Günther Brus' Selbstbemalung (Self-Painting) from 1964 is in Michael Darling's Target Practice: Painting Under Attack, 1949-78 at the Seattle Art Museum, June 25-Sept. 27.   … [Read more...]

Opening Oct. 15 at SAM, two shows organized by the museum that aren't going to travel. (Click images to enlarge.)1. Alexander Calder: A Balancing Act, curated by Michael Darling. The idea is to trace the origins of his signature style through his initial efforts to its flowering largely through intimate objects, from 1927 to the mid-1970s. Seattle collectors John and Mary Shirley own a hefty share of the 80 objects, many of which haven't been publicly exhibited. Calder has recently been at the Whitney and MoMA. The concentration in Seattle will … [Read more...]

By the time Jacob Lawrence arrived in Harlem, the party was over. The flush days of Harlem's cultural renaissance had come to an abrupt end with the 1929 stock market crash and the beginning of the Depression. Born in 1917 in Atlantic City, N.J., to a couple who had come north in the general migration of blacks out of the South, he found little he could count on in his early years. By the time he was 13, his father was long gone. He and his younger brother and sister had spent three years in foster care before their mother could afford to send … [Read more...]

Products are increasing available to take care of problems they don't have. (Photo, Rooney O'Neil. Click to enlarge.) … [Read more...]

Walapai, Arizona, 1971 11 x 14 inches silver print Robert Mann Gallery (Click to enlarge.) … [Read more...]

In the first week of their exhibit at Lawrimore Project, Alex Schweder and Ward Shelley lived in their teeter-totter house, optimistically titled Stability.Even when otherwise engaged, they were intimately aware of each other's weight. With a tilt and sway, each affected the other. Should they have wanted more intimate contact, they would have had to meet in the middle, like single beds braced for fusion.Maintaining their cheerfully weird fiction that they were comfortably kicking back at home, they lived like zoo animals. Naturally, visitors … [Read more...]

Look at me! Look at me!Look at me NOW!It's fun to have funBut you have to know how!Dr. Seuss, Cat in the HatTaxali at Jonathan LeVine Gallery till May 2. … [Read more...]

Why should I travel when I'm already there? Charioteer via artist's Web site. … [Read more...]

Following the worldwide crash, the heart has gone out of art about big money.Once seen as the equivalent of a medical examiner performing an autopsy, For the Love of God  has taken its rightful place as the corpse. With $20 million in rock candy glittering on its $100 million skull, it is more symptom than diagnosis. As such, the piece is a more powerful, less didactic work of art. A year ago, some dismissed it as a frivolous joke. Anybody laughing now? Certainly not the artist, whose chances of recouping his investment continue to … [Read more...]

Frank Ryan, Overpass, oil/canvas, 40x48, 2008 (Click to enlarge) … [Read more...]

If a good artist gets a big platform solely because of his content, he's still a good artist. What Kerry Skarbakka thinks of as an idea, the Today Show presents as a gimmick, and there's nothing wrong with that. You can pull all the stops out Till they call the cops out Grind your behind till you're bent. But you gotta get a gimmick If you wanna get a hand. You can sacrifice your sacharo Working in the back row. Bump in a dump till you're dead. Kid you gotta have a gimmick If you wanna get ahead.Stephen Sondheim, GypsyVisit msnbc.com for … [Read more...]

Sam Falls (Click to enlarge) … [Read more...]

Air Supply, 1-5, 2004 Images via Western Bridge from James Harris Gallery. (Click first four to enlarge) … [Read more...]

Silke Zeidler (Click to enlarge.) … [Read more...]

Brianna Sendziak, Sea, 40 x 30 inches, C-print, 2009More Icarus here. … [Read more...]

Garden and Cosmos: The Royal paintings of Jodhpur closes on Sunday at the Seattle Asian Art Museum. More information than you want to read here. … [Read more...]

In response to Jen Graves' provocative article, The Vancouver Problem (my response here), Ries Niemi logged the following reflections on Artdish, quoted in part:I know a lot of Vancouver artists- and, some of them are just like Jen describes, while others are just as provincial as she accuses Seattle artists of being. And in Vancouver, the shadow of a certain style of text and photo based, detached and cold conceptual work, somewhat Baldessari-esqe, hangs over a lot of the artists. There has been a big concern lately, as Emily Carr has been … [Read more...]

Mr. Cotter won the Pulitzer for criticism, story here. Art critics have long been passed over for Pultizers. He's an excellent place to start. In an Allan M. Jalon profile of Cotter last December in the Columbia Journalism Review (only the lead online), Jalon quoted me saying..:Of all the critics out there, I think I might like Cotter the most, not only for his knowledge and insight (lots of critics have that) but for the heart and soul he quietly brings to each piece.More from me on Cotter more here, here, here and here. … [Read more...]

Frank Zoretich was leaving the PI as I arrived. We met in passing but kept up, at first through his newsletters sent under the title, Friends of Frank, and later, as his fame grew, in a second edition, Friends of Friends of Frank. At the PI, he was known as the king of fluff, a title he wore with pride. Let others battle for the big news story, the trend, the deepish investigative foray. Zoretich is all about what others with an eye on the substantial disdain, such as, stories about cats. Back in Seattle after stints at several newspapers in … [Read more...]

Ryan Molenkamp, artist and security chief at the Frye, reports that museum guards have more to fear than the agony of da feet. Boredom eats the soul. To combat this eating away, the artists on the Frye team organized a portrait challenge in 2004, open to all comers. In ever more ambitious forms, it continues. Writes Molenkamp:Subjects were taken from the various discarded magazines floating around the museum. The challenge amounted to a small photo being pasted in a standard sheet of paper, and 6 empty boxes placed below it...The results ranged … [Read more...]

Allan McCollum, Surrogate Paintings, 1979-1981 Jil Weinstock, Green Frame Tableau, pigmented cast rubber, 50" x 90" x 2" 2008 … [Read more...]

The two poles of contemporary video art could be represented by South Africa's William Kentridge (previous post) and Norway's Ann Lislegaard. He's the raw to her cooked, the coarse to her silky, the earth to her alien tread. Since both have solo shows at the Henry (his upstairs, hers down), a little compare and contrast is inevitable, but each deserves to be seen in his/her own light. Henry, take a bow. These shows make sense in relation to each other. The idea behind their presentation is clear - a survey from mountain top to mountain top. The … [Read more...]

Behold! human beings living in an underground cave, which has a mouth open towards the light and reaching all along the cave; here they have been from their childhood, and have their legs and necks chained so that they cannot move, and can only see before them, being prevented by the chains from turning round their heads. Above and behind them a fire is blazing at a distance, and between the fire and the prisoners there is a raised way; and you will see, if you look, a low wall built along the way, like the screen which marionette players have … [Read more...]

From Rachel Shimp in the Seattle Times, reviewing Stephanie Syjuco at the James Harris Gallery:What if you opened your cupboard one morning, and among the usual cereal boxes, a tiny slum had developed?Right to the point with an arresting image. I have no idea who Shimp is, but she joins a team of good writers covering visual art for the Seattle Times after the ST dispensed with its staff position. I wrote about this interesting twist of fate in an earlier post titled, "Eliminate the art critic. Result? More and better art criticism." Shimp … [Read more...]

Responding to this post, about the value of acquiring an MFA, Seattle artist Steve Veatch observed that "there is no such thing as a self-taught artist, just as there is no such thing as the self-made man:" Whether you go to art school or not, you will only learn by doing the work yourself and being guided by someone. "Self taught" artists can't operate in a critical vacuum. And if you don't go to art school, and you go to museums and galleries and turn to books and magazines for instruction and insight, you will have to ask what their … [Read more...]

If guns were Delftware ceramics, warring states would be art collectors. (Charles Krafft)Back in the world where guns fire and grenades turn their targets into pink mists of pulp, small gestures count and may be useful. (YaChin You) … [Read more...]

Ruth Trevarrow: Chicks Dig Me and Mine, thanks to F. Lennox Campello … [Read more...]

Rebeca Bollinger Untitled (Beverly & Fairfax No. 1), 2006 C-print on aluminum panel, edition of 6 - 28" x 32" … [Read more...]

Dan Webb, Hiker. Pack up all my cares and woes. … [Read more...]

 Anne Mathern Kerry Skarbakka … [Read more...]