Visual Arts

Ari Post • May 3, 2012

When taking on the art of an unfamiliar cultural tradition, it’s difficult to know where to start. There are immediately questions—namely, Do I understand what I am looking at? The aesthetic terrain, symbolism and subject matter are foreign, often incongruous to our own knowledge. For instance, as far as everyone in America and Europe is concerned, a hexagram is synonymous with the Star of David (the Jewish Star). However, in ancient Indic lore, the hexagram was a symbol of creation, the overlapping triangles representing “the divine union of male and female.”

When dealing with a culture as deeply rooted, multifaceted and intricate as Japan’s, there is almost no way to take it all in. Japan has a cultural and religious system of symbols and an artistic tradition as unique and fascinating as any in the world, and to know it would require years of time and effort. However, in the same way Picasso found revelation in African tribal masks for their raw aesthetic radiance, it is sometimes enough to admire the beauty and facility of cross-cultural artisanship.

Right now, The Textile Museum and the National Gallery of Art are hosting monumental exhibits of Japanese art, both of which expose the sheer beauty of the country’s sophisticated craft and artistic traditions.

The Textile Museum’s “Woven Treasures of Japan’s Tawaraya Workshop” (Mar. 23 – Aug. 12) display the Japanese textile traditions of the Tawaraya, a still-operational silk workshop over 500 years old, that has woven fine silk garments for the Imperial Household for centuries. The National Gallery’s “Japanese Bird-and-Flower Paintings by It? Jakuch? (1716 – 1800),” on view only through the end of the month, exhibit Jakuch?’s thirty-scroll series of nature and wildlife, proving him to be an unprecedented innovator in style, technique and aesthetic. Both exhibits are a master class in composition, color and design, and both beg to be viewed live. In photographs they are impressive, but in person they are breathtaking.

(It must also be noted that the Sackler Gallery, on the National Mall, is hosting an overwhelming exhibit of printmaker Katsushika Hokusai (1760–1849), perhaps the most acclaimed artist in Japanese history, titled “Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji.” However, this exhibit demands coverage all its own, and thus is not included in this article.)

Based in Kyoto, Japan, the Tawaraya silk workshop is perhaps the oldest and most illustrious workshop in the country. While popular among the public for producing fabrics used in traditional theatrical costumes, Tawaraya is renowned for their production of yusoku orimono—garments of fine silks in patterns, weaves and color combinations traditionally reserved for the Japanese Imperial Household. On display in The Textile Museum, they read like an installation work, speaking of harmony, balance and serenity.

In a peculiar way, they are reminiscent of Sam Gilliam’s hanging fabric installation at The Phillips Collection, which closed almost a year ago. The Japanese fabrics of vibrant and subtle colors and ancient symbols, whose aesthetic is rooted in a centuries-old practice, become suddenly and hugely contemporary. This is a little ironic, as the man behind Tawaraya’s operations today, Hyoji Kitagawa, is the 18th-generation successor of this family-run workshop, who has painstakingly maintained silk weaving techniques passed down over a millennia, right down to dye recipes from the tenth century.

One remarkable aspect of these designs is the length that is taken in pursuit of subtlety and understatement. Where it is more familiar in the Western tradition for the elite to be wearing louder, flashier clothing, in Japanese aristocracy it would seem that bold symbols and wild colors are considered crass and unsophisticated. The Emperor’s yusoku orimono is composed of but pristine white and earthy brown ochre silks.

The patterns and symbols are similarly more nuanced. On the garments of a regular citizen, the symbol of a tortoise—which represents long life—would likely be a large, obvious and rather literal interpretation. On a yusoku orimono, the creature is represented by a pattern of hexagonal blocks, each one an individual shell, that stretch monochromatically across the silk. You will see cherry blossoms, cranes, pine trees, phoenix, bamboo and butterflies, each of which carry their own meaning and significance, but all of which are independently beautiful.

These symbols carry over to the National Gallery, where the 30 scrolls of 18th century Japanese painter Jakuch? might actually bowl you over. The expansive scrolls are intricate and effusive: a pair of chickens embroiled in a dynamic mating dance, feathers ruffled in exacting detail and eyes wild among a craggy hibiscus plant; an adumbrated landscape of seashells, crabs and starfish on the ocean’s floor; a wild goose in the reeds, hurtling toward a pond’s icy surface; a rooster amidst a plant of small, piercing red nandina berries. Yet within the paintings there is a fluidity of composition, a pristine sense of geometry and an unquantifiable harmony of color that link them to the same tradition as the Tawaraya silks.

Both offer an otherworldly glimpse of tradition, discipline and aesthetic near-perfection. The Japanese history is rich in artistic life, and Washington is lucky to have such resplendent exhibitions of their works to appreciate and compare.

For more information on “Woven Treasures of Japan’s Tawaraya Workshop,” on view through Aug. 12, visit www.TextileMuseum.org. For information on “Colorful Realm: Japanese Bird-and-Flower Paintings It? Jakuch?,” on view through April 29, visit www.nga.gov. [gallery ids="100740,121552,121541,121549" nav="thumbs"]

Ari Post •

The epoch of ukioy-e encapsulates the final phase of traditional Japanese history and a time of flourishing cultural arts from about 1600 through the 1860s. Due to the country’s policy of national seclusion (starting in the 1630s for fear of the impact of European colonial expansion on native culture), Japan was a world almost entirely unseen by foreign eyes until the late 19th century.

During this period of isolation, Japanese art acquired a singular character with few external influences. The style of ukiyo-e, which means “pictures of the floating world,” blended the realistic narratives of ancient picture scrolls with inspiration from the decorative arts and observation of nature. When these artistic traditions finally reached Europe and North America, their radical approaches to space, color and subject matter shook the Western tradition, revitalizing graphic design and penetrating the consciousness of painters from Monet to van Gogh.

Katsushika Hokusai (1760 – 1849), the ukiyo-e’s most prolific and renowned artist, produced an estimated 35,000 works during seven decades of ceaseless artistic creation. His images have matured into icons of world art, most famously his woodblock prints of Mount Fuji and its relationship with the surrounding villages and countryside. At the Sackler Gallery through June 17, “Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji” exhibits the full collection of Hokusai’s original prints, showcasing the intricate beauty, intimacy and grandiosity of these masterworks. They will leave you swooning and weak in the knees, enraptured by their ephemeral delicacy like a cherry blossom’s silky petals caught in spring’s first light.

Mount Fuji occupies a special place in Japanese culture. The ancient Japanese were sun worshipers and in the bustling city of Edo (modern Tokyo), this 12,000-foot volcano, resting like a lazy giant in the distant landscape, was the first piece of earth to catch light from the rising sun. A lifetime resident of Edo, Hokusai was intimately familiar with Mount Fuji’s snowcapped crest when he finally immortalized it in his print series at the age of seventy.

As a teenager, Hokusai apprenticed with a woodblock engraver, but quickly shifted his efforts to drawing and painting. Like most ukiyo-e artists, his career began as an illustrator for yellowbacks—cheap novelettes named for the color of their covers—before moving into illustrations for the major novelists of the day.

Hokusai’s work spanned the gamut of ukiyo-e subjects: album prints, genre scenes, historical events, landscape series, paintings on silk and privately commissioned prints for special occasions called surimono. Well regarded throughout Japan, his model books for amateur artists were very popular, as were his caricatures of occupations, customs and social behavior. From age twenty until the year of his death, Hokusai illustrated over 270 titles, including several books of his own art.

“But nothing I did before the age of seventy was worthy of attention,” said Hokusai, who envisioned his artistry maturing well past his centennial. Indeed, in the last two decades of his life Hokusai produced his finest work, unrivaled within the genre as the apex of the ukiyo-e tradition.

What Hokusai manages to capture in these prints precedes Impressionism in capturing the fleeting wonder of natural phenomena, realizing the texture and mood of atmosphere, seasonality, temperature and light. (It’s worth noting that Hokusai was actually rather familiar with European and Chinese art when he made these prints, as his country had by then opened international trade relations in some capacity, allowing glimpses of foreign artistic traditions.) In studying the mountain and its relationship to the surrounding world, Hokusai shows us the serenity and violence, the danger, mystery and allure of our natural world.

Perhaps another aspect of Hokusai’s genius was in bringing the tonal reservation and transient effusiveness of painting together with the bold, clean linear image-making and stark visual clarity of prints. The prints perfectly depict the external appearances of nature and symbolically interpret the vital energy forces found in the sea, wind and clouds.

In “The Waterwheel at Onden” and “In the Mountains of Totomi Province,” the sinewy legs and worn bodies of the laborers give way to serene facial expressions, a common thread throughout the series, as if the physical burden of the land is but an inevitable accessory to the life it sustains. The agonizing labor plainly and literally depicted, inconceivable in the reality of its strenuousness, goes almost unnoticed in the works’ overwhelming peace and inner beauty.

This cosmic push-pull between man and the larger forces of nature is fully realized in the breathtaking “Kajikazawa in Kai Province,” where a fisherman stands dwarfed atop a craggy rock jutting out from a violent sea, his fishing lines taut against the ocean’s current and caught in a heavy fog from which Mount Fuji barely emerges in the background.

One of the show’s last prints, “Sunset on Ryogoku Bridge,” shows a pale grey sky, with the wine-hued boldness of an unseen sun saturating the Prussian blue waters and glowing green bridge. Mount Fuji hovers like a deep, luminescent shadow behind a cluster of dim houses. An old man stands in his boat, leaning on his oar and staring at the distant mountain, as if overwhelmed by the site. It is a beauty he cannot resist. It is also a feeling that viewers can associate with: a sense of floating in time, in a reality beyond what we see before us.

Above all, Hokusai’s prints are studies in reservation, balance and ritual, mirroring the sentiments of his culture in his ceaseless, patient pursuit of Mount Fuji. The confluence of life, labor and the natural world press on, immortal but impermanent, much like the woodblock engravings from which the prints were forged, worn down with each unforgettable printing until its sharp-edged clarity vanished into but a vague impression of its past self.

“Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji” is on view at the Sackler Gallery through June 17. For more information visit Asia.SI.edu. [gallery ids="102450,121126,121120" nav="thumbs"]

Gary Tischler •

Lions and tigers and bears, oh my. Come January 29, there will be a similar song to sing at the National Gallery of Art: Picasso and Castiglione and the newly renovated French Galleries, oh me, oh my.

A rich time machine and evidential exhibition explores and nails down Pablo Picasso’s reputation as the greatest draftsman of the 20th Century in “Picasso’s Drawings, 1890-1921: Reinventing Tradition,” an exhibition of some 60 works, spanning the first 30 years of his career riding straight to the doorsteps of impending legend-hood.

In “The Baroque Genius of Giovanni Benedetto Castiglione,” lies an exploration of sources and influences, in the varied, kinetic exhibition with 80 works culled from the galleries extensive holdings of works by the Italian master, that also includes works by contemporaries and followers.

There is no title for the newly renovated and installed French Galleries, the culmination of a two-year project that enriches, rearranges and creates dialogue among the Gallery’s nearly 400 impressionist and post-impressionist holdings. “Greatest Hits” surely would not do, but the fact that the collection in the West Building’s second floor now carries with it a kind of path of themes, stories, and regularly spaced explosions of recognized and acknowledged masterpieces seems to demand a worthy title.

There is no connection among the two exhibitions and the reopening of the French galleries, although Picasso, among many, is a strong presence there—he is at once the Jesus and John the Baptist of modernism, after all. And you could easily plug in the energetic lines and brushstrokes present in almost all of Castiglione’s work to Picasso’s drawings to ignite a spark.

The boy genius is very much evident in the Picasso exhibition, as is the man who, if he did not entirely invent cubism, surely gave it a good kick into the stratosphere. It’s an interesting process to watch, from the perfectly and finely rendered work of an 11-year-old child to the cubist works where he swims like a fish on fire. There are many nudes and near classical drawings of women here that, whatever and whomever the drawing are about, are always at least a little (and often very) sexually charged. Picasso—with a reputation that might explain a lot—could manage the not-so-easy task of creating allure and sex appeal in a cubist woman, fully twisted in negligee and disquietingly recognizable nightwear, replete with all their jagged, ragged edges.

Picasso’s early lines—a bust infused with the classics surely remembered from his studies, a restrained portrait of a woman—are clean, and never quite without emotion. See the son and father self-portrait, and then a father rendered by the son. You will see the connection.

Giovanni Benedetto Castiglione lived through the better part of the 1600s and included among his sources Rembrandt’s religious works. Seen side by side, you can easily see the connection. But he was also a source of inspiration for later artists, most notably Tiepolo and the still later French painter Antoine Watteau.

He belongs in the baroque, in terms of a recognizable genre and style, and his themes and subjects are like that of his contemporaries, religious and familiar: The Adoration, The Gifts of the Magi, the Crucifixion, and nativities of all sorts. But there’s a difference beyond categorization. Castiglione’s works are never still, not even perhaps when they should be. There’s an electric current running through them—shepherds leaning to get a better look, figures stretching, on the move, necks craning, in scenes that are essentially moments of peace.

What is there to say about the French galleries? That you will be overwhelmed, awed, delighted or turned on? That you will be returning again and again, and so will everyone else? These artists speak to us, surely, but they speak to each other, too. In the gallery live Van Gogh, Gauguin and late Degas works, the one intense, the other pushy and Degas quietly off to the side, away from the noisy brawl.

There are so many paintings here that are almost cliché at this point: Renoir’s blue girl, the harlequins of Picasso. It’s almost as if you shouldn’t love them so much and move on to something important like the Oscar nominations. But they draw you in—Van Gogh’s self portrait, Renoir’s cityscapes, like Point Neuf paired with the Pont des Arts.

In many ways, the renovation is an exhibition, about the trip from the classics to the impressionists to the post-impressionists. It’s about stunning landscapes in the early days. It’s about women, most definitely. It is why, with every new movement in the fine art world, with every infatuation with the next big thing, we always come back here.

Many of the works in the galleries were on view while the work of restoration went on over the past two years in the West Wing, in the exhibition, “From Impressionism to Modernism: The Chester Dale Collection.” That installation was easily the best exhibition in Washington for the past two years.

In the French Galleries, it’s Degas, Monet, Manet and Matisse, oh my. And all the rest, oh my, oh my.

For more information visit NGA.gov.
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Gary Tischler •

History surrounds us in Washington, politics is the humidity of our daily lives as much as suffocating temperatures and the news—intimate, immediate, profoundly affecting—sit beside us at breakfast, lunch and dinner.

History, politics and the news are a part of the culture of the city as an atmosphere, and in actuality. All three are still on hand even as the tumult and shouting dies down only in degrees after the narrow avoidance of a U.S. debt default.

The divisions—deeply felt and deeply expressed, stringent and strident—which helped propel the crisis right to edge of a chasm, the politics that dictated the news and the horrific historic moment at hand could be seen quite literally in three different exhibitions which explore the historic, political and news-driven immediacy which is as much a part of our cultural existence as the neighborhoods where we sleep and live.

No one kept track, but it’s fair to think that Ronald Reagan’s name was invoked at least hundreds of times during the noisy debates, the constant press conferences, the news stories and blogs, more often than not by the Tea Party members who had taken his “small government” message to heart. Reagan, perhaps in ways not intended, was a source of inspiration during the debate that drove the debt ceiling crisis.

At the National Portrait Gallery, Ronald Reagan’s remarkable life and continuing legacy is being celebrated in the NPG’s marvelous one-room examination and exhibition “One Life: Ronald Reagan,” offering small clues about a larger-than-life persona.

On the flip side, the faces of the other contending political forces in the great national chasm can be seen up close and artistically, glowing with a certain kind of humanity, in the exhibition “Democratic Principles” at the Women’s National Democratic Club in Dupont Circle, a selection of 22 paintings of progressive political leaders.

The debt ceiling crisis was recorded with stark immediacy not only by the television and news writers but by press photographers, and some of their efforts (maybe the round of golf between POTUS and Boehner) will surely make their way into the next White House News Photographers Association annual “Eyes of History” show. You can see last year’s best of the best—a powerful mesh and mash of national, political and world news photography—at Pepco’s downtown Edison Place Gallery through Aug. 12.

During the debt ceiling battle, you might have thought that Reagan was the founder of the Tea Party, so often was his guiding principle of small government invoked. If you take a look around at the “One Life” exhibition, you’ll find he was much more than that, and not quite that, either. He had qualities, not just conservative principles, to commend him to the American public, a persona that projected strength and optimism that was part movie imagery, part down-to-earth-reality.

The exhibition shows his roots in small-town America in Illinois, his days as a radio sports caster in Des Moines, his years as a Hollywood actor of considerable renown, if not top-drawer star wattage, his days working for General Electric as a speaker and television host and his improbable second life as a master politician who won two terms as governor of California and President of the United States.

The imagery in this exhibition defines the man’s popularity, the way others saw him and to a great degree admired him once he entered the political arena. Look at some of the photographs here—Aaron Shikler’s Time Magazine painting of Reagan in an unbuttoned shirt and a big belt buckle, his hands in back pockets. Or a photo of Reagan doing some budget jawboning with then House Speaker Tip O’Neill, a classic portrait of two Irish-American polls—you see his self-evident charm and strength. Nowhere do you see, in the numerous photographs, paintings and portraits, an ounce of self-doubt.

This is the Reagan people will remember—you won’t find much of the contentiousness, the Iran Gate, the lack of empathy for America’s unfortunates here. This is the star wars, anti-Communist, “tear down the wall” warrior, the mourner in chief after the Challenger crash, the morning-in-America celebrator.

“One Life,” when it comes to most of its subjects, is celebratory in nature, and with Reagan, there’s no exception. It’s the public man on display, his sunny appeal that comes through; including his view that big government was the bane of American political life.

But perhaps the biggest thing—a certain kind of class that transcended politics and ideology—on display here is the handwritten letter to the American public in 1994 announcing that he had been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s at age 83. It was full of hope and buoyancy, without an ounce of self-pity, the kind of language and attitude that helped propel him to so much political success and the status of icon. (“One Life: Ronald Reagan” continues through May 28, 2012.)

There are also some icons on display in the “Democratic Principles” exhibition of paintings by Elizabeth McClancy, which focus on progressive leaders known for their support and defense of causes, groups and people in need of political defenders and supporters. Many of them are elected members of the U.S. Senate, one or two are legends, some are no longer with us, and one of them is the President of the United States.

The politics in this case are less interesting than the portraits which seem to define, in one painting, the essence of the subject. It’s a telling exhibition of faces of not only of Barack Obama, but the Lion of the Senate, Ted Kennedy, whom it is difficult not to imagine as a ghost on the Senate floor during the contentious debt debate. It includes former Secretary of State Madelaine Albright and the current Secretary of State Hilary Clinton and her husband, former President of the United States Bill Clinton, as well as current partisan battlers like Kerry, Leahy, Mikulski, Pelosi, Schumer and Boxer.

Given the astonishing amount of natural disasters, big news stories and political conflict and controversy that have taken place more than halfway into 2011, it’s difficult to look at the photographs in the “Eyes of History” exhibition without thinking of them as a piece of history, far removed from last week’s or next week’s turmoil, the next story, the next flood, the next Wall Street free fall.

Except, of course, that they’re not. Look at the series on American soldiers recovering from traumatic wounds and you can hear the mortars, the rapid fire in the mountains of Afghanistan. Look at the triumphant, then wan face of the president and it feels as if you’ve seen it just a moment ago, with more grey hair. Look at the angry and worried faces of people out of work, trying to get by and feed their families and you see not months ago, but now. The dramatic scenes of the Haitian earthquake still leaves footprints and is repeated in other disasters—the faces of the starving children of Somalia will surely be a part of the next “Eyes of History” gathering of photographs. [gallery ids="100266,107025,107022,107019" nav="thumbs"]

Gary Tischler •

The visual arts are the quiet arts, the arts of contemplation, the finished art.

When we see a painting in a gallery or a museum, a sculpture in a garden or a vast lawn, an installation wherever it’s installed, the artist is gone, finished and done, dead or alive. The visual arts are about viewing and taking it in, seeing, believing and feeling. We derive meaning from not just the work but from our own lives. In visual arts, the unfinished part of the painting is what we bring to it.
And what we bring to art varies from setting to setting, viewing to viewing, person to person; it’s as if a painting wiggled under the glare of a thousand stares and eyes. This is possibly why people buy art—ownership keeps out the democratic eyes of public spaces, making the work rare.

A Rembrandt on a wall by a staircase in a home is a little like a love song sung to no one in a forest. It is almost invisible, except for the owner and his visitors. A museum opens up the process, finishes it or keeps it going. Contemplation ensues, to be sure, but so does conversation and argument, the murmur of more than one presence.

Nothing proves the case more than a visit to the Louvre in Paris and the room housing the Mona Lisa. Hordes of tourists, sometimes the size of an entire residential block of Beijing, surround the rope that avoids close contact. Something happens to the Mona Lisa in this setting, it becomes both less and more mysterious—it sways with a certain imperiousness, but it also gets cut down to size among these multitudes.

Exhibitions at museums—and individual works at museums—alter the equations of visual arts. Museums in America exist at the pleasure of boards, regents, overseers, budget minders, and the trailing ends of the artistic process, the critics, scholars, historians and cultural observers. But most obviously, they exist for and at the mercy of people who come to museums to see paintings, drawings, sculptures and installations.

Visitors change museums as well as art and how we look at it. You can make yourself feel small at a museum, but you are never alone – unless they’ve locked you in. Your friends and neighbors and fellow citizens from all over the country and the world are here in these galleries, standing right next to the Rembrandt self portrait, sometimes posing, at other times puzzling over Pollock just like you did before you got smart and knowing and saw the Ed Harris movie.

In exhibitions, juxtapositions, like the wall descriptions, are important. It’s when you begin to realize the varieties of great art and how sometimes, some art is not so great when looked at from here and there, from far and close and next to other art. The National Gallery once had a show of two great German artists. One was Kate Kollwitz, the great, powerful maker of art, often in bold strokes and hammerings of chalk and black pencil, which cried out for justice in depictions of starving children, dying soldiers, striking miners and rageful peasants. Her work demanded, screamed for humanity. She lived to a ripe old age and died at the end of the Third Reich, and posters made from her work have often been seen at riots and demonstrations for social justice. She was juxtaposed with a small exhibition of Ludwig Kirchner – big, bold paintings of prostitutes, dancers and cabaret singers, the night life of Berlin. The works were musical, almost, full of gusto and energy and life. But Kirchner was also a German Jew who ended up committing suicide as Hitler’s Reich was picking up speed. Who’s the more life affirming in such a context?

I mention this because of the richness of museums in Washington and the regularities of exhibitions at the museums which freshen up the holdings and permanent collections like sparkling water in an exquisite garden. Exhibitions are the creations not only of the artists but the curators who set them in settings and create new ways of looking at old work. The works of old and new masters and reputations, whether belonging to Degas or Warhol, sometimes are restored, not by restorers, but by fresh eyes and different context so they can come to live again under the gaze of their admirers.

For the first installment of our fall visual arts prevue, we give you a quick look at exhibitions and events coming to a Washington museum.

ANDY (WARHOL) IS STILL DANDY

Nobody, certainly not Warhol himself, ever claimed that Andy Warhol had the gifts of a Picasso, a Da Vinci, a Renoir, or even a Rothko.

But there’s also no question that Warhol was one of the most influential artists of the latter part of the last century and into this one. He may not have been the best draughtsman ever or the most gifted painter, but he had his pale, white finger on the zeitgeist. If Warhol didn’t invent pop culture, he sold and marketed it like no artist before, during and since. Warhol made silk screens of money and Monroe and Jackie and Elvis and soup cans, making Lichtenstein’s pop art comic blowups and “pows” palatable and hot. Warhol hooked up low/high art to commerce, ignited America’s still-flaming worship of celebrity by turning it into an aspiration; Kim Kardsashian and Snookie are his illegitimate cultural children. I recall a fairly comprehensive Warhol exhibition at the Corcoran a number of years ago sponsored by PNC Bank with the CEO speaking in front of blowups of Warhol’s Ben Franklins, saying “I always wanted to stand in front of one of those marking the marriage of marketing, money and Warhol.”

He’s still with us, pale and glowing even in death. The National Gallery of Art is hosting the first exhibition examining Warhol’s works centered around news headlines appropriately entitled “Warhol: Headlines” (Sept. 25 though Jan. 2). The Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden is also touching base with Warhol with an exhibition of 102 silkscreened and hand-painted canvases of distorted images of shadows created in his studio (Sept. 25 through Jan. 15).

“Shadows” will be unique and big—the works are edge-to-edge and will extend 450 feet around the curved Hirschhorn galleries. The “Headlines” show is no small thing either—some 80 paintings and drawings, photographs, prints, film and video works all based on Enquirer-like headlines. The pieces are dovetailed with Warhol’s obsession with the sensational or trivial-made-sensational side of news running from news of Princess Margaret’s baby, to Eddie Fisher’s breakdown to plane crashes, all grist for Warhol’s star-grinding mill. It was Warhol who said that everyone would be famous for 15 minutes during their lives—which means the Kardashians are way overdue to crash into obscurity.

The two exhibitions follow a successful run of the musical “Pop” at the Studio Theater located brashly in Warhol’s factory where outrageous things happened, including the near-assassination of Warhol.

DEGAS AND MARIONI AT THE PHILLIPS COLLECTION

You may not be able to make a direct connection between the legendary French impressionist painter Edgar Degas and modernist Joseph Marioni except that Duncan Phillips, the founder of the Philips Collection, liked them both, and in its 90th anniversary year, the gallery is doing both proud.
The Phillips has Degas’ famed “Dancers at the Barre,” highlighting the painters obsession with ballet to the gratitude of the art world, and has built an exhibition around that obsession with “Dancers at the Barre: Point and Counterpoint” (Oct. 1 through Jan. 8).

The exhibition features drawings, studies and related work and was sparked by a careful attempt at correcting time-caused aging in the “Barre” painting. The result is an exhibition that renews interest in the Degas-Phillips connection and Degas’ great and shining works—paintings sculptures and drawings—on the theme of ballet the first major exhibition in 25 years on the subject.

Acclaimed modernist Joseph Marioni will have 15 recent, glowing, monochrome paintings on display at the Phillips (Oct. 20 through Jan. 29), alongside the artist’s existing 30 works from the museum collection.

30 AMERICANS AT THE CORCORAN

In a kind of artistic echo of the completion and opening of the Martin Luther King Jr. memorial, the Corcoran Gallery of Art is featuring several exhibitions on the theme of race and ethnicity. Chief among them is “30 Americans” (Oct. 1 through Feb. 12), a major survey of works by a number of the most important, established and young African-American contemporary artists of the last three decades.

The exhibition includes works by Nina Chanel Abney, Leonardo Drew, Renee Green, Nick Cave, Kalup Linzy, Jeff Sonhouse and Purvis Young among a large group of artists. Sarah Newman, the curator of Contemporary Art at the Corcoran said that the exhibition explores “how each artist reckons with the notion of identity in America, navigating such concerns as the struggle for civil rights , sexuality, popular culture and media imagery.”

Also on tap are “Strange Fruit,” an exhibition of some 15 new photographs and video works by Hank Willis Thomas, exploring how spectacle and display relate to African American identity (Oct. 1 through Jan. 16); and “Gordon Parks: Photographs from the Collection,” an exhibition of photo essays on civil rights from the Corcoran Collection (Oct. 1 through Jan. 16).

MORE AT THE NGA

Some of the finest Gothic-era tapestries in the world will be on display at the National Gallery of Art.
“The Invention of Glory: Afonso V and the Pastrana Tapestries” will feature four recently restored monumental tapestries which commemorate the conquest of four cities in Morocco by Afonso V of Portugal. (Sept. 18 through Jan. 8).

On a very different note separated by a number of centuries will be “Harry Callahan at 100,” an exhibition of some 100 photographs on the noted photographer’s centenary of his birth. (Oct. 2 through March 4).

The show will reach across Callahan’s innovative, elegant photographic career from his days in Detroit, Chicago and Atlanta.

WPA’S OPTIONS 2011

The Washington Project for the Arts will present “Options 2011,” the 14th installment of its biennial exhibition of works by emerging and unrepresented artists from Washington, D.C., Maryland and Virginia (Sept. 15 through Oct. 19 at 629 New York Ave., 2nd floor).
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Gary Tischler •

When Arena Stage brought back its hugely successful season and theater opening production of the very-much-a-staple Rodger Hammerstein musical “Oklahoma” for a late summer run, the theater community stood up and took notice.

Theater folks noticed too that Woolly Mammoth had also done a similar thing bringing back its production of Bruce Norris’s Pulitzer-Prize winning “Clybourne Park” to record-breaking (for Woolly) box office success. Both productions brought back original casts and energized productions. People saw a trend.

In truth, while innovative and smart marketing and scheduling strategies may have been at work, what happened wasn’t really new. Arena Stage, in fact, had been doing a similar thing with productions of “Crowns,” the popular musical about the importance of hats in the lives of African American women.

In theater, in fact, the adage that “everything old is new again” is the life blood, the bread and butter, the staple of theater world. What Arena and Woolly did was to bring back almost identical versions of the plays they had already done, thinking correctly that a larger audience as well as a repeat audience remained for the two plays. They were right. But theater exists on reviving, re-doing, and returning to a repertoire of plays and musicals that make up the core of what theater does on Broadway, in regional companies, in dinner theaters, amateur companies, high school and college. Road companies of big hit Broadway musicals are hugely profitable, same-version, different casts of eagerly awaited shows.

The staple of classic and therefore “old” theater literature are revisited time and time again over the centuries and decades—that’s why we have theater companies whose repertoire is rooted in Shakespeare, Shaw, the Greeks and American classics by O’Neill, Miller and others.

The reliance on the old and familiar—along with revisits that cast fresh light on the old plays—make new plays all the more thrilling because we don’t know how the story ends, what the characters will say or do, and we haven’t heard the songs by new composers and lyricists sung and played. This mix and mash of old and new is the heart of theater—we find surprises in the way an actor might play Hamlet—in fact hope for it—and are surprised how familiar and close to our lives the work of a new playwright is.

Every theater season begins with those anticipations of the familiar, the hope for surprise and connection and, of course, all of it accompanied by the possibility of awe and wonder, of moments in the dark that will lie in our memories like special dreams, the come-and-go moments for which, as I’ve noted elsewhere, there is no app.

The season kicks off with a hefty mix of old and new. Here, with some things to look forward and backward to.

SILENT SHAKESPEARE AT SYNETIC

Synetic Theatre, headed by the dynamic husband-wife team of Paata and Irina Tsikurishvili from the Republic of Georgia, has become and always was just about the most innovative, beyond-category theater company in the Washington area.

Whether performing at its original Church Street locale, at the Kennedy Center, in Shirlington or its new digs in Crystal City, the company has propelled a mix of mime, choreographed movement and spectacle to create its own kind of (classical, but silent) theater, borrowing its subjects from sources that include classic Russian literature, Dante, Cervantes and Shakespeare.

Its productions have reaped dozens of Helen Hayes Awards and almost instantaneous and consistent critical acclaim. Synetic’s form of theater is new, but its base subject is classical theater, minus the words. This brings new meaning to Hamlet’s “The Rest is Silence,” a play Synetic did ALL in silence.
The company is kicking of its 2011-2012 season with three best-of productions under the banner of “Speak No More,” three of its most popular versions of Silent Shakespeare, its 2008 production of “Macbeth” (Sept. 14 through Oct. 2); its 2010 production of “Othello” (Oct. 19 through Nov. 6) and its 2008 production of “Romeo and Juliet” (Nov. 25 through Dec. 23).

Synetic covers the criteria—everything really old is really new again and again—and again.

FRIENDS, WASHINGTONIANS AND COUNTRYMEN : IT’S FREE!

Michael Kahn’s Washington Shakespeare Company is presenting its 21st Annual Free for All. This time “Julius Caesar” is doing the honors and also kicking off the company’s 25th anniversary season.
This Julius is a revival of the critically acclaimed 2007-2008 production and will be performed at Sidney Harman Hall through Sept. 4. The Bard’s best play about politics and ambition echoes mightily, featuring as it does among its main characters honorable Republican senators whose fears of centralized government leads them astray. But that’s just one man’s opinion David Paul directs with a cast led by Aubrey Deeker, Tom Hammond and Tyrone Henderson.

ON THE ROAD AGAIN WITH LES MISERABLES AND THE JERSEY BOYS OR UP THE BARRICADES AND WALK LIKE A MAN

It’s a 25th anniversary for the Cameron McIntosh juggernaut “Les Miserables” and for the occasion there’s a brand new fully-staged production of the legendary Boubil & Schonberg operatic musical which set records in London, on Broadway and in dozens of road companies. The tale of the escaped convict (serving time for stealing a loaf of bread) Jean Valjean and his nemesis the relentless Inspector Javert is epic in scale with soaring songs a plot to fill several books by Victor Hugo and spectacle that stirs the heart and mind, and songs and music that make you want to run to the barricades (or from them, depending). Set in 19th Century France during yet another revolutionary time, the songs include “On My Own,” the stirring “Bring Him Home” and last but not least, “Can You Hear the People Sing.” If you can’t, you need a hearing aid.

It all happens at the Kennedy Center’s Opera House (Sept. 28 through Oct. 30).

If Victor Hugo isn’t your cup of tea, how about them boys from Jersey, as in “The Jersey Boys,” the earthy, hit-rich musical that traces the success, pitfalls, rags-and-juvie-to-riches story of Franki Valli and the Four Seasons, arguably one of America’s biggest rock-pop bands ever, not excluding their peers The Beach Boys.

The hugely popular show returns to the National Theater for quite a long stint and why not. (Nov. 10 through Jan. 7). Walk like a man, my friend.

HOLLY TWYFORD DIRECTS

Holly Twyford is one of the most gifted, eclectic actresses on the Washington theater scene who’s done just about everything except have her own reality show; from Shakespeare to an outrageous Woolly play to a gig as a dancing pig at Adventure Theater, she has plenty to round out her resume. What she hasn’t done is direct, and she’s taking care of that with her directorial debut at No Rules Theater Company, named Outstanding Emerging Theatre Company.

That would appear to be a nice fit for Twyford, who’s always been a little edgy and is now directing Diana Son’s “Stop Kiss,” a play about two women, a scattered New York City traffic reporter and a St. Louis school teacher, who meet and fall in love. “The play chose me,” Twyford said. She had appeared in the play ten years ago. “The play had been special to me when I was in it and to be able to help shape the entire telling of this beautiful story as much as a director can was a chance I couldn’t pass up,” (Sept. 7 through Oct. 2).

HISTORY IN THE MAKING AT SIGNATURE (AGAIN)

Signature, no slouch in the ambition department, will be by all accounts the first theater to present two original world premiere musicals in repertory by presenting “The Hollow,” and “The Boy Detective Fails,” now in prevues.

“The Hollow,” with a book by Hunter Foster and music and lyrics by Matt Conner, is based on the Washington Irving Sleepy Hollow story and features a headless horseman but not Johnny Depp (through Oct. 16, directed by Eric Schaeffer).

“The Boy Detective Fails,” with a book by Joe Meno and Music and Lyrics by Adam Gwon, is about self-styled boy detective Billy Argo, who must face the shocking death of his partner-in-crime-solving and sister. Ten years later, he’s on the case (through Oct. 16, directed by Joe Calarco).

BERNIE MADOFF AT THEATER J

One of the more anticipated plays of the season is coming to Theater J where Bernie Madoff in his new home, a jail cell, will make an appearance in Deb Margolin’s “Imagining Madoff,” a play which posits Madoff setting the record straight and telling the story of an interview with Holocaust survivor, poet and investment client Solomon Galkin.

Bernie Madoff defrauded clients for hundreds of millions of dollars in a vast Ponzi scheme and he didn’t’ quibble, destroying friends, family, charities and celebrities with quiet gusto. Rick Foucheux stars as Madoff, artist-in-residence and Washington favorite Jennifer Mendenhall plays Madoff’s secretary, and Alexandra Aron directs. (Aug. 31 through Sept. 25)

BOOKS BURN AT ROUND HOUSE

Ray Bradbury, now in his 90s and still writing, has often been pigeonholed as a writer of science fiction novels and short stories through his long career (“The Martian Chronicles” “Something Wicked This Way Comes”). But in truth, he’s been much more than that; celebrator of literary favorites, teller of Irish tall tales, and prophet might be good, for starters.

Long ago, he wrote a slim novel imagining a world in which firemen occupied themselves with burning books by state directive because, well, you know, books are dangerous things. (Bradbury did not, however, envision Kindle as far as we know). The book became a haunting, if imperfect, film directed by Francois Trufautt and starring Oscar Werner and Julie Christie. The writing in the book and the images from the film are haunting.

Now Round House Theater in Bethesda is staging Bradbury’s own theatrical adaptation of the novel, a multi-media production incorporating cutting edge video, projection and a sound design created by the Savannah College of Art and Design.

Sharon Ott directs with a cast that includes Katie Atkinson and John Lescault, among others (Sept. 7 through Oct. 9)

A “PARADE” OF A DIFFERENT SORT AT FORD’S THEATRE

The trial and lynching of Leo Frank in early 20th-century Atlanta seems an unlikely subject for a Broadway musical, but the show, with music and lyrics by Jason Robert Brown and with Harold Prince as co-conceiver, won a Tony award for musical drama and is now getting a Washington premiere as a co-production with Theater J.

Frank was a Jewish factory manager who was accused of murdering a teenage girl on the day of the Confederate Memorial Day Parade.

The musical kicks off Ford’s 2011-2012 season and is also the first selection for Ford’s five-year “The Lincoln Legacy Project,” which aims to create a dialogue around the issues of tolerance, equality and acceptance (Sept. 23 through Oct. 30).

MICHAEL KAHN DIRECTS WORLD PREMIERE OF “THE HEIR APPARENT”

It’s not Shakespeare, it’s not even British, but it is old and funny. That would be “The Heir Apparent,” a variation of Jean-Francois Regnard’s 1708 comedy adapted by David Ives. It’s a play with a familiar plot—young swain wants to marry young girl, but needs an inheritance from his uncle who wants to, guess what, marry the young lady herself. Moliere made do with less and more, as did Shakespeare.
Michael Kahn, Washington Shakespeare Company’s Artistic Director for the past 25 years, will direct a cast that will include long-time D.C. favorites Floyd King and Nancy Robinette (Sept. 6 through Oct. 23 at the Lansburgh).

TED, DAVID AND ALLAN AT THE STUDIO THEATER

That would be actor Ted van Griethuysen, just hitting his stride, Studio Theater Artist Director David Muse, hitting his stride in his second year at Studio, and Playwright Alan Bennett, always in stride, whose “The History Boys” received a standout production here several years ago.

Muse is coming off a hugely successful production of “Venus in Fur” for Studio, and seems perfectly suited for Bennett’s brainiac, culture-buff comedy “The Habit of Art,” which includes as characters the British composer Benjamin Britten and poet-as-legend W.H. Auden (opens Sept. 7).

HOWARD SHALWITZ INVITES YOU TO THE WOOLLY APOCOLYPSE

That’s Howard Shalwitz talking about the 2011-2012 season, Woolly’s 32rd on planet Washington. “Join us as we mine our collective visions of apocalypse—and all the drama, jokes, and dreams they inspire.” First episode is “A Bright New Boise” by Samuel D. Hunter, directed by John Vreeke, where someone is summoning the rapture, right in the middle of a parking lot of a mega craft store in Boise, Idaho.

Gotta be there for that (Oct. 10 through Nov. 6).

HERE, THERE AND EVERYWHERE

Caryl Churchill of “Top Girls” fame kicks off the new season for Forum Theatre, now company in residence at the Round House Theatre’s Silver Spring location. Michael Dove directs Churchill’s “Mad Forest” while Rose McConnell, Alexander Strain, Heather Haney and Dana Levanovsky star (Sept. 22 through Oct. 15).

More at the Shakespeare Theatre Company: the musical “Fela!” returns to the United States, telling its tale of the legendary Nigerian musician Fela Kuti. It’s directed and choreographed by Bill T. Jones, kicking off a national tour at Sidney Harman Hall (Sept. 13 through Oct. 9).

“Ay Carmela!,” a U.S. premiere of a play by Spanish playwright Jose Sanchis Sinisterra, will kick off the Gala Hispanic Theatre’s season. It’s a play about the adventures—comic and romantic and dark all at once—about a pair of vaudevillians who find themselves in the midst of the bloody Spanish Civil War (Sept. 15 through Oct. 9).

The National Theater of China will present a production of “Two Dogs’ Opinions on Life,” an improvisational comedy that will be part of the Kennedy Center’s celebration of “China, the Art of a Nation” in September and October. “Two Dogs” will be performed at the Terrace Theater (Sept. 20 and 21 at 7:30 p.m. ). A second theater company, the Beijing People’s Art Theatre will perform “Top Restaurant” about the history of a Peking Roast Duck restaurant over half a century (Sept. 30 and Oct. 1 at 7:30 p.m., October 2 at 1:30 p.m.).
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Robert Sacheli •

If color is a language, then John Blee can be considered a lyric poet.
The Washington painter, whose solo exhibition will be seen at The Ralls Collection in October, produces abstracts lit with the sheen of a summer sunset.

Vivid oranges and yellows play against sky blues that shade into purples, punctuated by pinks that range from the palest of roses to vibrant corals. In less skillful hands, the effect could be garish. Instead, Blee’s colors, no matter how surprising their combinations, sing with an assured harmony.

“You paint out of the whole experience of your life,” says Blee, and an important part of that life was spent growing up in India and Pakistan, where his father was a State Department officer. “Indian color is off the scale—it’s not subdued,” he says, and his paintings reflect its sun-drenched intensity. Blee also points to the richly hued Indian Basohli miniature paintings of the 17th and 18th centuries as inspiration for his colors. His artwork—and life—is also informed by another influence nurtured during those years, the spirituality of India.

Blee counts among his mentors painter Helen Frankenthaler, whose work helped shape the Color Field movement of the 1940s and 50s. “I remember when I met [her], when I was still an art student. I found her color amazing. Colorists are very rare. I asked her how she chose colors and she replied it was like a poet choosing a word for a poem. I feel the same.”

Jane Roberts, whose Paris gallery hosted exhibitions of Blee’s work in 2008 and in June of this year, singles out his “supreme sense of color and light, like late Bonnard, whom he particularly loves. His paintings seem to glow from inside and have a joyous life of their own, unlike many abstract paintings which are merely formal exercises. A French collector, a busy lawyer, who bought a painting in 2008 told me that she has John’s painting opposite her desk and it literally calms her down after difficult meetings!”

Blee’s exhibition will focus on his latest works, paintings he groups into his “Orchard Suite,” whose genesis originated two years ago after seeing an exhibit of late Bonnards at the Metropolitan Museum of art. “There was one with a checked tablecloth in the bottom of the canvas with a still life on it,” Blee says. “It suggested to me the space of a landscape—the checks were like small farms seen from a mountain—and the fruit spilled over them the fruits of the land. From that picture I made ‘Eastern Orchard,’ the first of what I think of as my continuing suite”

“But,” he adds, “Klee in the series of ‘Magic Square’ pictures [of the 1920s and 30s] always has played inside of me. Those works are like the purest sounds in music and they deeply engage me. I first started looking at Klee seriously when I was 14 or 15 in Delhi and bought a book of his work, my first thick art book. I still look at it.” The rhythmically deployed, rectangular forms that appear in much of Blee’s work often echo Klee.

Gallery director Marsha Ralls finds other parallels in the “Orchard Suite” paintings: “These particular works of John’s really are a continuation of the Washington Color School. The color really glows.”

The series also has literary roots, a 1920s collection of French-language poems by writer Rainer Maria Rilke, grouped under the title The Orchard. “The word ‘orchard’ has a sense of the seasons to me, of ripening and flowering,” says Blee. “It encompasses fruition, growth, decay, and transformation.”

That John Blee’s paintings are underscored by both visual and literary sources—as well as philosophical ones—isn’t surprising. Spend time talking to him and he’ll weave a rich thread of references that range from Baudelaire to poet Hilda Morley to Hindu mythology to Braque. It’s this sense of connection and synthesis that fuels Blee’s creativity.

“I believe very strongly that all the arts, though focused differently, have the same source. We speak in words, and where words are the most like painting is in poetry. It is not just or solely the images of poetry, it is the power of language itself. For me music and dance and theater are all the same as poetry and painting.”

Blee says that “in the New York School of painting, which I descend from, as with the [pre-World War I] School of Paris, poets have allied themselves with painters and vice versa. I read Frank O’Hara’s criticism in art magazines when I was a kid in Delhi. All my own critical work is based on those pieces, the verbal part anyway. O’Hara had a real love of painting that I share. His poetry is very much alive and accessible in the moment, coming right from life and spilling out.”

“Rilke, though, was a far greater influence,” he says. “I read him first as a late teen, and really only began to ‘get’ him after a year or two. But his vast poetic landscape and a desire to go beyond all and put it together in a larger vision has always been part of my own search in my painting.”

“For me, the poet of my own life is Hilda Morley whom I met at the artists’ colony Yaddo in 1973 and knew until her death in 1998. She knew all the New York painters and composers and had been married to composer Stefan Wolpe. She was the real thing. Her poetry mirrored the New York School of painting. One needs living examples to understand this complicated thing called ‘life,’ and being an ‘artist’ is not something that is easy. Hilda knew instinctually how to carry on and to be.”

John Blee seems to have taken the lesson of “how to carry on and to be” to heart. He’s one of the city’s most notable painters, selected by critic and writer F. Lennox Campello among those included in his new book, 100 Artists of Washington, D.C. The top-floor studio of his house (whose color-splashed floor is a painting in itself) is filled with works in progress. He’s found a rewarding avenue in the courses he teaches at U.D.C and the Art League of Alexandria. And there’s always that next painting on the horizon, another opportunity, as Blee says, “to put the impossible in front of you, to aim as high as you can.”

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John Blee’s work can be seen in “20 Years, 20 Artists at The Ralls Collection” through Sept. 24. Dates for his October exhibition are to be announced. (The Ralls Collection, 1516 31st St., NW, RallsCollection.com)
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Georgetowner •

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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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"]