Charlotte Segal Artist Retrospective at ARC

Charlotte Segal is having a retrospective exhibit at the ARC Gallery in Chicago, Illinois opening this Friday, May 28, 2010. She's a wonderfully lyrical artist.

20th Evanston + Vicinity Biennial 2010

Jurors John Himmelfarb, Chicago artist, and Julie Rodrigues-Widholm, MCA Curator, selected this painting, "The Dreamer and The Dream," 2009, 30"x44", oil wash, pencil, prismacolor on 90# Stonehenge, for inclusion in the Evanston Art Center's Biennial.

Reception Sunday May 23 from 1 to 4, the show runs from then 'til June 27.

The venue is free and it has parking in an absolutely awesome location, 2603 Sheridan Road, Evanston, Illinois.

Free Art Sucks What?

I have argued in a previous post "Why Museums Need to be Free." Here's an interesting counter-argument by Mat Gleason in Coaguala Art Journal, Issue #98, with the title of "Free Art Sucks. Take My Money and Get out of My Way. Mr. Gleason describes attending a Culver City Art Walk., ". . .the art had actually been pretty good. . .oh sure, some trash here or there, some rentals by the trustafarians and some grad school masturbation, but, all in all the art was a good slice of L.A. Contemporary."

This could, without the L.A. Contemporary, describe art walks I've attended here in Chicago, ArtWalk Ravenswood (an event I have participated in for the past 6 years and will do so into the future), the oldAround the Coyote, open Fridays at the Flat Iron Building in Wicker Park (where my gallerist, Gary Marr's Sapere space is) or in Pilsen, Chicago Arts District. It's all there, the grad school masturbation, regurgitations of anime, and on and on.

Then Mr. Gleason opines that the experience of attending the art walk as a free event cheapened it by making so accessible to the public, "Would you rather pay five or ten dollars and bump up against strollers and suburbanites or pay a hundred dollars to see an art show and have twenty people tops, silence, the option of curatorial commentary straight from the source and maybe a nice dinner out of the deal?"

He goes on, "Idiots are pulling art down to their level, demanding artists and galleries make the exhibition experience a potty-training exercise for the eyes without the psychological damage. The art has followed suit and is made for imbeciles by the addled, dull and fearful in the hopes of narcissistic hunger being satisfied and a few bucks made on the side. The great art is out there and it is time for people to get fucking angry and elite about it."

I argue something a bit different, yes, there's a lot of bad stuff out there, and we have a potential mass audience desperately in need of art training and art appreciation. The only way to do that is make the art accessible at free or nearly free museums and art events.

Judith Roth and the Power of the Uh-Oh

Artist, Judith Roth, "Seated Dancer on Green Chair", 2009, 48"x50", oil on canvas, currently on display at A.R.C. Gallery, Chicago until February 27, 2010, as part of a group exhibit, "Off Center" under the auspices of the Chicago Women's Caucus for Art.

Judith Roth is a classically trained artist, out of the Boston Museum School and Skowhegan. Perhaps uniquely nowadays, she works exclusively from live models, even in this age of the ubiquitous and multiple photo realities.

The real title of this piece could be "Uh-Oh and Proud of It." If you look closely,  you can see that this work of art is a diptych, made up of two canvases, there's a joint that you can see in the right side foot. Judith started the piece and ran out of room to finish. A lesser artist would have repainted and in so doing, adjusted the scale to fit the existing canvas. But what Judith did instead, in a flash of creative problem solving, was run to get a second canvas to extend the scale of the work. In so doing, she honored and preserved the immediacy of the marks and trusted her eye and hand. She trusted her years of painting and drawing.

Just for grins is a work on paper by Ida Appelbroog, demonstrating much the same happy accident.

Robert Motherwell Wisdom

[caption id="attachment_818" align="aligncenter" width="408" caption="Image by Robert Motherwell, from the Lyric Suite, Ink on Japanese Paper."][/caption]

From "On the 'Lyric Suite.'" 1969, essay excerpted in The Writings of Robert Motherwell, edited by Dore Ashton with Joan Banach, University of California Press, 2007.

"On an impulse one day in a Japanese shop in N.Y.C., where I was buying a toy for a friend's child, I bought 10 packets of 100 sheets each of a Japanese rice paper called "Dragons & Clouds". . .

"Some weeks later--early in April, 1965, it came to me in a flash: PAINT THE THOUSAND SHEETS WITHOUT INTERRUPTION, WITHOUT A PRIORI TRADITIONAL, OR MORAL PREJUDICES OR A POSTERIORIONES, WITHOUT ICONOGRAPHY, AND ABOVE ALL WITHOUT REVISIONS OR ADDITIONS UPON CRITICAL REFLECTION AND JUDGEMENT. GIVE UP ONE'S BEING TO THE ENTERPRISE AND SEE WHAT LIES WITHIN WHATEVER IS IS. VENTURE. DON'T LOOK BACK. DO NOT TIRE. EVERYTHING IS OPEN. BRUSHES AND BLANK WHITE PAPER!"

Inchoate Jargon

[caption id="attachment_816" align="aligncenter" width="517" caption="Painting--Nancy Charak, 2010, Primordial Soup 10, 16"x14", watercolor, pencil, prismacolor on birchwood panel."][/caption]

At Sapere Gallery, 1579 N. Milwaukee, Chicago, IL.

The annual College Art Association conclave (CAA) has been meeting in Chicago, so as a committed former member I went to a couple of the free panels. On Thursday, February 11, the panel was "Investigating the Need for Women's Art Galleries, Exhibitions, and Organizations: From our Center." Joyce Owens, Beate Minkovski, Amy Galpin and Joanna Gardner Huggett were on the panel. While the conversation and audience response went somewhat off target (as such are prone to do), there was general agreement that until such time as the high-end market (galleries and museums) is completely responsive to the work of so-called minority artists whose voices have been squelched, then so-called alternative spaces will be necessary.

My own added view is that the member institutions of the CAA graduate so damned many artists out of its BA and MFA programs that there is in essence an over-supply of very, very good, well trained people. The CAA should be teaching artists what the realities of the job markets are.

Then I went to another panel discussion yesterday, Saturday, February 13, titled "Feminist Painting, What Does it Mean to Paint Like a Woman and How Might that Differ from Painting as a Feminist?" That room was jam packed, standing room only. The panelists, Harmony Hammond,Carrie Moyer, Paula Wilson and Amy Sillman offered up what I can only summarize as "inchoate jargon." At one point the question was asked and answered whether or not this particular panel could have been titled something like being about lesbian or queer art. In addition to the mind numbing jargon there was constant reference to the battles of the 70s, 80s and 90s. My thought is that women have been making art much, much longer and I would have liked a longer historical perspective rather than one tied to the academic squabbles.

A quote was offered up from, I believe, Arthur Danto, that for a woman to engage in abstract expressionism, which is my oeuvre, is for her to engage in aesthetic cross dressing. I had to do everything in my control to keep from blowing my lunch. I'm not saying that I didn't understand what the panelists were talking about, because I did; what I couldn't deal with was the fixation on the academic squabbles, of the big fight against the male dominated establishment, which clearly still isn't won, as evidenced by the talk in the other panel discussion that I attended, of the continuing need for alternative spaces.

My last plaint is that each of the artists, perhaps logically, talked almost totally about their own work, with some slight references to those women who have gone before. I wanted to stand up and shout out the following names, Helen Frankenthaler, Linda Karshan, Sandra Blow, Katherina Grosse, Joan Mitchell, Pat Steir, and Agnes Martin.

Judith Roth and Joyce Owens Two of My Favorite Artists

[caption id="attachment_810" align="aligncenter" width="450" caption="Joyce Owens, A Love Puzzle"][/caption]

Joyce Owens and Judith Roth, two of my favoritest artists are being honored today by the Chicago Women's Caucus for the Arts for Excellence in the Arts at the Chicago Cultural Center at 4:00 pm today. I won't miss this.

[caption id="attachment_812" align="aligncenter" width="400" caption="Judith Roth, the Tangle"][/caption]

Judith and Joyce are artists, advocates and educators. They believe in and act on the power of community for artists, women and minorities. They care about art and artists of all stripes and colors. I am proud and pleased and honored to know them and to call them friends.