museum (through Sept. 2015)??

In “Eye on Elegance,” the DAR Museum uses its extraordinarily rich holdings of Maryland and Virginia quilts to examine regional styles prior to 1860. The exhibition seeks to reveal the true story behind each subtle, deceivingly beautiful masterpiece.?Because historical knowledge of the quiltmakers is well preserved, one can identify these quilts by hyperlocal regions of Maryland or Virginia, and explore the makers’ histories, including the family and household members in each quilter’s home that may have helped stitch the tapestries.?The show is divided into four sections: the ‘Appliqué’ section presents quilts and counterpanes of chintz appliqué, or with appliqué centers; the ‘Pieced’ section features mathematical stars, strippies and other designs; Baltimore and Maryland ‘Albums’ have their own section; and the ‘Migration’ section examines quilting designs moving between continents and to other regions of the United States.??

eyeonelegance.dar.org??

“El Greco” at the National Gallery of Art?(through Feb. 16)??

The artist Doménikos Theotokópoulos (1541-1614), universally known as El Greco, was born on the Greek island of Crete. Aspiring to success on a larger stage, he moved to Venice in his late twenties and absorbed the lessons of High Renaissance masters Titian and Tintoretto. He then departed for Rome, where he studied the work of Michelangelo and encountered mannerism, a style which defied the naturalism of Renaissance art.?Relocating to Spain in 1576, El Greco spent the rest of his life in Toledo, where he achieved unprecedented mastery as a painter of Byzantine icons, developed an artistic vision that captured the religious fervor of Counter-Reformation Spain and defined something of the grainy, arid Spanish landscape that has shaped the aura of its cultural heritage from that point onward (think Don Quixote).?The National Gallery has seven paintings by El Greco, one of the largest collections of his work in the United States. Four of them have recently returned from Spain, where they were featured in major exhibitions honoring the 400th anniversary of the artist’s death. The reunited paintings are joined here by three others from Dumbarton Oaks and the Phillips Collection and from the Walters Art Museum in Baltimore.??

www.NGA.gov

Ari Post • October 23, 2014

The word “terrain” comes to mind a lot at the Hirshhorn’s current exhibit, “Salvatore Scarpitta: Traveler.” Scarpitta (1919–2007), an Italian-American who grew up in Los Angeles in the 1920s, was a unique presence in postwar American art for reasons of both style and subject. As an artist, he negotiated many terrains and bridged many divides: of painting and sculpture, abstraction and realism, elegance and vulgarity, and most whimsically of all, of fine art and competitive sprint car racing.

Scarpitta moved to Rome after high school to study art. When World War II broke out, he served in the United States Navy, ultimately working as a Monuments Man, where he was tasked with safeguarding art and historic monuments from war’s destruction.

Perhaps the first of many fascinating career choices, Scarpitta stayed in Rome after the war and set up his studio on the famous Via Margutta, a narrow street rich with artistic culture, popularized by Gregory Peck in the 1953 film, “Roman Holiday.” This decision in itself alludes to a kind of fixation the young artist may have had with confronting destruction and devastation firsthand, as well as a need to help build things back up.

His work from the mid-to-late 50s directly confronts the destruction of the War, the failure of Fascism and the fall of Mussolini—an event which had forced him and his first wife, an Italian Jew, into hiding in the Apennine Mountains in 1943.

In these dimensional works that are part painting, part sculpture (and later deemed “Extramurals”), layers of fabric are wrapped around stretcher bars or wood panels. Folds of cloth, canvas, medical bandages, gurney straps and swaddling envelop the picture plane, creating precarious but steady surfaces. Scarpitta spattered the surfaces with paint, resin, tea, pencil marks and what seems like any material that was on hand. The result is a surprisingly elegant glaze over a woven landscape of coarse fabric. As a wall panel in the exhibit beautifully points out, they are “mottled, hide-like” surfaces, whose natural, undulating folds and weaves inform the surface with naturally occurring shadows.

It was this breakout work that caught the attention of legendary New York City art dealer Leo Castelli who convinced Scarpitta to move back to New York and exhibit in his gallery. Once there, Scarpitta rekindled his childhood obsession with cars.

As a boy in L.A., Scarpitta had been a regular spectator at the treacherous Legion Ascot Speedway, where he marveled at the feats of the drivers and mourned those who died in crashes. As an adult, he began using car parts—some scavenged from fatal wrecks—in his paintings. Like the Extramurals, the car-part paintings are cut and bruised, bandaged and bound. However, in contrast to his previous works’ muted monochrome, these works employ almost technicolor vibrancy.

This reignited passion for racing eventually led him to abandon abstraction for a radical, flesh-and-bones realism. Adding car parts to his paintings was no longer enough—he needed to make the actual cars. Between 1964 and 1969, Scarpitta created six full-scale vehicles, each in the souped-up, vintage go-kart style of the racers from his childhood.

The last phase of Scarpitta’s career took a different, equally unusual turn. He began building sleds in the 1970s and continued making them for the rest of his life. Made from scavenged objects, these nonfunctional sleds represent a more primitive means of transportation, as well as the solitary nature of art.

While some of the sleds stand upright as sculptures, others are mounted on canvas and hung like paintings. “Snowshoe Sled” (1974) looks like a Rothko collage, the sled hung in the center between color fields of yellow and green. It is oddly detached from anything in this world, the sled floating like a bar of color in the center of the canvas.

While they are obviously sleds, the works are also sculptures in a very natural sense, balancing Scarpitta’s remarkable craftsmanship and sense of structure in delicate harmony. They are his most inspiring creations, where his abstract sensibilities merge with his insistence for form and purpose of function to make works that seem alive. They are objects perhaps meant to traverse unknown landscapes of our unconscious, tantric tools to help guide us to the far reaches of our human condition. And if nothing else, they sure look fun to ride.

Come hear Hirshhorn Director Melissa Chiu speak at our Cultural Leadership Breakfast, this Thursday, Oct. 9, 8 a.m. at the George Town Club.

To read more on this exhibit, visit Georgetowner.com
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Richard Selden •

How often does one get to hear an electric guitarist improvise on famous themes from Russian music?

“We have upped the ante for the upcoming season,” says Vera Danchenko-Stern, artistic director of the Russian Chamber Art Society, which she founded nine years ago to bring a rarely heard repertoire to Washington.

That repertoire includes not only solo jazz guitar—played in this instance by Serge Khrichenko, a classically trained musician based in Silver Spring—but also arias and art songs by Russian composers such as Tchaikovsky, Rimsky-Korsakov and Rachmaninoff.

The opening gala concert of the Russian Chamber Art Society’s 2014-2015 season will take place Friday, Oct. 10, at the Embassy of Austria. Titled “Russian Kaleidoscope,” the program features Khrichenko’s jazz, contemporary works for clarinet and piano performed by Julian Milkis and Danchenko-Stern, and vocal selections sung in Russian by two emerging talents: soprano Yana Eminova and mezzo-soprano Magdalena Wor.

Is the Society’s audience made up primarily of Russian speakers? “Absolutely not,” says Danchenko-Stern. Many patrons are opera aficionados who welcome the opportunity to hear and learn more about Russian vocal music, a tradition as worthy of international admiration as that of Russian literature.

Danchenko-Stern, a graduate of Moscow’s Gnessin Institute of Music was a faculty artist there and at the Royal Conservatory of Music in Toronto where she and her family moved in 1978, says she “immigrated for the second time” this time to the United States in 1990 when she married her second husband Lev Stern. She has coached singers for Washington National Opera productions and taught “Singing in Russian” for more than 20 years at Baltimore’s Peabody Conservatory, one of the few music schools in the country to regularly offer such training.

Two of Danchenko-Stern’s colleagues on the Peabody faculty, violinist (and brother) Victor Danchenko, and pianist Alexander Shtarkman, will perform at the Russian Chamber Art Society’s holiday concert, “Tchaikovsky is Forever,” on Friday, Dec. 5. They will perform alongside her former student, soprano Natalia Conte, mezzo-soprano Elena Bocharova and tenor Viktor Antipenko.

At the Oct. 10 gala, which also includes a buffet dinner, open bar and dessert, the concert begins with the duet between Tatyana and Olga from “Eugene Onegin.” Tchaikovsky specified that the singers should be young and beautiful—Tatyana is supposed to be just 14 years old—and, while not in their teens, Eminova and Wor qualify by age and appearance as well as by vocal ability.

Wor, born in Poland, is an alumna of Washington National Opera’s Domingo-Cafritz Young Artist Program and the Merola Opera Program in San Francisco.
Some of the pieces for clarinet and piano on the Oct. 10 program were heard in D.C. a few years ago when Danchenko-Stern gave a concert of works by Russian Jewish composers in honor of Rabbi Howard S. White, longtime Jewish Chaplain at Georgetown University. Others are Washington premieres.

Referring to the champagne reception for VIP ticket holders, the dinner and other festivities, Danchenko-Stern calls the gala concert “a chance for a whole event.”

More information about RCAS and online ticketing are available at thercas.com.

Ari Post • September 11, 2014

Increasingly each September, as the summer folds into a weave of warm rainstorms and cool, damp evenings, the anticipation of a fall art season takes on a palpable tangibility. The arts are inspiring and beautiful, often times joyous, sometimes heartbreaking, They stir something deep within us. In keeping with autumnal sentiments, there is a bracing immediacy, a feeling of here and now, exemplified in the visual arts—something transient but everlasting, the way golden, sun-spattered leaves remain with us long after they fall from their branches. Maybe this is why fall art openings are so popular. Nothing satisfies our craving for life like the sensory immersion of both art and nature.

The Georgetown neighborhood has reemerged in recent years as the most promising gallery scene in the city—Mark Jenkin’s recent Washington Post article, “Galleries Gathering Again in Once Arty Georgetown,” is perhaps the most resounding testament.

This year’s annual “Galleries on Book Hill Fall Art Walk,” on Friday, September 12, along Wisconsin Avenue, could very well be the public art event of the season. This is one not to miss.

Addison/Ripley Fine Art

Joan Belmar: Chords

1670 Wisconsin Ave NW

This exhibition features richly layered works on canvas and paper, in artist Joan Belmar’s first solo exhibition at Addison/Ripley. Belmar pulls inspiration from his Uruguayan heritage to create works that are lyrical and heartfelt. www.AddisonRipleyFineArt.com

Cross Mackenzie Gallery

1675 Wisconsin Ave NW

Drawings by Lyn Horton and ceramics by Maren Kloppmann

Cross Mackenzie Gallery has paired the graphite wall drawings and pen and ink works on paper by Lyn Horton together with elegant black and white porcelain work by Maren Kloppmann. Both artists work chiefly in black and white, and the juxtaposition of the seemingly chaotic and energetic lines of Horton’s drawings with Kloppmann’s quiet, grounded forms creates a harmonious dialogue of form. www.CrossMackenzie.com

Susan Calloway Fine Art

1643 Wisconsin Ave NW

The Light that She Loves: Literary Paintings and Drawings by Maud Taber-Thomaz

Artist Maud Taber-Thomas creates luminous drawings and paintings that embody a loving conversation between different art forms, exploring Victorian and Medieval literature and capturing the vibrant light and color of distant times and places, particularly through the use of portraiture. Trained in classic painting techniques, the artist’s process is tied to past generations, from the Renaissance Tenebrists, to the French Rococo painters, to the Pre-Raphaelites and Impressionist portraitists. www.CallowayArt.com

All We Art

1666 33rd St. NW

All We Art is a new, multidisciplinary space dedicated to promote international cultural exchange through exhibitions, cultural programs and related services, specializing in contemporary art and collaborating with an extensive network of Latin American and international artists. Founded by Luisa Elena Vidaurre and Pablo Brito Altamira, this partnership is a welcome member to the rebirth of Georgetown’s gallery scene. www.AllWeArtStudio.com

Artist’s Proof Gallery

1533 Wisconsin Ave NW

Featured Artist: David Kracov

David Kracov is a sculptor, painter and animator, who has worked on landmark movies such as “The Lion King” and “The Swan Princess.” He has long captured the hearts of young and old alike, with work guided by the ever-evolving nature of pop culture, literature and history. www.AProof.net

Maureen Littleton Gallery

1667 Wisconsin Ave NW

Body/Building

The Maurine Littleton Gallery presents Body/Building, a group exhibit of architecture and art. Featuring the work of Erwin Eisch, Warrington Colescott, Nancy Genn, Sergei Isupov, Iliya Isupov, among many others, the show explores human and architectural forms through Vitreographs (prints made from glass plates), ceramics and glass sculpture, each artist conveying structure and relationships in literal, figurative and poetic terms. www.LittletonGallery.com

Neptune Fine Art

1662 33rd Street NW

Raya Bodnarchuk: Bronze Sculpture

Sculptor Raya Bodnarchuk is known for her clean lines and modernist compositions with a contemporary yet sensitive twist. Her works are included in collections such as the Smithsonian American Art Museum, the Corcoran Gallery of Art, and the National Institute of Health, with noted commissions throughout the United States. www.NeptuneFuneArt.com

Robert Brown Gallery

1662 33rd Street NW

A South African Sketchbook: Drawings, Photographs, and Etchings

Five of South Africa’s most acclaimed artists respond to their homeland with honesty, passion, directness, even whimsy. Works by Roger Ballen, Deborah Bell, Willem Boshoff, William Kentridge and Diane Victor. Extremely powerful and evocative, images on display in A South African Sketchbook join the struggle for a better nation. Their impact reaches far beyond South Africa. www.RobertBrownGallery.com

Washington Printmakers Gallery

1641 Wisconsin Ave NW

The Painterly Print Exhibition: Linda Rose Larochelle

This exhibit features a series of monotypes by block print artist Linda Rose Larochelle. Monotypes allow the printmaker to achieve a range of tones, subtle gradations of color, and to take advantage of the spontaneous effects of free flowing inks. In this show, the figurative monotypes are large and expressive with bold colors and patterns reminiscent of Matisse. Many have a touch of whimsy that is sure to be appreciated. www.WashingtonPrintmakers.com [gallery ids="101848,138493,138495,138476,138480,138485,138488" nav="thumbs"]

Ari Post • August 26, 2014

For a number of reasons, the subject of women in art can be a fraught discussion. There is a regrettable tendency to box them in categorically, to define and justify the presence of women artists throughout history in a way that befits the social order of the longstanding gentlemen’s club that is fine art. They are too often woven into the narrative of their male counterparts—try finding mention of Lee Krasner without Jackson Pollock, or Georgia O’Keeffe without Alfred Stieglitz. Or they are remembered for the perceived femininity of their subjects—think Frida Kahlo and Dorothea Lange, whose respective works, though world renowned, far surpass the simplification to which they are occasionally reduced. Sometimes it is simply difficult to view these artists on their own terms.

The most prominently misunderstood woman in art history is probably Mary Cassatt (1844 – 1926). In passing, she is remembered as something like the mistress or student of Edgar Degas (1834 – 1917), a woman who painted tender, melancholic scenes of French children and their gingerly attentive mothers. While this could not be further from any realm of accuracy, it seems to be the way that history has distorted Cassatt almost from the beginning of the scholarship surrounding her, specifically regarding her relationship with Degas. Today this erroneous snapshot is all but cemented in the public’s memory.

The truth, however, is far more complicated—and more interesting. When Degas first saw the work of Cassatt, all he saw was a like-minded artist with whom he longed to work. Upon first encountering her work he remarked, “There is someone who feels as I do.”

Cassatt was equally taken with Degas. She said that her first experience seeing his work “changed my life.” It was this shared sensibility that drew Degas’ attention and ultimately led to his inviting her to exhibit with the founding Impressionist painters. The two began to work together in a prolific collaboration of styles and ideas that lasted over a decade.

Cassatt became Degas’ most challenging contemporary, and their work informed one another’s throughout the pivotal first years of the Impressionist movement, which Degas is so widely credited in leading. Together they forged a new era of artistic thought.

At the National Gallery of Art through October 5, “Degas/Cassatt” focuses on the Impressionist years from the late 1870s through mid-1880s, when Degas and Cassatt worked most closely together. It is a thoughtful re-examination of the impact Cassatt had on Degas as an artist, which significantly modifies conventional wisdom regarding the “master/apprentice” relationship with which they have been typically associated.

The artists worked so closely during this time—drawing and painting side-by-side, talking and visiting museums together—that there is a deficit of personal correspondence with which to understand their professional partnership. There was no need to write, for they were always together. The most verifiable evidence of their artistic dialogue thus becomes the work itself.

The collection in this exhibit focuses on a number of loose but fascinating groupings, notably their mutual affinity for theater scenes, conspicuously interrelated print series and portraiture affectations, and, intriguingly, selections from their personal collections—for they were each discerning collectors of each others’ work.

It is clear that Degas and Cassatt had different interests in the theater. Long renowned for his paintings of dancers and their alluring backstage culture, Degas’ prints in this exhibit show the untamed carnival atmosphere of the theater in all its burlesque, chimerical splendor. Shadows of distorted figures stretch across the dark walls, disorienting the boundaries of distance, while performers make their way through forests of set-pieces. Intense spotlights pierce the backstage darkness, adumbrating the figures caught suspended in motion. He gives us a bacchanalian revelry that lurks just behind the curtain, intoxicating and exotic as a latent desire at the fringes of our minds.

Cassatt also explored the shadowed nuances of the theater, the distortion of shapes and figures, but from an altogether different position. She turned her attention away from the stage and onto the women in the audience, exploring the deformity of their shapes in their puffed-out dresses and the backlight that washes a ghostly halo around them. With their faces obscured by an enveloping darkness, they become forgotten souls left drifting in the wings.

Focusing her attention on young women in this way, Cassatt’s choice of subject matter is often misinterpreted as a sort of feminine fixation, as if being a woman she was predisposed to paint womanly things. However, these subjects occupy a far more complex arena of social undertones.

As a woman, Cassatt did not have access to the environments of her male contemporaries—she was not allowed backstage, nor could she enter the late-night stomping grounds of Degas and other fellow painters. Therefore, Cassatt chose women and children, a vast and neglected subject area. She imbued them with distortion and complexity both physical and psychological—from stifling social expectation, to ennui and effeteness—that is only now being fully understood. Her children are monstrously contorted. We realize now that when we look at the painting A Woman and a Girl Driving (1881), what we see is not necessarily the warm, benign postcard image of a mother and daughter, but a tense balance of social order, silently observed by both parties.

This was something which evidently interested Degas, who acquired and prominently displayed Cassatt’s Girl Arranging Her Hair (1886) in his home until the end of his life. This portrait of a young girl striving to achieve the grace she earnestly lacks, thick-armed and puffy-faced, fixed with an expression of vacant expectancy, is an unsettling reminder of the role she will inevitably play once she reaches maturity and gets taken up by a husband.

One room in the exhibition is almost entirely composed of Degas’ many studies of Cassatt. The way in which he depicts her shows a clear reverence for her spirit, as she looks out into museum galleries away from the artist while other women around her bury their faces in books to decipher the images on the walls.

Degas only painted one full portrait of Cassatt, the only one that exists. She leans forward on a wooden chair in a parlor, arms resting on her knees, and she holds a set of blurred cards or photographs in her hands. Her face is poised and intelligent, eyebrows raised over focused eyes cast slightly downward and into the distance. From behind her head, a violent explosion of white paint emanates. It could certainly be interpreted as the hazy glare of a gaslight. Or it could be the very expression of obscurity and misunderstanding, of a mind and vision buried by the white noise that kept her from the forefront of historical recognition. Until now.

Degas/Cassatt is on view at the National Gallery of Art through October 5. For more information visit www.nga.gov

Ari Post • August 7, 2014

*A guide to this month’s standout gallery exhibits around the city, for those of us who could use some time gazing at a good painting or piece of sculpture on a warm summer evening.*

**[Adamson Gallery](www.AdamsonGallery.org)**

1515 14th St., NW

In her exhibit “Interconnected: Science, Nature, and Technologies” (through August 31), Yuriko Yamaguchi created a sculptural installation titled Cloud, which balances fantasy and dreams with the overlapping web of common forces that affect the human condition: ancestry, economy, religion, nature, time, technology and place. This mixed-media work reflects its namesake both literally and metaphorically: it is beautiful from a distance, and evermore difficult to see as we get closer, until suddenly we are lost inside of it.

**[Cross Mackenzie Gallery](www.CrossMackenzie.com)**

2026 R Street NW

The painter Mary Armstrong creates ethereal landscapes that shift between the ground, water and air, exploring the symbiotic relationship between the earth and it’s atmosphere, evoking a sense of both serenity and turmoil. Her abstract interpretations of a landscapes are informed by 19th century painting approaches, yet her method of scraping through luscious wax and oils on panel in order to reveal hyped-up colors from underneath lend her work a decidedly contemporary resonance.

**[Jane Haslem Gallery](www.JaneHaslemGallery.com)**

2025 Hillyer Place NW

The renowned landscape artist Billy Morrow Jackson is on view through the end of September in “A Clear Eyed Poet of the Prairie.” Jackson is best known for his paintings of rural buildings and their environs, in which nearly all the canvas can be devoted to dramatically lighted sky. For those with a love of the American Midwest, this is truly an exhibit not to be missed.

**[All We Art Studio](www.AllWeArtStudio.com)**

1666 33rd Street NW

All We Art is a new, multidisciplinary space dedicated to promote international cultural exchange between Venezuela, other Latin American countries, and the United States, through exhibitions and cultural programs. The inaugural exhibit, “Tierra de Gracia/Land of Grace,” celebrates the exuberance of the artistic production in Venezuelan contemporary art (through September 14). Through painting, sculpture, photography, mixed media, jewelry and handcraft, the group exhibition features Venezuelan artists that together highlight the complexity of Venezuelan contemporary art.

**[Hamiltonian Gallery](www.HamiltonianGallery.com)**

1353 U St NW

Washington based artist Billy Friebele translates the bustle of the U Street corridor into abstract images and sound in “U Street Chromatic (for Duke),” on view through August 23. Paying homage to Duke Ellington’s early piano composition, Soda Fountain Rag, he has created an interactive drawing and sound-making machine. Planted in locations along the U Street Corridor that were important to Ellington’s artistic evolution, Friebele’s playful machine translates the motion of passersby into sound and abstract images using sonar sensors.

**[Project 4 Gallery](www.Project4Gallery.com)**

1353 U St NW

Through August 16, Project 4 Gallery will present “Everyware,” a show dedicated to exploring handheld digital art by a group of three artists connected and sharing their work and ideas through social media. The works of Aaron Cahill, William Deegan and Lynette Jackson explore context with mobile technologies and reflect on these new, contemporary conditions. For instance, Cahill’s geometric, design-like work is created entirely on his mobile device, utilizing multiple photo-sharing and fine art apps.

**[Susan Calloway Fine Art](www.CallowayArt.com)**

1643 Wisconsin Ave NW

Mix egg yolk with powdered pigment and you have egg tempera, a painting medium that has been used for over 1,000 years. A successful Kickstarter campaign provided the funding for Washington artist Caroline Adams’s project to make 50 paintings in egg tempera, combining 21st century crowdsourcing with ancient artistic traditions. Throughout the year, Caroline has documented her progress, building layers of color slowly and sharing her struggles and successes through her Kickstarter site. The project has culminated in a wonderful, intimate exhibition of these fifty small landscapes, on view through August 30. [gallery ids="116121,116127,116125" nav="thumbs"]

Ari Post • July 16, 2014

Painting en plein air is a simple artistic ideal, a French expression which means “in the open air.” It calls to mind the sweeping, billowy landscapes of an endless aesthetic tradition.

Artists have long painted outdoors, but the roots of plein air painting took form in the mid-19th century, during an accumulation of technical and conceptual breakthroughs in fine art. First, the Barbizon school and the Impressionists became fixated on capturing natural light in their work, which drove artists to focus more discerningly on the realism of the natural world. Monet’s haystack paintings, for instance, painted during particular times of day, capture the specific effects of atmosphere and light on the environment, a far cry from the generalizing, emotionally driven mountain scenes of Romantic era paintings.

The second factor is the invention around this same time of box easels. Portable, collapsible briefcase-like easels with retractable legs and built-in paint boxes and palettes made the hauling of painting supplies into the wilderness considerably less arduous and cumbersome. Vital to the teachings of art and widely adored by artists, patrons and audiences alike, the tradition of plein air painting remains popular to this day.

The contemporary artist Mark Tribe has taken this art form to a new, strikingly relevant plateau. He brings the tradition of plein air, unapologetically, into the digital age.

Tribe explores the aesthetics and representation of aerial views in landscape photography through the virtual lens of computer simulation in his exhibit, Mark Tribe: Plein Air, which opens to the public on July 19 at the Corcoran Gallery of Art.

Displaying all new work commissioned specifically by the Corcoran, this new exhibit includes nine large-scale images in which Tribe uses geospatial data and fractal algorithms to create digital simulations of real landscapes. Tribe’s shaped prints were made using a UV inkjet printing process on Dibond, a durable aluminum composite material, so that the effect appears to hover over the gallery wall.

The tradition of plein air altered viewers’ perceptions and taught them to see the natural world in new and exciting ways, presenting landscapes with a new eye for composition, light and darkness, the bluish haze of a shadow, for instance, or the rich, monochrome color-muddling of dawn light piercing the sky. Tribe elevates our perception even further, presenting outdoor landscapes from a “drone’s eye view,” a sort of calculated satellite perspective, an intricately pixelated topography that plays an increasingly important and subconsciously familiar role in contemporary culture.

Tribe’s large-scale photographs show a computer-generated world in which familiar environments appear distant, almost foreign. Unlike traditional depictions of landscapes in art, these aerial views shift our perspective. They do not reproduce our “natural” terrestrial viewpoint. There is no ground underfoot, no place to stand, and often no visible horizon. Tribe’s landscapes are idealized and pristine, what he calls “fantastic projections.”

The works grew out of concepts that the artist first examined in his 2012 project, Rare Earth. There, he manipulated landscapes as a symbolic setting for paramilitary fantasy, particularly as used in combat video games (an increasingly rich source of socio-political tension between older and younger generations). This exhibit thus provides an aerial view of such idealized, virtual worlds, which are often depicted as verdant and unspoiled. Collectively, the images collapse the boundaries between the actual and the virtual, the abstract and the representational. They do so in ways that challenge the basic premise of photography and the technological boundaries of image making, while also connecting Tribe’s innovative practices to the historical conventions of landscape painting and photography.

Aside from the plein air tradition, this work also pays homage to the early days of aerial photography, largely developed using balloons for gathering information during the First World War. In 1968, orbiting astronauts first photographed an iconic view of Earth rising over a barren moon—an image that forever changed our notion of landscape as a subject. Since then, military applications of aerial imaging technology has expanded exponentially, from spy planes to satellites and, most recently, to drones.

With this exhibit, Tribe presents a catalog of virtual landscapes that appears to have been shot by drones, interrogating, framing, and critiquing the ways in which landscape images are used to expand territories and defend geopolitical interests. By using software to generate his uncanny panoramas from data, Tribe suggests that the hovering lenses of unmanned devices produce images that can be as powerfully seductive as they are artificial. It is an unsettling prospect, but an oddly beautiful one.

Gary Tischler •

When audience members arrive at the Wolf Trap Filene Center for the July 25 Wolf Trap Opera Company’s production of Bizet’s quintessential “Carmen,” they’ll be settling in for something special that’s at the core of opera, and at the core of the WTOC, an experience that’s both expansive and essential. This production, sung in French with English supertitles, features custom video projection design, providing attendees a multi-media opera experience.

Kim Pensinger Witman, the senior director of the WTOC, says that “’Carmen’ is the kind of opera where you draw a lot of people who normally might not go to the opera, or it’s on a list of something they might want to do, or it’s a reason for coming out here.” In short, like a few other standards of the opera repertoire (think “La Boheme” or “Madame Butterfly”), it’s an opera for people who may not even like opera, but want to see ‘Carmen.’ “Somewhere in people’s lives they’ve heard strands of music or arias from the opera, it’s comfortable and familiar in a way.”

“But it wasn’t always like that,” she added. “When it debuted, it created a bit of a firestorm, because it was very non-traditional. Plus there was controversy about the plot because it involved a heroine who was a gypsy as opposed to an aristocrat or royalty. In addition, the opera was an example of the new form “opera comique,” which used spoken dialogue along with the music, which wasn’t like classical opera.”

Now, it’s one of those operas that expands the audience because of its familiarity. But that’s not all that’s expanding the audience at Wolf Trap, where opera has been performed since 1971. The WTOC is one of the most highly regarded residency programs in the world.

It’s tiered into two groups–the Filene Young Artists and the Studio Artists. The Filene Young Artist singers (some 15-20) are drawn from candidates who already have completed advanced degrees and performed in apprenticeships. The Studio Artists (some 12-16) are drawn from candidates who have undergraduate degrees, but are still undecided on a career path for opera.

“One of the things that’s unique about the program is that we basically select and choose the operas we perform based on the roster of singers that we have, their particular talents and voices,” Witman says. “I don’t think anybody else does that.”

“Carmen” is not the beginning and end of what the Wolf Trap Opera Company has to offer during the summer’s season. There has been a consistently adventuresome aspect to the WTOC offerings, enriched by guest artists, top-notch conductors and designers. They also offer special programs, recitals and pre-performance talks. It’s a full-service season presented by a full-service company.

The company’s first offering of the season was a rarely performed production of Handel’s “Giulio Cesare,” conducted by Antony Walker. The popular “Aria Jukebox,” which features Filene Young Artists singing arias selected by the audience, performed its annual show earlier this month. This year’s concert featured Artist in Residence Eric Owens and Director Witman at the piano.

“I started out as a pianist,” Witman said. “When I came here, I continued to play but took on other tasks, and now I’m senior director. Basically, I do the hiring. I’m involved in much of the production work. I coordinate all things classical music at Wolf Trap, which includes working with the National Symphony Orchestra partnership, which has their own Wolf Trap program and season.”

“We’re all trying to widen our audiences, all the venues big and small, and find ways to get the audience to come but to be a part of something—the talks, the recitals and of course the setting all lead up to the idea of opera at Wolf Trap being an experience. It’s a unique place, a unique company.”

For “Carmen,” Grant Gershon will conduct the National Symphony Orchestra. Mezzo-soprano Maya Lahyani stars as Carmen, with tenor Kevin Ray as Don Juan. Directing is Tara Faircloth. [gallery ids="101810,139907,139905" nav="thumbs"]