The Lucky Elite

Posted on November 26, 2012 by mlmcclung

I was reading an old article that Janet Tassel wrote in the Harvard Magazine about the role art museums play in civilization. She goes on a bit in different directions, but ultimately reflects the line of thinking that museums are repositories of collected objects that showcase the greatest achievements throughout the ages. As institutions, they should be be set apart and keep a view to the long arc of history, not the whims of popular society.

In the article, James Cuno (then of the Harvard Museum, now head of the Getty) and Philippe de Montebello (the Metropolitan) both concur that museums are by definition elitist. “That is what art is, and that is what every visitor to the museum is—by crossing the threshhold they are joining the elite.”

This got me to thinking – the other day I went to the Hirshhorn to see Ai Weiwei’s exhibit “According to What?” I was really looking forward to it and wanted to make sure I took my time and thought about the works and gave each and every installation and object the thoughtful consideration it was due. Given I might have been a little hungry and going to an exhibit with low blood sugar is not the best, but I found myself distracted and really annoyed by almost everyone around me.

I was put off that no one seemed to treat the show with the same deference that I was giving it. I know it was a holiday weekend and a lot of people were travelling but really…pulling suitcases through the museum? It seemed to me like the kids were running around – making shadow puppets on the walls of video projections; people were taking calls to arrange travel, to make dinner plans, and who know what kind of sordid engagements. One guy had his skateboard – and the cameras were click, click, clicking….ughhhh!!!

I got to the installation of beautifully crafted chests that are designed so that viewers can look through their various openings and see the phases of the moon. After waiting patiently for my turn to check it out, when I got to the opening my lovable and humorous partner was there smiling through the other side.

He got me to stop a moment, breathe and re-frame my experience. I could choose to enjoy myself or not and I could choose to be bothered by the crowds or not. I looked around and actually envied those other people – the kids running around without a care and the adults that didn’t need to give their full attention to the exhibit. How wonderful it is that children are exposed to art and given the opportunity to be themselves around it. All those visitors were living their lives in a setting where art was a part of it.

It occurs to me that a lot of us don’t get that luxury of experience – I didn’t grow up running around inside museums and galleries. For most of us, if we do wind up crossing that ‘threshhold’, we stand in awe of what we’ve been missing.

For those lucky elite, they’re not missing a thing.

Moon Chests – Ai Weiwei with Warren

Seeing Artwork During Vacation

Posted on October 15, 2012 by mlmcclung

We just got back from vacation; we spent 7 days in Barcelona with my partner’s parents and then took a few extra days for ourselves to drive up into France and around Provence.

Barcelona is a treat and it was great to get to share it with family. I used to travel there on business, but it was new for the rest of our group. We decided to rent an apartment right off La Rambla and enjoyed the convenience of being in the heart of the city. From there we easily walked along the marina in Port Vell, over to the beaches of Barceloneta, through the gothic quarter and along the famed Passeig de Gracia. One day we took a drive up to Figueres to see the Dalí museum and then we walked around Girona, enjoyed lunch in the old town and checked out the 11th century gothic cathedral.

After the folks left, we headed up into France and toured around a few days in Provence. The French border is only two hours and yet worlds away – we were struck by the changes in landscape as we skirted the Pyrenees and drove into the Camargue (an alluvial plain – a landscape that reminded us of the Chesapeake Bay), the food, the culture and the expense (seemed like the cost of everything immediately doubled). We stayed in Arles and then did excursions to Aix, Avignon and Montpellier.

All in all, it was a great trip for us – we did a lot but not too much…we paced ourselves and ultimately it was just right. We did wind up seeing a fair amount (okay, a lot) of art along the way – my top 10 this time around:

Fundacio Miró
Picasso Museum
Sagrada Familia
La Pedrera
Dalí Museum in Figueres
Palau de la Musica
Park Güell
Fundació Antoni Tàpies
Hervé Di Rosa at Carré Sainte Anne in Montpellier
Van Gogh café in Arles

La Pedrera

: Palau de la Musica

Salvador Dali sculpture

Sagrada Familia

Girona

: “l’Oeuf” (Place de la Comédie) in Montpellier

Hervé Di Rosa Yhayen (Procession)

Cafe Van Gogh

Three Museums in Cincinnati

Posted on July 20, 2012 by mlmcclung

Sunday I explored 3 museums in Cincinnati:

The Cincinnati Art Museum – is a wonderful collection of art, on par with state art museums around the country. It does a terrific job of bringing art to the city (it’s actually one of the oldest in the country) – like many art museums using a sort of checklist approach to showing work: a cycladic statue, check; an Egyptian sarcophogus, check; a Monet, check; a Picasso, check; a Rodin, a Calder, a Roman this, a Greek that – check, check, check & check.

It does what it sets out to do and so I find no fault – I do especially like that it places emphasis on the rich history of art from the region with it’s Cincinnati Wing. This addition, opened in 2003 and includes the “Cincinnati Painters” and also Rookwood pottery, along with glass, metalworks and furniture. There are beautiful examples of work by John H. Twachtman, Joseph H. Sharp, Frank Duveneck, and Henry Farny and many others – Cincinnati was one of the foremost art centers of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

During this trip, I was happy to get to see a new statue installed this past Spring out front: Jim Dine’s Pinocchio (Emotional) – a 12 foot bronze greeting visitors upon the approach to the museum. His work was also featured prominently in an exhibit, In Celebration of Pinocchio with hometown artists including Jim Dine, Casey Rioden Millard, Mark Fox, Jay Bolotin and Will Hutchinson.

The Taft Museum of Art – This 1820’s house on a hill was donated to the city by the Tafts. Charles Taft and his wife Anna Sinton Taft were brother and sister-in-law to President WIlliam Howard Taft. Their collection of art, bequeathed to the city, includes Eurpoean and American master paintings, Chinese porcelains and European decorative arts – there are works by Rembrandt, Hals, Goya, Gainsborough, Turner, Ingres, Whistler and Sargent.

While I was there I enjoyed the collection and also 2 special exhibits. The first was Mathew Albritton’s photography in Ohio to the White House – a look at the brithplaces and childhood homes of seven presidents. The second, al look at the collection of French paintings on loan from the Wadsworth Atheneum in the exhibit Old Masters to Impressionists. Additionally, the city was celebrating it’s 80th anniversary of the museum with an exhibit of 80 reproductions from the collection placed throughout the Cincinnati Valley. http://www.taftmuseum.org/?page_id=2031

The Contemporary Arts Center – This striking 6-story jig-saw puzzle of a building designed by Zaha Hadid opened in 2003. It is a non-collecting museum dedicated to presenting contemporary ideas from around the world. – this time around I saw Jannis Varelas’ Sleep My Little Sheep Sleep, Francis Upritchard’s A Long Wait, and Spectacle: The Music Video.

: Art for All, Taft Museum

: Taft Museum

The Captive, by Henry F Farny 1885 at Cincinnati Art Museum

Boston July 2012

Posted on July 18, 2012 by mlmcclung

Earlier this month we took a week and a half to go to Boston and then up the coast of Maine. We got to visit dear friends in both areas and we got to unwind while checking out New England.

In Boston, we did our normal walkathon tour of the city, winding our way up the Harborwalk , heading into the North End, wrapping around to Beacon Hill, Back Bay over to the South End and back by Tufts and into Downtown. We went jogging through Boston Common and shopping over on Newbury Street. While we never miss Faneuil Hall or Mike’s Pastry Shop over on Hanover Street, this time we also made the effort to branch out and we were glad we did. We enjoyed our meals down on newly-trendy Tremont Street and in Chinatown and we tried out the food trucks on the Rose Kennedy Greenway.

On our fifth day we headed up the coast of Maine toward Portland and stayed the rest of the week with friends in Yarmouth. We slowed our pace way down – we hiked a little and checked out a nearby beach, one evening we took a water taxi to one of the islands for dinner. We took a drive up to Christmas Cove, and spent a little time shopping in Freeport. We drank wine and gorged ourselves on lobster … actually having lobster for breakfast, lunch and dinner! Most of the time we simply sat out on the veranda and enjoyed letting ourselves do nothing.

I couldn’t help myself – I tried, but I just couldn’t. We managed to skip the art galleries altogether (I looked longingly into a few windows), but still wound up visiting three art museums in Boston: The Museum of Fine Arts, The Isabella Gardner and the Institute of Contemporary Art. We were impressed with the new architecture at each of the museums and we enjoyed the exhibits – two of my favorites:

Josiah McElheny’s exhibit at the ICA, Some Pictures of the Infinite, takes a conceptual look at time and space continuums. McElheny is the kind of artist that makes me wish I was smarter – each display challenged me to try to grasp a concept of infinity that, by definition, is unattainable. His blown-glass works break down barriers between craft and art – the mirrored spirals of suspended orbs combine scientific theories of the cosmos with iconic mid-century modernism.

At the MFA, the highlight was Alex Katz Prints – the show includes 125 pieces on display that together emphasize Katz’s artistic clarity of voice over the past 60 years. He creates arresting images using as few elements and details as possible. He reduces form and color to produce images of graphic quality that are immediately recognizable and the subjects – his beloved Ada, his family & friends and the Maine landscape retell his story of a life well-lived.

Orange Hat by Alex Katz

Endlessly Repeating detail by Josiah McElheny

Top 10 in DC – May 2012

Posted on May 25, 2012 by mlmcclung

I passed through DC on my way home from vacation this week – it was an opportunity to connect with a couple clients, do some research on a series of prints I’d like to make (my own work) and also to touch base with a few artists. While I was there I went to 4 museums and about a dozen galleries. As always, I found a broad spectrum of things to interest me – ranging from the gallery of Whistlers and The Peacock Room at the Freer to Jay Musler’s incredible feathery glass art at Maurine Littleton’s Gallery to Mark Morgan’s quirky sculptures made of discarded detergent bottles at Arts @ 1830.

For me, the two most exciting shows this time around were the Miró exhibit over at the National Gallery and then a small exhibit of privately-owned Matisse & Picasso prints and drawings at Neptune Fine Art in Georgetown.

Now, if you haven’t seen the show over at Neptune, I am sorry to say it is coming down – Christine Neptune shares the space with her husband, Robert Brown. He will be up next, celebrating his own gallery’s 30-year success with works from his stable of artists’ – including the likes of Mel Bochner, David Nash, William Kentridge and Oleg Kudryashov.

Okay, so I am getting ahead of myself – the Matisse and Picassos…what a treat! The show consisted of about 3 dozen prints and drawings that belong to two different collectors – they are all in beautiful condition. My favorites were the obvious Nadia portrait and then two tiny little Picassos, rare little prints that were from editions of only 10 and 14, respectively.

I really wasn’t expecting to happen upon the gallery at all; I was headed next door to see another show when I noticed the gallery. The townhouse is like so many in Georgetown, a nest of intimate rooms that stand above a rear courtyard..perfect for showing off master prints and illustrating how potential buyers might actually live with revered works. Coincidentally, a dealer I had met with not an hour earlier had recommended this gallery to me so I figured, “why not?” I am so glad I checked it out and will keep it in mind as a “must see” in the future.

The Miró exhibit over at the National Gallery is blockbuster. The show consists of more than 150 works, covering a period of 6 decades. I personally love this type of show – it is constructed to lead the viewer through the life of the artist, showing the progression of works in the context of what was going on around the artist.

“The Ladder of Escape” highlights Miró’s loyalty to Catalonia throughout a lifetime of hardship: two world wars, the Spanish Civil War, and during Franco’s dictatorship. His story winds its way from farmlife of the 1920’s through periods of politically-charged explorations in surrealism ultimately to the self-referential symbols that together make the vocabulary for his fantastical, poetic later paintings.

I am enamored with the constellation of works – each one a puzzle, revealing itself slowly, taking the effort of the viewer’s attention to decipher.

My Top 10 this time around:

Joan Miró at National Gallery
Matisse & Picasso at Neptune Fine Art
Peacock Room at the Freer
Colby Caldwell at Hemphill
Foon Sham at Project4
Ai Weiwei’s Fragments and Hokusai: 36 Views of Mount Fuji at Sackler Gallery
Renate Aller at Adamson Gallery
Julia Fernandez-Pol at Morton Fine Art
Jackie Battenfield at Addison Ripley
K Silve at Susan Calloway Fine Art
Getting to go visit Gail Vollrath and Brian Petro in their studios.

Foon Sham – Spiral Vessel

Colby Caldwell – How to Survive Your Own Death

Jay Musler – Blue State Bowl at Maurine Littleton

Joan Miro – The Ladder of Escape

Picasso – Toute la Vie (1960)

Julia Fernandez-Pol

Nancy Lovendahl’s Sculpture

Posted on May 16, 2012 by mlmcclung

I guess I first took notice of Nancy’s work about a dozen years ago – I frequently ride my bike up and down the Cherry Creek and the Platte River trails and I saw her series of sculptures over near Coors Field, on the west side of the Flour Mill Lofts. “Elements” are actually four circular outcroppings of sandstone and granite that provide a contemplative resting place on the northern end of Riverfront Park; the indigenous stones rest in sympathetic poses on the river’s landscape contrasting the urban backdrop of the evolving city around them.

A few years later, I saw her work again at the Sandy Carson Gallery – she was exhibiting alongside another favorite artist of mine, Lorelei Schott. Nancy had egg sculptures made of stone, ceramics, wire & wood, a series that has gone on to be shown around the world.

Since then, I have seen her work around town, in publications and online.

Recently I ran into her over at Madeleine Dodge’s studio and she invited me to come down to Sedalia and check out her latest work, “The Gathering.”

WOW! What a treat!

It’s a monumental sculpture, carved out of 300,000 pounds of limestone…the sculpture is made up of 18 pieces and is 38′ long, 30′ wide and 8′ high. The sculpture is destined to be placed on private land near the Ohio Creek Valley, an interactive display of oversized stones strewn on the stream’s edge. Emerging from landscaped grounds, “The Gathering” will resemble bones exposed from the earth’s manicured surface.

Nancy’s new work (two years in the making) reveals a record of mythical bison – giants that spark the imagination. The ‘bones’ will provide seating and shade in the clearing near the creek. It will be a shocking discovery to the uninitiated that will beg the question “who was here before us?”

Check out her website, www.nancylovendahl.com to learn more about this project, her other works and her storied career as an artist.

Nancy Lovendahl The Gathering

Nancy Lovendahl – The Elements

Nancy Lovendahl

My new artwork at Space Gallery

Posted on April 24, 2012 by mlmcclung

I am showing new work at Space Gallery April 13 through May 19 and I would love to have you come check it out – it includes one of the largest pieces I have worked on to date. Please do swing by and check out the show at any time that works for you or contact me and I will walk you through it when it’s convenient.I am continuing the burn series with multiple layers of paper, burning imagery through each layer. I love to explore the interplay of light and shadow and the manipulation of the viewer’s eye to explore movement and depth.

Additionally, I have started 2 new series – the first is a group of photopolymer etchings I did this past year that allow me to explore the pyrographs while introducing color. The second series is a group of deconstructed pieces that I have then reassembled.

These new works are fun for me and I hope that you will like them.

Installation shot at Space Gallery; Marlene's sculpture in foreground.

detail image of pyrograph, courtesy of the artist

: Untitled, pyrograph mounted on panel 63″ square, image courtesy of the artist.

This piece is 20 layers of burns stacked together; I love the spaces where you can see all the way through it and also the shadows it casts. It can be hung vertically, but I chose to showcase it horizontally in the show.

Springtime in Washington

Posted on April 20, 2012 by mlmcclung

It almost goes without saying, but my favorite show in DC right now is Doug Aitken’s projected video on the outside of the Hirshhorn Museum & Scultpure Garden. “SONG 1” uses powerful video projectors to cast the video around the entire museum and allows visitors to see the first-ever work of 360-degree convex-screen cinema. I got to see it on a warm starry night but have a feeling I would have like it in the rain or even in snow – it really is wonderful. If you are in Washington before May 13th, make sure you spend half an hour to check it out one evening.

The rest of the trip also had a lot of great art – here are my top 10:

Doug Aitken “SONG 1” at the Hirshhorn Museum & Scultpure Garden
“Circle of Animals Zodiac Heads” by Ai Weiwei at the Hirshhorn Museum & Scultpure Garden
“Snapshot: Painters and Photography, Bonnard to Vuillard” at the Phillips Collection
“Home is a Foreign Place”, a suite of 6 of the woodcuts by Zarina Hashmi at Burton Marinkovich
“Domestic Exchange” by Wilmer Wilson IV at Conner Contemporary
“Suprasensorial” at the Hirshhorn Museum & Scultpure Garden
In Vibrant Color: Vintage Celebrity Portraits from the Harry Warnecke Studio at the National Portrait Gallery
The Black List: Photographs by Timothy Greenfield-Sanders at the National Portrait Gallery
Paintings by Kathy Beynette at Gallery Plan B
“Pilgrimage” by Annie Leibovitz at Smithsonian American Art Museum

My Top 10 in Miami (January 2012)

Posted on April 20, 2012 by mlmcclung

Can the city’s galleries become anchors to an art scene that draws attention throughout the year? The city has truly developed into one of the great cosmopolitan cities, but the international, art-buying, jet-setters know when to be there. I guess I am wondering if the gallery scene will rise to the level of the fairs it hosts – can it? How do galleries even produce shows for the rest of the year.

A couple of months ago my partner & I headed down to Miami and I took a couple days to check out some of the art scene. I love to feel the energy that drives a growing art scene – but this time I left feeling a little empty. Maybe it was just me… I mean there are more galleries, right? The scene must be growing, but it kind of seems like a lot of what I found was specifically designed to attract the international art-fair developers.

Kawaii Universe? An entire warehouse of rainbow-colored stickers of cupcakes and sushi?

Walls on Wynwood? A couple years ago I took so many photos of the walls painted throughout the city – I was all over it . This time, I was just over it – it seemed so calculated and event-driven, lacking heart and spontanaeity.

A lot of the work I saw seemed to be screaming “Pick Me! Pick Me!” It is kind of like a pageant – if the work can be loud enough and colorful enough, maybe it will get noticed when the fairs come to town. I guess it’s not a bad marketing strategy and if I lived there, I would probably do the same thing. It’s just that the thoughtfully curated, well-developed shows were few and far between. Even some of my favorite spaces seemed to fall short with exhibits lacking programmatic coherence.

With all of that said, there is still a lot to look at and I know I only got to see a little bit – my top 10:

Robert Fischer’s “Quarry” at Charest-Weinberg
Romulo Aguerre “The Forms of Light” at Sammer Gallery
Richard Höglund, “Hysterical.Sublime..” at Gallery Diet
Karina PeisaJovich, “The eyes, sometimes” at Alejandra von Hartz Gallery
Nick Gentry & Josafat Miranda at Robert Fontaine Gallery
Roman Vitali, “It Also Snows Inside” at now contemporary art
JeanPaul Mollozzi at Bakehouse Art Complex
Victor Sydorenko, ” The Levitation Series” at Black Square Gallery
Mira Lehr “209 Ignition” at Kelley Roy Gallery
Consuelo Castañeda, “Homage to Gego” at Hardcore Art Contemporary Space

Another Way to Go: 6 artists, 12 directions

Posted on January 26, 2012 by mlmcclung

I am really interested in the ideas of artistic voice, identity and recognition.

Over the summer I had a number of artists approach me with questions about their portfolios, marketing and pricing, etc. In looking at some of these I saw so many artists that were kind of all over the map with regard to style and technique – you know, the kind where each and every artwork looked like it might have been the work of a different person.

I advised them to pick something and stick with it for a while so they could really become a master at something and not be just okay at a lot of different things. I wanted them to tap into that part of themselves that really defines them – to find their voice. I believe that mature successful artists are keenly aware of their voice. Not to say that artists don’t explore different things – ideas get resolved in different media, subject matter changes, etc. As a collector and a consultant, what I want to be able to see is, that as the works change, I can still tell it is the work of one artist and not some other artist entirely.

This past year, I was invited to curate a show this month at VERTIGO Art Space in Denver (Jan4-February11; www.vertigoartspace.com) and so I used this line of thinking as the starting point for the show and – wow! I quickly realized what a hot button topic this is…almost everyone has something to say about it. A lot of artists feel basically the same way. Others think I am looking at it from a business point-of-view and that I didn’t get art at all. I think some were offended that I would point out consistencies in their work because there is such a drive to be original and fresh and authentic.

Some gallerists told me that they value creativity over commercialism – others pointed to the realities of business, that for a gallery to stay in business, eventually something has to sell and customers’ expectations often drive that process. Artists told me the art they were showing in the galleries wasn’t what they really wanted to be working on- that they want to try something new but that the gallery wouldn’t go for it. Critics were calling artists “Johnny One Note” because they had been there – done that – seen it before. One artist selected for this show told me that as soon as the “recognized” series changed in favor of something else, the collectors, critics & galleries stopped even looking at the work.

I looked at my own work – as an artist, I am almost always associated with the burnout vellum pieces, but then I go off and explore other tangents like the series of 3000 photographs of sidewalks or the watercolors or the monochromatic eggshell compositions.

As I continued with the exploration for this show, I really began looking at the various tangents or diversions that many artists take.

Over the holidays my partner & I had a party and there wound up being a great mix of people, some artists, some gallerists, some of his running buddies, mutual friends, neighbors, a little family. That night one our longtime friends came over to me and commented on my burnout vellum pieces – “You know I appreciate and I get where you are going with them, but when are you going to go back to those colorful paintings you did 10-15 years ago?” Later that same night, another friend came to me and wanted to know about some new etchings I had done, “You know I appreciate them and I like the use of color, but when are you going back to the monochromatic burnout pieces?”

I’m now more interested in the issues around the idea of having that identifiable, sellable body of work … the advantages this affords an artist and the potential challenges of restricting creative exploration. There is a balance between the exposure and commercial success that recognition provides and the harness restricting creative exploration.

The 6 artists that I included in the show present 2 pieces – one that would be from their recognizable body of work and then another that is unrelated and not immediately identified as belonging to the same artist.