Bravo's Work of Art 2

In this latest episode of Bravo's new , art inspired reality show, Work of Art, the photographer Mark Velasquez was eliminated.  Being the only photographer of this show I was hoping his work would be better and he would last. Photography has always been the step child of the fine art world and unfortunately, Mark didn't help the cause.

With a BFA from Cornish College of the Arts focusing on drawing, sculpture and performance art, I expected his work to be more "artistic" and less commercial and obvious. He taught himself photography and by looking at his portfolio on Bravo's site his work is good but not inspired.
He is the perfect example of what I said about this show from the start, there is  no heart in the artwork.

Ross Bleckner fromInfo  the website The Daily Beast said the show "Brought back many memories.
Unfortunately, they were all memories of my junior and senior year in high school."
 I have to agree, it is so contrived and formulated that it really gives the art world a black eye. Most artists create to express some inner desire or demon they need to expose to the world. Well at least that is true in my case. But, art is passion, it is desire, it is showing the world something it has never seen or in a way that it has never seen. Not this, "here is your assignment for today, take $100 and do to it" approach.

Bleckner puts it like this, "The show doesn't make you want to be an artist because "making it," according to this formula, requires competitiveness and pandering to a small cabal of teacher-judges, the so-called experts, who bark "time's up!"

Just in case you are thinking that he is just some critic busting on the show, Ross Bleckner is a well-known artist whose works have been shown in several institutions throughout the world, including MoMA, MoCA, Astrup Fearnley, Museo National Centro de Arte Reina Sofia, and the Whitney Museum of American Art. He is also recognized as the youngest artist ever to have a solo exhibition at the Guggenheim Museum in New York.


I think this show will actually hurt museum patronage becasue of all the art bullshit.
Listen to how the artists explain their work, or how the judges talk about it. It's all bullshit to make normal people afraid to try and express themselves artistically or try and view art in museums. This is the reason so many people don't go to art galleries. They feel they are not "getting" the work so why bother. But if people would go and experience the works in our galleries and museums they will find that they will appreciate them on their own level, whatever that may be.

Don't let shows like this stop you from going to your local art museum or gallery. Here, in Philadelphia, we are lucky to have one of the countries foremost museums and a few areas loaded with smaller art galleries.

So where does the show go from here? The final challenge is coming up and I am curious to see what art speak will come out of Mile's mouth and if Jaclyn will take her clothes off again. But of course she is really shy about her body.  And what about Peregrine, I wonder what bizarre outfit she'll wear to show she is an artist.

I know I am slamming this show as I feel it really doesn't help bring art to the masses. It's one thing to do a competition about making a dress, it's another to create a real work of art. 

Only a few episodes left in season 1, I wonder if there will be a season 2?

Press Release

For Immediate Release: July 20, 2010

Encore Exhibition Just Announced

ArtHouse Lounge curator Jason Piper has just announced the encore exhibition of last year’s critically and publicly acclaimed exhibition Censor This!


Piper has invited back photographic artist, Michael Barone of Perkasie, Bucks County, for another solo exhibition to open on the anniversary of his previously successful exhibition. "Censor This II, fetish and fantasy" is scheduled to open on August 14, 2010 at the ArtHouse lounge in Harrisburg, PA.


According to Piper, “Michael received an overwhelming response right here in Harrisburg, that's why we're hosting Censor This II, Fetish & Fantasy! Most nude photographers and artists use filters and props to blur, hide, color or distort areas to make the works more appealing and less controversial, but Barone does not. He is a true artist which is what drew me to the idea of working with him.”According to Barone’s artist statement, “With these works, I have deliberately pushed the boundaries, forcing the viewer to the position of voyeur, glimpsing into the private, intimate fetishes and fantasies of others. By doing so, the viewer is forced to confront his or her own raw feelings about sex. Whether these feelings leave the viewer moved by the beauty of the images or revolted by their own prejudices against human sexuality does not matter to me. I am simply interested in evoking strong emotional responses.”


Piper said. “I am an artist myself and I strive to uphold the First Amendment. There is no reason for me to have a gallery if it is going to be censored.”


Barone holds a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from the University of Delaware and over the last 25 years has been shown in numerous galleries and websites both national and internationally.


The opening artist’s reception of Censor This II is August 14, 2010 from 6 to 10 pm featuring live models serving champagne and hors d'oeuvres. The exhibition runs through September 11, 2010.


For information about this exhibition visit  ArtHouse Lounge  or Barone PhotoArt
 
The gallery is located at 217 N. 2nd St., Harrisburg, PA

Moscow Curators Fined.

Almost three years ago an exhibition opened in Moscow called “Forbidden Art” at the Sakharov Museum.  And this month the museum curators were convicted Monday of inciting religious hatred and fined. The 2007 exhibit was part of an effort to fight censorship of the arts, but the Russian Orthodox Church was horrified and brought the lawsuit against the curators. 

The exhibit featured several paintings with images of Jesus Christ. In one, Christ appeared to his disciples as Mickey Mouse. In another, of the crucifixion, the head of Christ was replaced by the Order of Lenin medal, the highest award of the Soviet Union.

The Russian Orthodox Church is very conservative and politically powerful in Russia and pushed prosecutors to bring charges in 2008 and then kept up their pressure on the two curators throughout the trial.

Artists and human rights activists have appealed to the Kremlin to put a stop to the prosecution of Yury Samodurov and Andrei Yerofeyev, warning of censorship that was very prevalent during the days of the Iron Curtain and the Soviet Union. The prosecutors refused to back down under pressure from the church and last week the curators were ordered only to pay fines of up to 200,000 rubles, (about $6500) but they could have been sentenced to up to three years in prison. 

Yerofeyev said the aim of the “Forbidden Art” exhibit, which showed works that had been banned from shows at major museums and galleries in 2006, was to show the reality of censorship. Religion was not the intended theme, he said. The Mickey Mouse as Jesus painting was intended to show the mixing up of facts in a child’s mind. A child hears about the Bible from his parents while watching Mickey Mouse cartoons and gets confused. 

The Russian orthodox Church is a very powerful presence in Russia today. “The church has become an instrument of censorship like it was during czarist times,” said Gleb Yakunin, 76, a priest and Soviet-era dissident who has broken with the church. “It wants to control culture.”

Like the US court case in Cincinnati 20 years ago, when Dennis Barrie and the Contemporary Arts Center were indicted for pandering obscenity just hours after the opening of the photography exhibit, Robert Mapplethorpe: The Perfect Moment, this case can have a serious ripple effect on not only the art world in Russia but throughout the world.  

How many curators and artist with now take a risk and show work that could land them in jail and be forced to endure a trial and public scorn and ridicule? 
 Leonid Bazhanov, director of the National Contemporary Art Center, said a guilty verdict would make Russia less competitive in the world art market. Foreign artists would be wary of bringing their works to Russia, while more Russian artists would leave the country, he said. Maybe this is what the church wants.

This censorship battle maybe taking place in Russia, but as an artist I feel the heat right here in our country. What is happening in Russia is actually happening in the US today. The right-winged Christian conservatives are pushing their morality on the judicial system. They are using their voice and power to dictate their small minded agenda on the art world, persecuting artists who show work that in their eye is obscene.

In all the advertising hype over us being in a war they always talk about the soldiers are fighting for our freedoms,but this type of censorship slaps the face of those freedoms. We have soldiers dying every day to protect our way of life but the conservative cancer is eating it away from the inside.

Sometimes when I write this blog I feel like I am waging an unwinnable war with very few people supporting this cause. Show your support, visit an art gallery or chime in on a social networking site or my blog.

 
(Photo credit and comment - Yury Samodurov gestures as he and other human rights activists gather outside a Moscow courthouse during a court hearing of Samodurov's case. (AP Photo/Ivan Sekretarev, file)

Reality TV hits art world

I have recently started to watch the newest reality TV show from Bravo, "Work of Art; The Next Great Artist". Bravo brought together the production company of Sarah Jessica Parker, Pretty Matches, together with the Emmy-nominated Magical Elves who produces "Top Chef" and "Project Runway" This hour long contest pits artists against each other to produce artwork alla Project Runway. The format is almost exactly the same but instead of clothing these artists are supposed to be making works of art. The winner of the competition gets a solo exhibition at the Brooklyn  Museum and a cash award. The casting of course was picked to get some variety so you have the older fine artist, the whacked performance artist and everything in between.

I think I am enjoying  the show, but as an artist myself I find most of these artists missing the mark on the assignments.  What I see lacking in the work so far is heart. To me an artist is someone who visualizes what is in their heart and soul. There is no heart or soul in the artwork shown so far.

This last episode was really bad as the artist were to make "shocking art" but then Bravo censored the images on the broadcast, Huh? Why even have the episode if you are going to censor it. And besides, not a single piece was shocking. The winner of the competition was according to the judges,  the most shocking but really missed. His concept was wonderful but execution failed. It really felt as if  this episode was a promotion for photographer Andres Serrano. If you don't know his name you'll know one of his pieces. His most famous is "Piss Christ", a photograph of a plastic crucifix submerged in a glass of his own urine. This caused great controversy when first exhibited. The work was sold for $162,000 in December 1999 in London.
(An aside here, Andres Serrano needs to come to my exhibit in August and see where the cucifix is submerged!)

Anyway, I digress. The show is supposed to push the artist to create works of art on a budget and on a time schedule. The budget part shouldn't be a problem for most artists becasue, lets face it, artwork isn't selling like it used to. The time crunch is interesting but for an artist with an idea and who can work smart, it shouldn't be a problem.

My problem with the show is not only the censorship by Bravo TV, but the lack of any real substance in the artwork so far produced and also the serious, TV attitude of the judges. There comments are rehearsed and practiced and really are meant only to keep the TV audience watching not to be a constructive critique of the artwork. From Bravo's website, the judges are as follow:

Hosting this new series is art enthusiast China Chow. She will serve on the judging panel alongside art luminaries Bill Powers, a New York Gallery owner and literary art contributor, Jerry Saltz, current art critic for New York Magazine, and Jeanne Greenberg Rohatyn, esteemed curator and owner of Salon94 gallery. World-renowned art auctioneer Simon de Pury adds his voice of experience as a mentor to the contestants.

So I am very curious to see how this reality show progresses and to see the impact, if any on the art world.

I am checking out Work of Art's website waiting for the application for the next season if there is one.
It might be time I put my camera where my mouth is, oh wait, I already do that.
August 14th, Censor This II, fetish and fantasy" opens at the ArtHouse Lounge in Harrisburg!

Looking to see you there!

Photograph above ©Bravo TV

Andy Warhol - Pro or Con

Recently the show,  History Detectives, launched its new show. They are investigating the claim that a ceramic chip, smaller than a postage stamp and bearing drawings by Andy Warhol, Robert Rauschenberg, Claes Oldenburg, David Novros, Forrest Myers, and John Chamberlain was secretly attached to the craft used for the 1969 Apollo 12 moon landing by an Grumman aerospace engineer. It is a cute story and should make for some possibly interesting TV since there really isn't anything else on.
But reading about this made me think a bit more about Andy Warhol himself and my thoughts on him as an artist.


We all have seen his Campbell's Soup cans from 1961 and all the hype over his pop art explosion but was he this great ground breaking artist or just a fantastic salesman?

Andy Warhol began as a commercial illustrator. His first exhibit was in 1962 when he showed his 32 Campbell's Soup cans in a museum in Los Angeles. And in fact the bulk of his work was produced in a six year span until 1968 when he was shot.

His view on the his art was that we are bombarded with advertising images so much and we experience things through this to the point where the image is lost and becomes banal. He wanted to show the condition of mass advertising and it's effect on human perception. At least that is what he said.

 He shifted from objects to portraits of famous people; Marylin Monroe, Liz Taylor and Jackie Kennedy just to mention a few. he even tried his hand at photography, and films, all with his eclectic visual bent.

He died in 1987 and was more of a "personality" in the New York art scene than an actual artist. People would flock to see him siting in "Max's Kansas City" and were deeply moved if he made eye contact with them. He was the personification of celebrity, he wanted his "15 minutes of fame", which he coined, to last a lifetime.

He was born of an immigrant family in the blue collar town of Pittsburgh and moved to New York after studying illustration at Carnegie Institute of Technology. His drawings of shoes for advertisements in the 1950's got him the attention needed to spawn his art career. His attention stayed with advertising but took a slanted view of mass marking. 

Warhol once said, "What's great about this country is that America started the tradition where the richest consumers buy essentially the same things as the poorest. You can be watching TV and see Coca Cola, and you know that the President drinks Coca Cola, Liz Taylor drinks Coca Cola, and just think, you can drink Coca Cola, too. A coke is a coke and no amount of money can get you a better coke than the one the bum on the corner is drinking. All the cokes are the same and all the cokes are good. Liz Taylor knows it, the President knows it, the bum knows it, and you know it.

 A  1964 exhibit The American Supermarket, a show held in an Upper East Side gallery, was presented as a typical U.S. small supermarket environment, except that everything in it – from the produce, canned goods, meat, posters on the wall, etc. were created by six prominent pop artists of the time, among them Billy Apple, Mary Inman, Robert Watts and Any Warhol.

Warhol's painting of a can of Campbell's soup cost $1,500 while each autographed can sold for $6.
By the way, in 2009 His painting, "Eight Elvises" sold for $100 million, yes, $100,000,000. That is a lot of zeros.
The exhibit was one of the first that directly confronted the general public with both pop art and the question of what is art.

The more I research and read about Warhol the more I feel he just capitalized on what would sell. I agree that his original vision was something a bit unique, even though Monet had similar views in some of his work. But I think he was a product of his time and environment. The New York art scene in the 1960's was ripe for change and someone as eccentric and with the marketing savvy as Andy Warhol definitely was able to take a bite out of the Big Apple and the art world.

All of this was actually escalated in on June 3, 1968 with the assassination attempt by Valerie Solanas who was a member of The Factory art scene and founded a movement called Society for Cutting Up Men (S.C.U.M) Do you think she had issues? Supposedly, she gave a script she wrote to Warhol to look at in the hopes of making it into  film with him, somehow the script was "misplaced".

With the assassination attempt, his sexuality and his knack for self promotion, Warhol was destined to be famous.

My question is this, was he a genius artist or just in the right place at the right time and mearly a decent illustrator with a bit of PT Barnum in him?

What are your thoughts?

Art Photography Auction

As readers of my blog know there are many photographers who have influence the way I see and shoot. Ansel Adams, Minor White, Paul Strand, Helmut Newton just to name a few. But, none of these has influence me more than Robert Mapplethorpe.

Mapplethorpe was always an artist, creating beautiful and thought provoking collages, but did not pick up a camera until he was in his early twenties, starting with Polaroid images and making decorative and interesting frames out of the actual film casings. 

He is best know for his frank portrayal of the homosexual leather scene but he also had a wonderful way of lighting a subject, which sometimes got lost due to the frankness of his subject. But it wasn't only male nudes he photographer, some of his most beautiful images are of statues and flowers. Whether it be a male nude, or a flower, this sense of lighting and stark focus on the erotic around us has greatly influence my work and especially the current exhibition I am working on. So, it was wonderful to see that one of Mapplethorpe's  flower images, Calla Lilly, 1984 is going up for auction at the Heritage Auction, on June 9th in Dallas, Texas. The images is expected to sell for between $30,000 and $40,000. and to be the highlight of the auction.
As a photographer whose life was cut short at 42 at the hand of AIDS and who has been maligned after death due to his subject matter in showing a lifestyle that many don't even know exist, it is wonderful to see that their are still people out there who respect him for the photographer, the artist he was.

Mapplethorpe's image along with images by Irving Penn, Yousuf Karsh, Alfred Eisenstaedt, Annie Leibovitz and Richard Avedon represent some of the most famous and influential photographers ever.

I really wish I could be there and see these images and watch the gavel fall being envious of anyone who can afford such wonderful works of art.

Photography, for a long time during it's early years, was not consider a true fine art. But, photographers like these are the ones who helped make it a legitimate art form and have paved the way for me to do what I do.

Lately, with the digital mass marketing camera revolution, photography has become watered down and common place but it is my hope that this auction can spark the flame to those creative and innovative photographic artists to produce work that is inspiring, emotional, controversial and beautiful.

I know I will never stop shooting and my wife will probably find me dead either in my dark room or with a camera in my hand. My hope is that she will be right there beside me when I go and I am sure we will be well into our 80s by then. And I will still be photographing naked, beautiful people!

Thank you Robert.

No Freedoms in Amarillo Texas

A few weeks ago my wife and I were watching a news program, 60 Minutes or 20/20, when they talked about a  fundamentalist Christian group in Amarillo Texas. They have been compared to radical militant and terrorist organizations. They have played a role in the closings of a strip club and of a swingers group.  Last New Year's Eve about two dozen Repent Amarillo protesters spent New Year's Eve carrying signs, singing and praying outside a business in downtown Amarillo that they claim is a swinger's club. Repent Amarillo's director David Grisham said his group objects to the nonmonogamous lifestyle. Grisham said he's never been in the building but has heard stories about what goes on in there. He heard what goes on, he had no idea of what was actually happening. But not only did they protest outside the club, they photographed people coming in and out, wrote down license plate numbers and thoroughly harassed these people who wanted nothing but to have a good time. The authorities new about the party and all the proper permits were filed, but this radical group decided to target them and infringe on their rights. They went to the Amirillo zoning board and made this group "Route 66" jump through hoops to receive the proper zoning permits.  Repent Amarillo cost the club tens of thousands of dollars in renovation costs to bring the building up to code. After Repent members showed up at parties 32 times, many of Route 66's members left, afraid of being harassed and possible harmed. The Route 66 club was operating as a business, and, with only a few customers left, its owners were left with no choice but to close their doors and sell the location.

This is only one example of how the extreme Christian right feels that they are better than everyone else in the United States and can take it upon themselves to violate the rights of law abiding citizens.

Part of their mission statements states, "It is a ministry committed to the fulfillment of Christ’s commandment of the great commission. As Christians, we cannot stand by and watch 67,000 of our neighbors walking through the gates of hell. A soldier for Christ fights a spiritual battle. The enemy is not our fellow man but the principalities, the powers, the rulers of the darkness of this world . Our mission is to do battle with the lies of the enemy. To do battle with the corruption of this world"

This they call spiritual warfare.

Their website has militaristic theme musics and gun shots all dressed in fatigues.

Again, from their website:

Some of the possible missions that these two groups may be called upon to work will be some of the following:

1. Gay pride events.

2. Earth worship events such as “Earth Day”

3. Pro-abortion events or places such as Planned Parenthood

4. Breast cancer events such as “Race for the Cure” to illuminate the link between abortion and breast cancer.

5. Opening day of public schools to reach out to students.

6. Spring break events.

7. Demonically based concerts.

8. Halloween events.

9. Other events that may arise that the ministry feels called to confront.

Are these this the corruption of the world? Gay Pride events, Earth Day, Halloween and of course the one event that will send you straight to hell, the "Race for the Cure"

But of course they know they are doing the right thing becasue the leader of this group, Davis Grisham, heard the word of God.

"I heard the Lord speak to me," says Grisham, "not in my ear, but in my spirit, asking ‘David, what do you see?' " Grisham says that he "knew it was the Lord speaking," and he answered that he "saw the ruins like the gravestones of a dead, godless society.

"The Lord gave me a revelation immediately, and the revelation exploded in my mind," says Grisham

Normally when someoone hears voices they get put them on some serious medication, but not the Christians, it seems every evangelical out there has heard from God.

It is funny that the first thing you see when you get on their website after the militaristic theme and the gun shots is a soldier and a PayPal link for donations.  That is the one thing this group and all the other evangelistic groups seem to need, money.

Repent Amarillo is being allowed to proliferate through Amarillo Texas becasue it seems that the city council is either too scared or spineless to defined the innocent from such a barbaric group. Oh I forgot, they are Christians they are the good guys... Bull Shit. When someone tells me that they are nice becasue they are Christian I fear them more than any Islamic Jihad.

I am getting so sick and tired of people doing thoughtless and cruel things to other human beings in the name of God. This group is just another in a long line of misguided religious zealots and those who have followed much like the Reverend Jim Jones in his compound in Jonestown,  Guyana, South America.

We must speak out against this oppression and not let these right winged, ultra conservative, liberals take away our freedoms of speech, religion and sexuality.