Visual Arts

Fall Arts Preview: Gallery Guide

Georgetowner • May 3, 2012

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With every fall season, gallery walls come vibrantly to life like the foliage of the Shenandoah. The arts, like the trees, are inspiring and beautiful; sometimes joyous, often times heartbreaking. They stir something deep within us. Why would we labor to make a painting in an era of convenience and efficiency? Why would we visit the National Gallery when Avatar is on Netflix? Why do we yearn for the leaves to change in October, even though we’ve seen it captured in an endless stream of photographs? Because nothing satisfies our craving for life like the sensory immersion of art. Just as we pick up produce at the farmer’s market instead of buying it wrapped in cellophane, sometimes we just crave something real.

Here is a list of some of the District’s most anticipated gallery offerings this season. Go experience it for yourself. Go stand in front of a painting on a crisp autumn evening with a glass of free wine in one hand and a hunk of stinky cheese in the other. I dare you not to feel alive.

(e)merge Art Fair
Kicking off the fall arts season, the (e)merge art fair Sept. 22 to 25 is a weekend-long event that brings together artists, galleries, curators and collectors to discover and experience a world of emerging artistic talent. Hosted at the Capitol Skyline Hotel by the Navy Yard and Waterfront Metros, the fair brings together a consortium of galleries and nonprofit art venues with special events and educational programming featuring prominent curators, critics and artists, while providing free exhibition space to a large pool of emerging artistic talent. Guided tours of the fair will be available. For more information and to purchase tickets, visit EmergeArtFair.com.

Artisphere
In the Terrace Gallery of the Artisphere, the exhibition “Date/Fields,” running Sept. 23 to Nov. 27, brings together five renowned international artists, all working with the contemporary flow and transfer of data, to transform the gallery into a portal of sensory information: sites of signal, noise, presence and absence. Curated by acclaimed electronic sound artist Richard Chartier. Gallery reception: Friday, Sept. 23, 7 to 10 p.m. Artisphere.com.

Addison/Ripley Fine Art
From Sept. 10 through Oct. 15, Addison/Ripley will exhibit the landscapes and nature paintings of Mary Page Evans. Evans’s purity and reduction of form and color, at once a seeming tribute to her mentor Gene Davis – a renowned Washington colorist whose work is currently on view at the National Gallery – also reveals a lifelong battle between representation and abstraction, reminiscent of Monet or Cézanne. Opening reception: Friday, Sept. 16, 6 to 8 p.m. AddisonRipleyFineArt.com.

Cross Mackenzie Gallery
Having relocated from Georgetown’s Canal Square to Dupont Circle, Cross Mackenzie Gallery will be reopening to the public this fall with the work of ceramic artist Michael Fujita, whose work is inspired by fleeting observations of the world around him. Regular monthly openings are also scheduled throughout the duration of the season. Welcome back, Cross Mackenzie! CrossMackenzie.com.

Heiner Contemporary
Heiner Contemporary will showcase the work of New York artist David Kramer Sept. 9 through Oct. 22. Deeply affected by the pop art and advertising aesthetics surrounding his upbringing in the 1970s, his work injects the faux glamour of that era onto a scratchy canvas filled with terse observations and acrid dictums, constructing a disillusioned, often hilarious satire on the American dream. Opening party and artist performance: Saturday, Sept. 24, 4:30 to 7:30 p.m. HeinerContemporary.com.

Hamiltonian Gallery
A joint exhibition of artists Nora Howell and David Page will be on view at the Hamiltonian Gallery, Sept. 17 through Oct. 29. Howell explores issues surrounding race and identity through photography and food; a functioning coffee bar will be installed in the gallery. Page’s work consists of three large-scale, mechanical sculptures in mixed media including steel, wood and leather. Opening Reception: Saturday, Sept. 17, 7 to 9 p.m. Artist Talk: Wednesday, Oct. 12, 7 p.m. HamiltonianGallery.com.

Hemphill Fine Arts
Ilya and Emilia Kabakov, who have worked collaboratively since 1988, are among today’s most renowned contemporary Russian artists. They have been shown in more than 170 museums in more than 40 countries, including the MoMA, The Whitney and the Hirshhorn. Hemphill Fine Arts’ exhibition, KABAKOV showing Sept. 10 through Oct. 29 continues the artists’ ongoing examination of societal transitions between construction and decline through illustrative, sometimes childlike symbols. Opening reception: Saturday, Sept. 10, 6:30 to 8:30 p.m.

Marsha Mateyka Gallery
2011 has been an industrious year for Sam Gilliam, one of Washington’s most acclaimed and revered artists: a central installation and curatorial venture at the Phillips Collection, a collaborative exhibit with the Kreeger Museum, and a commissioned mural at the Takoma Metro Station, to name a few. To round off the year, the Marsha Mateyka Gallery will open their fall season with an exhibition of Gilliam’s paintings, Sept. 17 through Oct. 29. This is a remarkable opportunity to see a more intimate side of Gilliam’s usually large-scale work. Reception for the artist: Saturday, Sept. 17, 4 to 6 p.m. MarshaMateykaGallery.com.

Parish Gallery
An exhibition of abstract painter Kenneth Victor Young, a member of the Washington Color School of the 1960s, will open at the Parish Gallery with a reception on Friday, Sept. 16, 6 to 8 p.m. Then, Oct. 21 through Nov. 15, the gallery will host the work of printmaker Percy Martin, longtime art teacher in the Washington area, whose series of lush and complex prints details the lives and rituals of the Bushmen, a mythological people born of the artist’s imagination. Opening Reception: Friday, Oct. 21, 6 to 8 p.m. ParishGallery.com.

Project 4
“In Quest of the Sun,” an exhibition of new work by D.C. artist Ellington Robinson, will be on view at Project 4, Sept. 9 through Oct. 15. Robinson’s new work explores the ways by which we reach our physical and socioeconomic locations. Opening reception: Sept. 9, 7 to 9 p.m. From Oct. 22 through Nov. 26, the gallery will host a show of artist Agnes Bolt, who has long explored the relationship between artist and collector, living and interacting virtually with many D.C. art collectors. The show will feature photography, video and collected objects from Bolt’s experiences. Project4Gallery.com.

The Ralls Collection
As featured in the last issue of The Georgetowner, the highlight of The Ralls Collection’s fall season will be an exhibition of revered local painter John Blee this October. For more information, visit Georgetowner.com or RallsCollection.com.

Susan Calloway Fine Arts
“ArtCode,” a show of artist Edurne Esponda Sept. 30 through Oct. 29, displays the artist’s colorful, playful and thought provoking oeuvre. Born in Oaxaca, Mexico, Esponda has traveled the world as both an artist and fashion designer. As a painter, she looks to illustrate the fashion world in her paintings, often referencing clothing sizes and barcodes. Her color palette evokes the atmosphere of her childhood home in Oaxaca. Opening reception: Friday, Sept. 30. CallowayArt.com.

Washington Project for the Arts
OPTIONS 2011, the 14th installment of WPA’s biennial exhibition of works by emerging and unrepresented local artists, will open Sept. 15 and run through Oct. 29. Highlighting the breadth and diversity of the area’s contemporary art scene, the exhibition will include work by 14 artists selected by curator Stefanie Fedor, executive director of the Arlington Arts Center. Opening reception: Sept. 15, 6 to 8 p.m. WPADC.com.

Maurine Littleton Gallery
This November, the Maurine Littleton Gallery will be featuring new glass sculptures by British artist Colin Reid. Reid is regarded as a pioneer in the field of kilncast glass, with works in more than 45 museum collections worldwide. Reid was recently awarded the prestigious Peoples Prize at the 2010 British Glass Biennale and is an Associate of the Royal Society of British Sculptors. The gallery will also be displaying the work of metal sculptor Albert Paley. Exhibition dates TBA. LittletonGallery.com.

Zenith Gallery
Marjorie Goldberg, long established as one of the premier gallerists in the Washington area, will host a show of Zenith Gallery artists recently profiled in the new book, “100 Artists of the Mid-Atlantic,” by Ashley Rooney. The exhibition, at Chevy Chase Pavilion, Sept. 21 through Oct. 29, features an array of work in various media by renowned regional artists, including F. Lennox Campello and Julie Girardini. Meet the Author and Artists: Wednesday, Sept. 21, 6 to 9 p.m. ZenithGallery.com.

Call To Artists: Art Bank
The DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities (DCCAH) is seeking to purchase artwork of all mediums and dimensions to be included in the Art Bank Collection. The Collection is looking to acquire diverse and dynamic forms of contemporary art from working artists in the D.C. area, but preference will be given to District residents. To submit online, visit DCarts.Slidroom.com. For more information contact Zoma Wallace, Curator of Art Collections of DCCAH at Zoma.Wallace@dc.gov or 202.724.5613. Deadline for submissions is Friday, Sept. 30.
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Edgar Degas at the Phillips Collection

Ari Post •

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As geniuses tend to be, Edgar Degas was a compulsive revisionist. Returning to his canvases again and again, often over the course of decades, the artist left behind a wealth of visual pathways into his process upon his death in 1917. As geniuses tend to be, Degas was also a bit of a contradiction. He was a founding member of the Impressionist movement, though he vehemently rejected the label and his association with it.

Degas was a champion of an artistic revolution that moved painting beyond the gratifying of patrons and into the realm of true artistic exploration, paving the way for the explosion of cubism, abstract expressionism and beyond. He fought among critic circles for the collective reputation and legitimacy of himself and his colleagues—Monet, Renoir and Delacroix to name a few—and produced among his most acclaimed works in this time (roughly 1870s – 1880s). Yet he called himself a “realist” and rejected comparisons among his contemporaries. “What I do is the result of reflection and the study of the great masters,” he said.

But within each individual work, Degas managed to embody the monumental nature of artistic practice; he achieved a harmony and perfection of nature through practice, observation, trial, revision and an ever-scrutinizing eye.

His methodical, repetitive practice is frequently compared to the subject of his recurring painterly infatuation, the ballet dancer. While the spontaneity of his compositions may seem frozen precipitously in time—his ballerinas in imperfect repose between moments of rehearsal, turning out, warming up, preoccupied with nothing beyond their physical composition—the delicate beauty of these moments turn out to be nothing less than the result of countless studies and immeasurable, tedious compositional revisions. This relentless strive toward an ephemeral balance, delicate as the air floating about the plane of the canvas, is illuminated remarkably in the Phillips Collection’s current retrospective of his ballet paintings, focused around his seminal work, ‘Dancers at the Barre.’

“No art is less spontaneous than mine,” Degas once said. It would seem fitting then that he was focused so irrevocably on professional dancers. The effusive, explosive nature of a pirouette, for instance, must be fluid and natural within the movement of the dance, but that graceful fluidity is something that only comes with obsessive, endless practice and repetition. And Degas painted not the climax of the twirl, but the tenuous moments leading up to it—the revision, the edits, the scrutiny of practice. And he painted it within its own terms.

Upon entering the third floor of the Phillips Collection, which has devoted the entire level to the exhibition, you immediately come upon the ‘Dancers at the Barre’ painting, the two ballerinas stretching side by side in their matching blue practice skirts. On the other walls of the room hang two other studies of the same scene, one nearly identical in composition, and one of the central model posing nude in the same stance.

Throughout the exhibition, the Phillips chose to highlight Degas’ variation and repetition, even exhibiting infrared and x-ray photos of a number of the artist’s paintings to show them in their various stages of completion, exposing the way he moved and positioned his subjects about the canvas as well as their own axis—the adjustment of a leg, the arch of a back, the direction of a subject’s hair.

There is also a large showcase of the connections made to Degas within the ballet in recent years, focused around a video of acclaimed choreographer Christopher Wheeldon’s 2004 production of ‘Swan Lake’ at the Pennsylvania Ballet, which conceived its costumes and sets reminiscent of the nineteenth century Paris Opera as depicted by Degas.

But the crowning achievement of this exhibition is exactly what it should be: the collection of the artist’s works brought together for this stunning exhibit. The beauty and wonder of Degas is heroically and intimately displayed, showcasing his most acclaimed paintings alongside his sketches, prints, charcoal drawings and enticingly tactile sculptures. It is an exhibit that shows us the complete portrait of not just the subjects, but of the artist.

“Conversation in real life is full of half-finished sentences and overlapping talk,” said Degas. “Why shouldn’t painting be too?” This is an exhibit for those of us who want to experience the full conversation, and long to fall into a fierce, satisfying discussion with Degas in his own time.

Degas’s Dancers at the Barre: Point and Counterpoint, will be at The Phillips Collection, 1600 21st St. NW, through Jan. 8, 2012. For more information visit PhillipsCollection.org. [gallery ids="100309,107971" nav="thumbs"]

‘30 Americans’ Say It Loud

Ari Post •

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Walking up the grand staircase of the Corcoran Gallery of Art and into the rotunda, a noose tied at the end of a twenty-foot rope hangs from the middle of the domed ceiling. It floats heavily about ten feet off the ground. Circling the noose are nine wooden chairs on which Klan masks sit upright, their hollow eyes facing the rope as if in worship. The next things you see in the gallery, taking up the enormous wall at the entrance to the “30 Americans” exhibit, are the words “SAY IT LOUD.” You can feel James Brown belting into the microphone and you finish the lyrics quietly to yourself:

I’m black and I’m proud.

Brown recorded that song in 1968. There were still documented lynchings in the U.S. in 1968.

Like this juxtaposition, “30 Americans” offers an unrestrained and uncompromising dialogue on what it means to be black and American, exposing the racial, societal and cultural demons in us all, and forcing us to confront those things we spend our lives trying to ignore.

I am not a cultural historian, and I cannot pretend to understand the society or struggles of black America across the last century on any more than a literary level. So in order to discuss this show with any honesty or integrity, I have to strip away my third-party neutrality, my anonymous journalistic voice, and face it as a human being. I am a young white male. The baggage I carry into this show is that of ambiguous, quiet guilt, self-imposed ignorance and displaced confusion. I cannot help feeling a little self-congratulatory—and subsequently low—to be partaking in this act of cross-cultural dialogue, this academic diplomacy in exploring the art and sensibilities of another culture that is actually sort of my own culture. Was it going to isolate my whiteness? Are the stereotypes my own social filtering, or am I seeing them because the artist intended to show them outright? Coming into this exhibition, however, I felt connected with so much of this work.

The affectations and fetishized materials used by artists throughout the exhibition—shea butter, wax, cotton, soap, plastic rhinestones—the symbols and references to slavery, sharecropping and lynch mobs, the societal pigeonholes of basketball and hip-hop, were all things I fundamentally recognized. The often excessive glitz and grime of the work found me experiencing a world of which I have always lived just outside. I found unusual comfort in my kinship with the material, in understanding the ironies, injustices and tribulations of black America better than I realized. That was a short-lived and rather diluted epiphany.

Zora Neale Hurston, the seminal African American folklorist and anthropologist, wrote on the subject of understanding African American culture:

[African American culture is] particularly evasive. You see we are a polite people and we do not say to our questioners, “Get out of here!” We smile and tell him or her something that satisfies the white person because, knowing so little about us, he doesn’t know what he is missing…

A self-portrait by Xaviera Simmons shows the artist with her brown skin colored coal black and sitting naked before her camera in an overgrown wheat field with a righteous afro. In the opposing image, Simmons stands in the field, wrapped in a trench coat as black as her darkened skin. The images are a surge of carnal and spiritual defiance, pointing to the stigma of African heritage and its increasingly dramatic, often misguided interpretations. We may see her and we may judge her on the surface, but that doesn’t mean we understand anything about her. We have not been let in.

Hank Willis Thomas exposes the trappings of African American youth culture with pop-poster-like images you might see tacked onto the wall of a college dorm room, but with a dark and troubled conscience. ‘Basketball and Chain’ depicts the lower half of two young black men in basketball jerseys jumping high into the air, a basketball chained to their leg. In another image, a Nike brand-shaped scar is etched into the shaved head of a young black man. It is not difficult to intellectualize the paralyzing societal delusions of urban teenagers striving for athletic fortune without other foreseeable options, but the struggle is not in seeing it. The struggle is in living with it or being able to change it.

Men stand poised between self-righteousness and preemptive submission in the paintings of Barkley L. Hendricks. A freestanding wall made of raw cotton and wax reaches almost to the ceiling. The cryptic symbology of Jean-Michel Basquiat and the divine, tragic beauty of Kehinde Wiley’s monumental 25-foot portrait, ‘Sleep,’ both have the power to unhinge your jaw in wonder and contemplation: what does it feel like to be black and American?

The difficulty in dealing with such deeply rooted, socially inflammatory subject matter is that it can tend toward the overwrought, and vehemence often gets in the way of true significance, running the risk of beating its audience over the head with its message. But “30 Americans” handles itself with grace and perspective, facilitating an open, honest conversation with its audience.

But the depths of what I may never understand linger in the back of my throat. I get the references to blaxploitation films. I am left sad and weak by the images of malnourished slaves and lynch victims. I empathize with the innumerable injustices the African American people have faced, and I admire “30 Americans” for providing a lens into the contemporary manifestations of these displaced feelings and issues. But the subtexts might forever elude me: what does it mean to be black and American today?

For some, this show is the embodiment of ambiguous race and class confusions neglected in our daily lives. For African Americans of my generation, I imagine “30 Americans” is a conversation across generations of families who have been dismantled and disassembled, and who put themselves back together through their stories, their art and the resilience of their spirit. “30 Americans” begins to explore what it would take to really exist in a post-racial society. It would seem that the answer is to understand—not shy away from—our distinctions.

“30 Americans,” at the Corcoran Gallery of Art, is on display through Feb. 12, 2012. For more information visit [Corcoran.org.](http://www.corcoran.com/)

100 Years of Quiet Wonder: Harry Callahan at the NGA

Ari Post •

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This fall art season has brought a number of heavy-hitting exhibits to the Washington stage. Edgar Degas’ dancers arrived en masse to the Phillips Collection, the Corcoran Gallery’s 30 Americans exhibit has ignited racial and social discourse through the work of internationally acclaimed contemporary African American artists, and Andy Warhol has all but taken over the National Mall, with concurrent shows at both the National Gallery and the Hirshhorn. Looming on the near horizon are major exhibitions of Picasso, Annie Leibovitz and George Bellows.

But with all the sweeping, florid grandiosity of these major retrospectives, Harry Callahan at 100 stands out for just the opposite reasons, and in all the right ways. Tucked away in the basement floor of the National Gallery, the collection of work on view, commemorating the renowned photographer on the centenary of his birth, brings us perhaps the most intimate, utterly immersive show of the season.

Throughout his career, Callahan proved himself a discerning and incisive observer of the American subconscious, exploring a diverse range of visual ideas and concerns. He was also a fine teacher, as head of the photography department at the Institute of Design in Chicago and then a professor at the Rhode Island School of Design. A college dropout with no early artistic ambitions and almost no formal training, he grew up “not being able to do anything that I felt good about,” until he picked up photography as a hobby. Five years later, he was a professional photographer.

Callahan’s first major influence as a photographer, and someone who had a profound effect on his career, was Ansel Adams, who he met through a photography club while living in Detroit in his 20s. Later in life, Callahan said of Adams:

“There was something about what he did that hit me just right… He had pictures which were what I felt was photography… And I don’t think they were the great pictures, or the ones that were considered great of his, that really made me excited. It was the close-up pictures, near the ground, which I felt from then on I could photograph anything. I didn’t have to go to Yellowstone or the Grand Canyon, I could photograph a footprint in the sand and it would be like a sand dune. And I think this was probably the most freeing thing that could have ever been for me.”

The grandeur of the ordinary and the limitless scale of the intrapersonal are ongoing themes in Callahan’s work. And while he was also well known for his bold and constant visual experimentation (he was, among other things, one of the first fine art photographers to experiment with color), what stands out in this concisely curated show, which spans work throughout the course of Callahan’s entire career, is the status to which he raises our most basic surroundings and occurrences.

You will see trips to the beach. You will see trees throughout the season. You will see parked cars. You will see weeds and grass and junk. You will see buildings, storefronts and houses the same as you see when you look out your front door. And all of these images are engrained with a restlessness and fascination, as if the artist, having forced himself to evaluate the world immediately around him, demands that we too consider our world and come to a quiet understanding.

However, the most powerful series of images are of Callahan’s wife Eleanor. A photographer’s portrait of a loved one is hardly uncommon. Alfred Stieglitz, a seminal founding figure in fine art photography, famously photographed his wife, Georgia O’Keefe, with brazen sexual charge. Photographer Edward Weston’s portraits of his wife Flora are stark, severe and contemporary. But Callahan’s portraits of Eleanor are love songs in thin, black frames, and that sincere vulnerability is what makes them so engrossing. They show woman as woman, lover, mother and daughter, and speak of a more encompassing relationship based in profound trust, love and respect. Whether wrapped in a coat outside a bleak apartment building or lying naked in their bed, Eleanor becomes a symbol of a husband’s perception of his wife’s beauty, strength and fragility. And Eleanor does her part, looking into the camera, saying everything and nothing with her gaze, like she is looking right into her husband’s eyes.

Callahan’s photographs work on a level that comfortably serves dual, perhaps opposing functions. On the one hand, you can evaluate the socially critical, the autobiographical, the theoretical, the experimental and the technical nature of his work and walk away with your brain tingling. At the same time, and with equal bearing, the photographs are plainly beautiful. They are nice to look at. Like a Rothko or a Rockwell, there is a peaceful and satisfying presence about the work that washes you over inexplicably. Anonymous building facades of endless brick; cold, leafless trees reaching their draconian fingers into the ever-cloudy skies; the pensive, lovely faces of women, their downcast eyes distracted by the very matter of life, wherever it may be.

Callahan’s images are beautiful because they are made up of that which we balance just outside of our daily attention. These are the ever-present backgrounds—emotionally and physically—of our own stories. It feels like Callahan just chose to tell them.

‘Harry Callahan at 100’ is on view at the National Gallery of Art through March 4, 2012. For more information visit NGA.gov.

Theo Adamstein: Photo Enthusiast for FotoWeek DC

Gary Tischler •

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In a time when everyone is seen as being passionate about something, be it ever so trivial, it’s not difficult to resist using the word.

But when it comes to Theo Adamstein and photography—specifically Foto DC and FotoWeek DC, which is set for its fourth annual  festival and celebration of all things photo Nov. 5 through 12—the characterization fits. 

It’s not as if Adamstein doesn’t have many manifold interests and talents— he’s been a high-profile architect, a very busy cultural promoter and activist in D.C., a busy businessman and owner of Dodge Chrome, Inc., a highly original custom photo and high-end imaging lab with locations in Silver Spring and Georgetown.

Mostly, these days, he is the executive director and founder of FotoWeek DC and Foto DC, which, as he readily admits, has consumed him. “Right now,” he said near the end of an interview at the Foto DC year-round headquarters in Adams Morgan, “I am not a practicing architect. This has taken over my life.”

This being FotoWeek DC, which, like many  recent cultural celebrations and festivals like the Fringe Festival and Passport DC, has gained a firm foothold in the city and gained national and international attention. It’s grown like topsy, not bad for a non-profit endeavor which yearly seems to find itself in an ever-growing and ever-changing series of venues with an expanding mission and every more particpants in its competitive portions.

Four years ago, Adamstein, a man with several careers under his belt and some influence on the cultural scene with board membership on several institutions, noticed that Washington seemed bereft of any major competitive and celebratory photography festivals.

“There just wasn’t anything,” he said. “I know we had and have numerous talented and gifted photographers and photojournalists,  in the Washington area, but no festival, no major marketing tool, nothing much.” Pulling together enthusiastic friends and people he knew in the Washington cultural and photography circles and from his architectural world, Adamstein founded FotoWeek DC, which included a competition, primarily for local photographers, workshops, lectures and an array of exhibitions. And with it’s high-profile launching and the presence of museums and galleries, FotoWeek DC was a major success. It made a splash in the photography world here and echoed elsewhere.

For Adamstein, who’s no dilettante when it comes to photography,  the world of photography is rich, diverse and serious. “It was my major interest when I was a young boy and it remained so, even though I ventured into other careers,” Adamstein, a native of South Africa, said. “I pursued photography seriously and with passion, and I still do.  I specialize in landscapes. I’ve had shows and exhibitions.”

Photography, of course, embraces many arenas, interests and genres and occupies the talents of all sorts of photographers and photography from photojournalism, to art photography, to the professional photographers who work for newspapers and slick magazines,  the portraitists and fashion photographers and the documentarians.

“We’ve tended to promote and exhibit work with a certain view, in the arena of justice, environmentalism, social and green issues, there’s a documentarian theme to some of it,  but not all of what we do,” Adamstein said.

In fact, speaking with Adamstein in the Adams Morgan DC Foto Space—a big, airy space once occupied by a high-ended furniture store—illustrates much of what he’s talking about. He’s dressed in gray black, a man with a strong, empathic face and an expansive, energetic way of talking tinged with a hint of South African accent. He’s got a suitable dose of charisma necessary for a pioneering type. He talks big-picture, encompassing not only the festival and its growth, but also the explosion of changes that have occurred in photography itself.

“Digital imaging has changed everything,” he said. “It changes the way a photographer looks through the lens. It’s fast, its malleable and it’s both cheap and expensive. Photographers can do more in the environment of the computer culture, but they’re also faced with more choices and decisions. It’s a process, and it’s ongoing. So, we try to stay on top of it.”

FotoWeek DC, in fact, has become the capstone celebration and effort of what is now a living institution.  “There’s a permanence now,” Adamstein said. “We do things the year round—the Cherry Blossom Festival competition, the project with the Crystal City Business Improvement District and so on.  We’re very fortunate to have this space here.”

If you look at this year’s festival, you see a large effort with a focus on both competition and celebration, opportuned with critical components such as cross-fertilization, partnerships and partnering, promotion and education. “You have to get everybody involved,” Adamstein said. “We’ve had support from the business and commercial community. You work hard the year round trying to get grants, and you get the international community involved on Embassy Row. We have ways for individual, local photographers to be involved, not just in competition, but with links to resources. What you’re doing is creating a community of photography.”

“Here’s a great thing,” he said. “Chicago doesn’t have anything like this. New York doesn’t really have a major festival. We do, and to me that’s exciting. There’s so much potential for growth.”

The venue and space challenge is always there, every year. “The thing is you have to have exhibition space—and we’re lucky this year again to have the Corcoran Gallery of Art participating. We have this space, where we’ll have our night visions component, and we have Pepco’s Edison Place Gallery, and, of course, we have FotoWeek Central on L Street.

That’s a 50,000-square-foot  space, site of the former Borders Bookstore, donated to FotoWeek by Somerset Partners LLC, which will be housing 14 (yes, 14) exhibitions alone and will be a co-site of the launch party along with the Corcoran Gallery of Art.

“We live in a very unique city with unique opportunities,” he said. Listening to him, you can hear the sounds of the future of photography in his voice.  His enthusiasm—his passion, if you will—is boundless.          

“The competition aspect has expanded. It’s gone international,” Adamstein said. “But that’s a good thing. We in the city will be able to see the works of photographers whom we might not otherwise see. Conversely, our photographers will have a chance to have their work seen by the world.

“I believe in partners, in linking up, that’s what the new digital age lets us do.  I believe in bringing this to our young people in the schools. [There is a project donating digital cameras to students.] And I believe we can be a resource for photographers. 

“And this—FotoWeek DC—is a celebration of photography.” 

FotoWeek DC Highlights
November 5-November 12

FotoWeek Central, 1800 L Street NW

?International League of Conservation Photographers, RAVE Retrospective

?Flash Forward for 2011 from the Magenta Foundation

?Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting Beyond Witness

?2011 FotoWeekDC International Awards Competition Winners

?2011 FotoWeekDC Thumbnail Show

?2011 FotoDC Uncover/Discover Series

?PhotoPhilanthropy: Witnessing Change

?Facing Change: Documenting America

?Women Photojournalists of Washington, 2011 Annual Juried Exhibition

?Embassy of Spain, Alberto Shommer Retrospectiva 1952-2009

?FotoWeekDC Youth Contest Winners

?Critical Exposure

?2011 FotoWeekDC Cherry Blossom Contest Winners Corcoran Gallery of Art and the Corcoran College of Art + Design

?The Corcoran Gallery of Art and the Corcoran College of Art + Design will be free to the public Nov. 5 through 12 in celebration of FotoWeekDC. Free noon lectures by Stephanie Sinclair, Amy Yenkin, Trevor Paglen and others as well as portfolio reviews by renowned curators, educators and critics will take place Nov. 21.

George Washington University Kogan Plaza

?NightGallery’s digital HD exterior projections on the south façade of GW’s Lisner Auditorium Nov. 7 through Nov. 19.

Pepco’s Edison Place Gallery, 702 8th ST NW

?“Colors of Life” from its 2011 International Photography Contest organized with “Every Child Matters.” Also: vintage photography from the 1920s, 30s and 40s from former National Geographic photographers B. Anthony Stewart and J. Baylor Roberts.

FotoWeek DC Launch Parties.
?Nov. 4 from 5 p.m. to 11:30 p.m. at FotoWeek Central and the Corcoran Gallery of Art and College of Art and Design.

For further information and details about FotoWeekDC events, go to fotoweekdc.org.

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‘Amazing!’ Mel Bochner in the Tower

Ari Post •

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An art professor once gave me a great piece of advice: “Whenever you look at a work of art,” he said, “always ask yourself one question: What is it?” It is with this unimpressive mantra that I walk into every museum and approach every exhibit. For whether I am looking at a Titian mural (a portrait) or one of David Smith’s twisting metal sculptures (an abstract), this process helps me define the parameters of the artwork and experience things evenly and honestly. But entering the Tower of the National Gallery of Art to see the recent exhibition of Mel Bochner, I was at a loss for definition. Ironically enough, it was a room full of words.

In the mid- to late 1960s, Bochner created a series of portraits of friends and colleagues using only words written on paper, assembled and organized largely through studying Roget’s Thesaurus. One of the founding fathers of conceptual art, Bochner has spent his career questioning the nature of the art object, focusing on process, perception and idea over—and often in lieu of—the usual conclusion of artistic practice: a physical work of art.

For example, his Measurement series used black tape to make measurements directly onto walls, effectively making large-scale diagrams of the rooms in which they were installed. But through making and compiling words, Bochner found a depth, eloquence and historical context uniquely suited to his palette—and what he perhaps never found in the standard definition of painting. Bochner would not paint a portrait. He would paint: “Portrait, Depiction, Archetype, Likeness, Model, Effigy.”

“The thing about English that’s so fascinating as a language is its ultimate flexibility,” Bochner says. “One thing about the thesaurus is that they always add words but rarely eliminate things. So you get an archeology of language.”

This is the foundation of Bochner’s recent work, a rather idiosyncratic history of English. His earlier words-based works were meant to be portraits, as well as erudite studies in the flaws, redundant coextensions and contradictions of English. His new work, the primary focus of this exhibition, has taken the form of borderline social activism, revealing an ever-evolving lexicon where “Amazing” is replaced by “OMG,” and “Screw the Pooch” has eclipsed “Perish.” It also reveals more than a few of the artist’s bugbears, philosophical and moral uncertainties, and the result is a remarkably naked, honest and fulfilling experience.

It had been over 30 years since Bochner made—or even looked at—his initial thesaurus series. But when he reexamined the drawings for a retrospective of his work at Yale in 1995, “My response was, there’s probably more juice in that lemon—probably worth another squeeze.”

The first new word-works he made were revisited portraits of Eva Hesse and Robert Smithson (both the originals and the revisited portraits are on view in the exhibition). “The earlier ones have the certitude of my youth—black ink, no mistakes,” Bochner says. “And I couldn’t go back to that anymore, it’s not my attitude toward life. So I redid them with charcoal and kept erasing and reworking and it formed a kind of bridge.”

But, as it seems, Bochner’s “attitude toward life” rapidly took to the forefront of his new work, evolving it from portraiture of the individual to portraiture of time, place and sentiment. The headlining diptychs of the exhibition, “Master of the Universe,” “Oh Well,” “Amazing!” and “Babble” are monumental paintings over eight feet tall, painted in crass neon hues with a bubbly Comic Sans-type font.

“These paintings are my response to everything I see around me,” he says. “They address the disillusion of language in terms of contemporary discourse. I look at this as basically an inarticulate expression of the underlying contradictions of the systems we live in, with a lack of articulate consciousness. And maybe it’s an educational deficit.”

The political edge of these pieces is hard to ignore. “It was very important to me to have that painting, ‘Master of the Universe,’ in Washington,” he says. “And I hope that people get, without my having to explain, the sociocultural undertones of that painting next to the other painting, ‘Oh Well.’”

“I long ago gave up on the idea that art can change capitalism,” Bochner says. “But anything that can bring people to greater consciousness about their own experience is positive and, I believe, a step in the right direction.

For instance, it is no coincidence that his painting “Amazing” begins with the words Amazing and Awesome—biblical words with which the Old Testament denoted God’s power—and then runs through the chronology of evermore contemporary exclamations, until concluding like a fart with OMG. The Awesome becomes more of a self-involved hyperbole than anything worthy of real rejoice.

“I want the paintings to be part of a conversation, a discourse,” he says. “Otherwise, why use language? The best quote I know about this is from Nietzsche: ‘We write not only to be understood, but also to be misunderstood.’ And that’s really it. To be misunderstood is to carry forth the conversation. It’s to raise questions, create arguments and disagreements. That’s basically what philosophy is. People misunderstanding each other.”

For a lifelong conceptual artist, Bochner’s new work is uncharacteristically ubiquitous, and it dances oddly around abstract expressionism and pop art. On the one hand, in answer to my self-imposed question, What is it? the answer could not be more tangible or concrete. It is words. Just like Warhol’s soup cans or Van Gogh’s purple irises, the work is inert. But a series of words cannot help but be read and, just as in abstraction, the interpretations can spin out endlessly and wildly. To quote theorist and critic Frederic Jameson, “The work…is taken as a clue or symptom for some vaster reality which replaces it as its ultimate truth.” The beauty of Bochner’s exhibition runs synonymous to the crudity of daily American life: we are free to pay as much or as little attention as we please, but there’s no denying the harsh reality before us, displayed in bold bright colors across the walls of our consciousness.

Mel Bochner’s Thesaurus Works are on view at the National Gallery through April 8, 2012. For more information visit Nga.gov/Exhibitions [gallery ids="100403,113248,113239,113233,113227" nav="thumbs"]

3rd Annual Photo Competition

Georgetowner •

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For our third year running, The Georgetowner’s annual photo competition has let us reach into the community and ask our readers for their most memorable scenes of the last year. Georgetown’s historic beauty is something often overlooked in the bustle of urban life—after a while you begin not to notice the gold-domed grandeur of the PNC Bank on Wisconsin and M (erected in 1814 as part of Riggs Bank by a group which included George Washington’s nephew), the Frank Schlesinger-designed apartments overlooking the waterfront, or even the beauty of Key Bridge, the oldest surviving bridge across the Potomac. And this doesn’t even touch upon our historic row houses, cobblestone streets, waterfront views of the Potomac, boathouses and parks.

Sometimes it takes a photograph to capture the essence of a time or place, and in Georgetown’s case, they are bridged tenuously between the tradition of the past and the promise of the future.

Many thanks to those who submitted this year. Of all the standout entries we received, the overarching theme seemed to focus on our neighborhood as a focal point for some of Washington’s most memorable landscapes and cityscape, and the overwhelming submissions that flowed beyond Georgetown and wandered around our city limits were impossible to ignore. Tom Ward’s photograph of the Vietnam Memorial, at right, was a subtle and moving portrait, echoing the souls of all those we lost so many years ago in the folding reflections of the granite walls within themselves.

As we look on from the newly completed Waterfront Park, past the Kennedy Center and into the city beyond, one thing remains in focus: we live in a beautiful place. Let’s not forget it.

About the winner:
‘Sunrise Over 34th Street,’ photo By Didi Cutler, winner of The Georgetowner’s 3rd Annual Photo Competition. Thanks to all who participated. For more photos, turn to page 16.
A 34th St. resident, Isabel “Didi” Cutler has spent many years living and traveling in the Middle East. Her photographic portraits and landscapes hang in embassies, museums and offices throughout the world, as well as in many private collections, including the White House. Her portraits include prominent statesmen, artists and authors, as well as a broad range of other individuals, ranging from royal families in their palaces to neighborhood children in intimate family surroundings. Cutler’s book, ‘Mysteries of the Desert,’ was published by Rizzoli in 2001. [gallery ids="100454,115438,115403,115430,115413,115422" nav="thumbs"]

The Perfect Season for Visual Arts

Ari Post •

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In the seasonal cycle of arts and entertainment, summer and autumn bring about the blockbusters. Hollywood pulls out the big action spectacles and Oscar bait, lists of the year’s best books and music pop up in all our syndicated leisure sections, museums open their big name exhibitions to attract the inflated summer crowds and holiday visitors, and the Kennedy Center usually brings in “Wicked” for a few weeks. Over the past six months on our museum and gallery scene, we’ve seen a major Edgar Degas retrospective, a multifaceted citywide adulation of Andy Warhol, the wire-sculpture portraiture of Alexander Calder, the stentorian “30 Americans” exhibit at the Corcoran, and pioneering video artist Nam Jun Paik in the Tower of the National Gallery.

The winter months, on the other hand, often bring us rich and subtle experiences, opening the doors to work that might not have the opportunity to shine during the busy season. The work Sam Gilliam did with The Phillips Collection last winter, installing a site-specific work and curating a concurrent exhibition of his artistic influences, was an unprecedented homage to Washington art culture. Last February, The Hirshhorn’s retrospective of Blinky Palermo, a relatively obscure, German-born postwar painter, was the first comprehensive survey of the artist’s work in the United States. And while shows like this are the salty bone marrow for Washington’s art-going crowd, they would be overshadowed by the Warhols and Calders in the primetime months.

Now is the time for galleries and museums to release their B-sides and alternative works, and challenge tradition of the Western canon. It’s a two-month art junkie paradise. This is the stuff you don’t usually see in books. All you can do is bundle up to combat the whipping winter wind and go experience the work firsthand. Once your fingers thaw, you’ll be glad you did.

Annie Leibovitz at American Art Museum
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Since she made her indelible mark in the landscape of contemporary pop culture with her Rolling Stone photographs of a naked John Lennon cocooned around a black-clad Yoko, Annie Leibovitz has been generally acknowledged as the eye of Hollywood. Anyone who’s anyone since the 1970s has assuredly looked down the barrel of Leibovitz’s lens.

But don’t expect to see Johnny Depp or Leonardo DiCaprio hanging on the walls of the American Art Museum this year. The exhibition, “Annie Leibovitz: Pilgrimage” (opening Jan. 20), is uncharacteristically void of any people at all.

Visiting the homes of iconic figures, including Thomas Jefferson, Emily Dickinson, Georgia O’Keeffe, Pete Seeger and Elvis Presley, as well as places such as Niagara Falls, Walden Pond, Old Faithful and the Yosemite Valley, Leibovitz let her instincts and intuitions guide her on a journey across America. Revealing her curiosity and infatuation with the country, the photographs span landscapes both dramatic and quiet, interiors of living rooms and bedrooms as well as objects, rendered in a way that feels almost unconscious. Some of the pictures focus on the remaining traces of photographers and artists Leibovitz admires such as Ansel Adams and Robert Smithson. The photographs in this exhibition, bridging a period between April 2009 and May 2011, were taken simply because Leibovitz was moved by the subject. And it cements her as much more than a photographer of American dreams, but a filter of the American experience. For more information, visit AmericanArt.si.edu.

Picasso’s Drawings at the National Gallery of Art
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As an artist, Pablo Picasso covered so much ground it becomes difficult to discuss any of his individual contributions without missing an alternative, equally integral aspect of his work. From cubism and collage, to the undulating restraint of his blue period and the effortless, classical ambiguity of his Rose period, it’s easy to get lost in his composition, his perspective, his color and texture, his visual sense for love, madness, grief, joy and everything in between. What’s often overlooked is how well the guy could draw.

Picasso was a master draftsman, and his command will be on full display at the National Gallery this month in “Picasso’s Drawings, 1890–1921: Reinventing Tradition,” opening Jan. 29. The exhibit spans the artist’s drawings over 30 years, from his early studies as a young student in the 1890s (10 to 15 years before he shook the art world with the introduction of his cubist works around 1907), to his virtuoso drawings and portrait sketches of the early 1920s. Delving into the importance of drawing to Picasso’s process of creation, experimentation and discovery, the audience will get to see how intricately his work is connected with the grand tradition of drawing by European masters of the near and distant past from Rembrandt to Vermeer. For more information, visit NGA.gov.

‘Suprasensorial: Experiments in Light, Color and Space’ at the Hirshhorn
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The Light and Space movement was introduced to American around the 1960s in southern California. Focused on perceptual phenomena such as light, volume and scale, the tenets of the movement sound like a neo-impressionism for the 20th century, with a focus on the ethereal perception of light, volume and scale in its most raw form. Whether directing thre flow of natural light, toying with light through transparent, translucent and reflective materials or embedding artificial light within objects and architecture, the works always used a range of materials and often incorporated modern innovations in science and even aerospace engineering.

The Hirshhorn will be presenting the first exhibition to reevaluate the evolution of the international Light and Space movement through the work of five pivotal Latin American artists, who almost a decade before the movement’s introduction to America were creating environments of light and color that challenged traditional standards of art. The five installations that make up “Suprasensorial” (opening Feb. 23) will create enveloping optical effects that overwhelm and transform sensory experience and demonstrate Latin America as a source of innovation for the global Light and Space tradition. For more information, visit Hirshhorn.si.edu.