Thursday, October 30, 2003

Gil Perez, the doorman at Christie's in New York, is apparently so influential with potential buyers that he has a position on the company's board and reportedly earns $100,000 a year and is now the 50th person in Art Review's annual 100 most powerful figures in the art world.

According to the list, American billionaire Ronald Lauder is the most powerful figure in the art world. I think that he's Estée Lauder's chairman.

Number 100 is a funny surprise.


UPI reports that Mary Boone, the owner of New York's Mary Boone Gallery is suing photographer Annie Leibovitz because 12 years ago Boone apparently paid Annie Leibovitz $197,000 to have Annie take Boone's photograph and 12 years later she's still waiting.


The BBC says that "No modern artist, not even the likes of Damien Hirst or Tracey Emin, divides opinion like Jack Vettriano."

This Scottish painter has sold out every single exhibition that he's ever had, apparently all of them within an hour, and has a waiting list for his next painting of several hundred names, and famous people and celebrities all crave his work. Sounds like the typical British formula for success.

And yet the British critics hate his work and success.


Call for Artists: The Margaret W. and Joseph L. Fisher Gallery in the Rachel M. Schlesinger Concert Hall and Arts Center has an open call for artists. The Schlesinger Center is located on the Alexandria Campus of Northern Virginia Community College. To receive an application to exhibit, please provide your name and complete mailing address to Dr. Leslie White, Managing Director at LWHITE@NVCC.EDU or write to:

Dr. Leslie White, Managing Director
3001 N. Beauregard Street
Alexandria, VA 22311-5097
t: 703.845.6229 or f: 703.845.6154 or lwhite@nvcc.edu



I am sure that it has already happened somewhere, but I am waiting for someone to make a big deal of someone's exhibition of photographs taken with the new photo capable cell phones.


Thursdays is "Galleries" column day in the Post and today Jessica Dawson reviews a library art show.

Jessica reviews Where We Come From - an exhibit of work by Emily Jacir at Provisions Library (formerly the Resource Center for Activism and Arts) in Dupont Circle area.

And a few of days ago, the Washington Times' Joanna Shaw-Eagle reviewed "Himalayas: An Aesthetic Adventure" at the Arthur M. Sackler Gallery

And on Artnet Magazine, former Hirshhorn Museum Press Officer and sometimes curator (and quite an accomplished artist as well) Sidney Lawrence reviews "Beyond the Frame, Impressionism Revisited: The Sculptures of J. Seward Johnson, Jr.," at the Corcoran and offers a slightly different perspective. For my take on this weird show, see my Oct. 24 entry.


The most misused word in the world of art is the word "print," as used in definiting work as "limited edition print," etc.

In the narrow, but true art definition of what an original art print is, a print is a work of art produced from an image worked by the artist on another material, usually a metal, plexiglass, wood, linoleum, plastic plate, etc.

Everything else is a reproduction.

And lawsuits will happen if suddenly a collector discovers that their "print" or "original" is in fact a reproduction.

So if an artist paints or draws an image on any medium, and then has multiple images made from that original by an electro-mechanical or mechanical process using photographic or digital images (such as Iris or Gyclee), those images are reproductions - not prints.

However, because it would really be hard to market an artist's work as "limited edition, signed and numbered reproductions," the word "print" has been kidnapped by the marketeers of art to apply to any set of multiple images - regardless of how they came to be, or what part the artist played in its creation.

It gets a bit murky when it comes to digital art - that is artwork that is created from scratch through the use of a computer or a photograph taken with a digital camera.

Once the file is done and finished and saved, then one can say that the image that comes out of the printer is the "print" in the true sense of the narrow art definition - much like the negative in traditional photography produces the photographic print.

However, a photograph that is taken, developed, printed in the darkroom and then scanned so that Giclees or Iris "prints" can be made from the photographic image means that those are reproductions made from the original photograph. But a photograph taken with a digital camera and then has Iris/Giclees or any other digital prints made from the digital image in the memory card is a "real" print!

So a digital medium like Giclee/Iris can be either a reproduction or a real print - it all depends on what the original source of the image is!


And what happens when computers become good enough to use Artificial Intelligence (AI) to "learn" to "create" a painting or photograph based on verbal or typed instructions? 

In 1987 my Naval Postgraduate School thesis was "Applications of Artificial Intelligence and Expert Systems to Naval Cryptologic Operations", and let me tell you folks... the future is slightly terrifying as Terminator fans know.

Back to art... so if a painting or photo is created, or painted, or printed by a AI- savvy computer... is that "art"?

We shouldn't hide from technologies that advance art... as photography historians know. But AI and art do present some interesting questions!

What do you even call it? If ever we're able to teach and then tell a computer to print something that looks and feels like a photo, but based on our commands, and something comes out of a printer that looks and feels like a photograph... what is that? 

An "AIgraph"? If it's quick we can add foreign words to make it more artsy: a "rapidograph"... or a "prontograph"... 

Someone stop me! Get back on track Campello!

Printmakers are especially sensitive to the misuse of the work "print" to market reproductions of artwork. One of the best places in town to buy true prints from very talented printmakers is the Washington Printmakers Gallery in the Dupont Circle area.

Just back from a visit to Penn State. While there I visited the Palmer Museum and saw a small but very interesting exhibition: Through the Looking Glass: Women and Self-Representation in Contemporary Art. Also saw the faculty exhibition at the Zoller Gallery.