Real Clear Arts

Rocco Landesman didn't take Peoria, but he did seem to refrain from dismissing the city and its arts community again.

The new National Endowment for the Arts chairman yesterday started the whistle-stop tour of U.S. arts communities that he promised a few weeks ago. The first stop was a must because he'd insulted Peorians back in August.

On his visit, Landesman avoided another direct hit, saying he would not compare the production of "Rent" that he saw at the Eastlight Theatre Friday Night to a production of the Steppenwolf Theatre in Chicago. According to the Peoria Journal Star, here's what happened:

The chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts did observe earlier in the day that amateur arts are worthwhile much in the same way that minor leagues and amateur sports have value in relation to the big leagues and professional sports. One can feed into the other and is worthy of support, he said.

Including NEA support?

"I don't know. I'm not saying the NEA would never support a community theater," Landesman said. "I don't think that's something I could definitively say."

Having learned what not to say, Landeman also said his view of the city had changed:

"The first impression from someone who knows nothing about it is that it's a very meat and potatoes, rust belt, manufacturing city...The thing, of course, that is revelatory is realizing that there is a vibrant arts scene, that there is what has, I think, the beginnings, ultimately, of the real makings of an arts district in the Warehouse District. There's big plans for it. The riverfront museum is a big deal. You have great riverfront, too."

Here's the whole story, plus a local reaction article, also in the Journal Star. WMBD/WYZZ also covered the visit.

Photo: © 2009 GateHouseMedia, Inc., Courtesy Peoria Journal Star.

Art thievery usually boggles the mind -- you can't resell a truly valuable piece -- and yet it flourishes. Do you know where it thrives, and where it's rising?

The Art Loss Register, which tracks reported thefts, sent out a notice at the end of October about the theft of three paintings by Pierre Gavreau in Toronto (coincidentally, I just mentioned Gavreau the other day in my post about the Automatistes):

The window of the gallery was smashed and the paintings removed during an early morning burglary. The paintings [at left] were part of a 30-year retrospective of the artist's work, commemorating his first solo show in Toronto in 1979. All three paintings are abstract works dating from the early 1980s, and had a combined value of over $40,000 USD.

Then, ALR said:

Canada currently ranks #13 in reported art thefts, with over 2,000 lost artworks recorded on the Art Loss Register's database.  Reports of art thefts are on the rise in Canada.  Between 2000 and 2005, only 82 stolen objects were reported.  Since 2006, over 300 have been registered on the ALR's database.

Well, I knew ALR kept track of thefts by country, but I'd not seen the statistics. So I asked, and here's the current top 15:

1) United Kingdom -- 53,709

2) United States -- 21,079

3) France -- 15,562

4) Italy -- 15,041

5) Germany -- 11,137

6) Belgium -- 5,178

7) Switzerland -- 4,540

8) Netherlands -- 3,340

9) Iraq -- 3,292

10) Brazil -- 3,198

11) Austria -- 2,946

12) Poland -- 2,184

13) Canada -- 2,077

14) Turkey -- 1,956

15) Hungary -- 1,700

Don't read too much into the list: it's likely that art theft is rampant in rich Asian countries, say, but it's just not reported to ALR, which is based in London and New York.

The trends are important, though -- they show changes in the theft rate, or the reporting of thefts, or both. 

David T. Little, the New York City-based composer and percussionist, has won DilettanteMusic.com's digital composer-in-residence contest -- by a huge margin, gaining more than half the votes.

This contest, as I mentioned the other day, was judged first by experts and then by the voting public, who could listen to Little's music, and that of the other two contenders, Aaron Gervais from Edmonton, Canada, and Chiayu from Taiwan, on the DilettanteMusic.com website.

Little's entry was called 1986, was written for a string quartet, and, as he described it:

is based on the tune "My Grandfather's Clock." 'I have my own connections to this song, which I must have played hundreds, if not thousands of times as a boy playing in a fife and drum corps in New Jersey.' 1986 calls on this experience, making use of the snare drum part that he played. The "tune" returns throughout the piece in different incarnations - from silly to serious - giving the listener a sense of a hazy, but fond, memory.

Little, who holds a degree in percussion performance, a Masters in Composition and a Master of Fine Arts degree, is studying for a Ph.D. at Princeton.

His victory was announced at a concert Thursday night at Wilton's Music Hall (above) in London, where the London Sinfonietta performed a program curated by the three finalists featuring their contest entries alongside works that influenced them. Little chose the second movement of Charles Ives' Trio, for violin, violoncello & piano, S. 86 (K. 2B17), "TSIAJ ("This scherzo is a joke")" as the work that influenced him.

So here's how the evening of classical music at the White House went. President Obama warmed up the crowd with remarks about not knowing when to applaud, eliciting laughs, according to the transcript provided by the White House.

Now, if any of you in the audience are newcomers to classical music, and aren't sure when to applaud, don't be nervous.  (Laughter.)  Apparently, President Kennedy had the same problem.  (Laughter.)  He and Jackie held several classical music events here, and more than once he started applauding when he wasn't supposed to.  (Laughter.)  So the social secretary worked out a system where she'd signal him -- (laughter) -- through a crack in the door to the cross-hall.  

Now, fortunately, I have Michelle to tell me when to applaud.  (Laughter.)  The rest of you are on your own.  (Laughter.)

I couldn't watch it, because of another engagement, but The Washington Post's Anne Midgette did, and seemed to share concerns similar to mine: "The day's message was, "Look, classical music can be fun," even though this message is also a tacit admission of the widespread assumption that it isn't."

Earlier in the day, Michelle Obama had "sold" classical to kids by saying it was exciting because it could be changed. Midgette posted on my post, which asked whether the First Lady was thus sending the right message, partly agreeing without saying what I was questioning...but happy that classical music is being played in the White House.

The New York Times, meanwhile, suggested the importance of classical music by sending music critic Anthony Tommasini down to Washington to review it -- in contrast to practice with the country, jazz and Latin events, when D.C. bureau people wrote about it or no one did. Rather a waste, I think: Tommasini offered no commentary, simply playing it straight.

I almost forgot, until an email from the White House press office reminded me: tonight is classical music night at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. I wrote about it here, and you can watch streaming live here at 7 p.m. (Unfortunately, I will miss it.)  

Desiree Rogers, the Social Secretary, blogged about the music series today, and First Lady Michelle Obama presided over a classical music workshop this afternoon. Here's an excerpt from her remarks:

...nothing mixes old and new quite like classical music.  Many of the beautiful concertos and sonatas you're playing today were written hundreds of years ago, long before CDs and computers and MP3 players were ever invented.  The only reason we know what they sound like is because the great composers of history scratched those notes into parchment with quill pens.

But today you can play these same notes on an electric violin.  You can write your own variations of these songs online and e-mail them around the world.  And you can mix and blend your instruments in ways that Beethoven and Mozart never could have imagined.

That's what makes classical music timeless, because even though it's been around for centuries, musicians like all of you are always reinterpreting and replaying it in ways that we've never heard before -- and that makes it so exciting.

I'm not sure she's sending the right message about the value of classical music here, but...

The President has made personal remarks about his musical enthusiams at the jazz and country music events; it'll be interesting to hear what he says tonight.

Once again New York City Center* has pulled off what so many arts organizations only dream about: attracting new audiences and getting them to return. How? Its annual Fall for Dance Festival -- 10 performances, 20 companies -- now in its sixth year.

Every year, along with the festival -- which offers a sampling of dance by four separate companies on each program -- NYCC surveys attendees. The results are now in for the 2009 event -- staged between Sept. 22 and Oct. 3 and, as usual, sold out. The ticket price is subsidized by donations, especially from TimeWarner (which has an arts and education component to its philanthropy), and kept at $10.

The survey shows that nearly a quarter of attendees had never attended a performance at City Center, and that just over half had never before attended a Fall for Dance performance.

And of the other half, who had previously seen a program at Fall for Dance, 68.5 percent said they attended subsequent performances by dance companies in Fall for Dance. I'd call that success.

It's clear, too, from previous surveys that people are coming back.

Take a look at one line in the survey: those who had never before attended Fall for Dance. In 2005, the second year of the festival, that portion was a much higher 73 percent -- and in each subsequent year it has dropped, to 72 percent, then 60 percent, then 55 percent and now 51.4 percent.

About those Canadian artists, who will be featured in The Automatiste Revolution: Montreal, 1941-1960 at the Albright-Knox Art Gallery next spring, which I just mentioned here: I don't know their work, and maybe you don't either, so in the interest of learning -- and in procrastinating from my real writing -- I've obtained some images:

Here is Marcel Barbeau's Rosier-feuilles (Rose-Bush Leaves), 1946:

Is the tide starting to turn at the Albright-Knox Art Gallery? Thanks to the prospect of a slight increase in 2010 funding from Erie County, which must still be approved by the legislature, there's hope.

Starting today, the Gallery has added hours (that's a photo of works by Fletcher Benton, now on view, at left). It will now be open six days a week, Tuesday through Sunday, instead of four, Thursday through Sunday. Total hours per week increase just slightly, to 35 from 33 -- because the Gallery now opens at noon, instead of 10 a.m. It still closes at 5 p.m. every day except Friday, when it stays open until 10 p.m. (As I've written before, museums need more evening hours.) Read the press release here.

Other cost-containment and initiatives to increase revenues continue, though -- some worse than others.

Rightly, the Albright-Knox is continuing its tradition of being at the forefront: it recently announced that it will bring to the U.S. for the first time an exhibition showing artists from Canada's avant garde in "an international context" (which means shown with American works of the period): Automatiste Revolution, Montreal, 1941-1960 will open in Buffalo in March. It's now on view at the Varley Art Gallery in Unionville, Ontario -- which is "20 minutes" outside of Toronto. Details here and here. And see Automatiste works here.

The Albright-Knox recently elected a new board chairman, Leslie H. Zemsky, which the Buffalo News welcomed as a good sign, too, citing her "energy, enthusiasm, dynamism and a perspective that will encourage and develop the next chapter in the Albright-Knox story."

Some people will never forgive the Gallery for selling its antiquities -- about which I am not happy either. But right now, I'd just like to see this art outpost get healthy again.  

Photo: Courtesy Albright-Knox Art Gallery 

I must be getting known for writing about prizes, both positively and negatively (to cite just two posts). I just learned of another new contest -- in music, this time.

And it's your chance to influence the course of classical music. DilettanteMusic.com -- which is a U.K.-based online "global hub for classical music" -- is allowing the public to choose its first digital composer-in-residence.

I haven't explored the Dilettante Music website -- or its business model -- as much as I'd like; but the public input deadline is close, so I'm writing now.

Part of the site's mission seems to be to provide a forum for listening to unsigned musicians, and to provide a way to buy music online. The contest was announced in June, when the website said it would choose a lucky composer:

The winner will receive the Digital Composer-In-Residence Award worth £1000, and a year-long 'digital residency' on the Dilettante website, including a 'composer's corner' blog on the homepage and a podcast series. They will lead online masterclasses and take part in forum discussions with Dilettante members. The residency will conclude with a live event, which will include a newly commissioned work.   

The finalists, from the U.S., Canada and Taiwan, were announced on Oct. 20, and now you can listen to their music online and vote -- up until Nov. 4, which is just two days away. 

Are there more art prizes for individual artists this year, or does it just seem that way? And are they all worthwhile?

I've posted here about several -- the MacDowell Medal, the Wolgin Prize, Guggenheim Fellowships, the Public Art Award, the Biennale's Golden Lion award, and of course ArtPrize. Some new, some old, and just a small sampling of those available.

Last Thursday came the brand new "First Annual Art Awards" produced by artist Rob Pruitt at the Guggenheim Museum "in association with" White Columns and "event partner" Calvin Klein Collection. Phew.

The dozen awards were for lifetime achievement, an international exhibition, and nine meant for exhibitions and projects that had significant impact on the field of contemporary art and took place between January 2008 and June 2009 in the United States. Artists and art world professionals (it's unclear how they were chosen) selected the winners, except for the two Lifetime Achievement Awards, which were determined by Pruitt, the Guggenheim and White Columns, and the Rob Pruitt Award, which "was decided solely by the artist."

The awards were given at a dinner at the Guggenheim, intended to rival the Oscars: "Tickets for the event were offered by invitation only." The prizes, designed by Pruitt, were fashioned as buckets of Champagne that are actually lamps.     

Ok, it was a benefit, but the whole thing strikes me as off-key -- a fest for the elite that ends up being more about partying than art, and alienates the general public. And, yes, as the Los Angeles Times' Culture Monster blog said, it was supposed to be ironic -- but I wonder if that's how it was perceived. David Ng, the LAT writer, wondered, too. Many news outlets seem to have ignored the whole thing.

Philadelphia artist Ryan Trecartin, just 28, has hit the jackpot this year. Several days ago, he won the inaugural Wolgin Prize, $150,000 awarded by the Tyler School of Art at Temple University and claimed as the largest prize to a visual artist in a juried competition. The Temple Times has the story here.

On Thursday night, he won the "Calvin Klein Collection New Artist of the Year Award" at Rob Pruitt's First Annual Art Awards at the Guggenheim. And earlier this year, he won a fellowship awarded by the Pew Charitable Trusts. 

Trecartin's work has been show in the 2006 Whitney Biennial, the New Museum, the Getty Museum and at the Royal Academy and the Saatchi Gallery in London.

Guess we'll be hearing more about him.

Photo: Re'Search Wait'S (Edit 1: Missing Re'Search Corruption Budget), 2009, Courtesy Ryan Trecartin and Elizabeth Dee

It'll never happen here, and it probably shouldn't. But as the publishing business teeters ever closer to failure, with profit margins shrinking and sales declining, it's interesting to look at the situation in Germany.

The Wall Street Journal has the stories in today's paper. First, there's one about Wal-Mart, Amazon.com and Target putting a limit on bulk sales customers may buy of the deeply discounted books they're now selling. At Wal-Mart, it's two copies; Amazon, three, and Target, five. They suspect small booksellers of "scooping up" cheap copies and reselling them. Here's the link.

More interesting is the companion article about Germany, where book prices are set. There, and in most of Europe other than Britain, bookstores and online booksellers must sell books at the price established by publishers. As a result:

Many in German attribute the country's thriving literary and publishing scene to a system that outlaws the discounting of virtually all new books for 18 months. The system protects independent booksellers and smaller publishers from giant rivals that could discount their way to more market share. Along with 7,000 bookshops, nearly 14,000 German publishers remain in business. Many are of modest size, like Munich-based Carl Hanser Verlag, which publishes the work of this year's Nobel laureate, German-Romanian writer Herta Mueller.  

Yesterday's Lexington, Ky. Herald-Leader printed one of those occasional stories about an art find that cheers the spirit and keeps many people buying old paintings. This one isn't anywhere near as good as the recent disclosure that a small picture of a young girl (right), purchased for less than $20,000, may be a Leonardo.   

But still. In this case, a doctor -- against the advice of his wife -- decided to plunk down $900 for a landscape he saw in an antiques store. It was dirty, and when he had it cleaned, the restorer discovered a signature: Robert Scott Duncanson, a painter the Herald-Leader said was "a noted 19th-century artist who was the first African-American painter to gain international recognition."

Good for the buyer, Dr. Jim Huffman, for going with his instincts. The untitled painting (left) is said to be worth $100,000 and is now on loan to the Speed Art Museum.

Again, good for Huffman, who was described in the article as an "amateur collector." I'm not sure what that means, because not that many collectors are "professionals." But if it means that he's untrained, which probably means self-trained, he has plenty of company.

At least he seems to have a good eye -- an attribute not all professionals have, let alone all collectors. One expert, a museum director now who (I think) happens to have a great eye, once joked with me about people in the art world -- collectors and dealers alike -- who just don't have it. His description of them, probably not unique or original to him, was "he has the eye of a vole." I still love that. Lucky are those that are born with a great eye -- and nurture it.  

Here's the link to the Herald-Leader article. 

At last, the White House is ready to take on classical music in its series of music events. Next Wednesday, following the pattern it set with jazz (also here) and then with country music (also here), Michelle Obama will convene a student workshop at 2:25 in the afternoon, followed by an evening concert attended by the President -- and probably the girls.

So who's performing? The stars, in the evening, are violinist Joshua Bell, guitarist Sharon Isbin, cellist Alisa Weilerstein (left) and pianist Awadagin Pratt.

They will also perform at the workshop, along with two child proteges: Sujari Britt, who plays the violoncello, and Jason Yoder, a percussionist, who will accompany Weilerstein in duets.

The White House guidance says the evening performance will be streamed live on WhiteHouse.gov and will air on Sirius radio. And it says there will also be other workshops early in the afternoon focusing on piano, violin, cello and classical guitar for 120 middle and high school students coming in from around the country.

I find these choices very interesting -- none of the performers is associated with one orchestra. None, I think, plays only classical music. Yoder attends the CAPA school in Pittsburgh, and played for the spouses of the leaders attending the summit there in September.

And it's not clear which classical music organization, if any, helped plan this -- as, for example, Jazz At Lincoln Center and the Country Music Association, among others, have for previous events.   

The word from the White House does not say what these performers will play, but it may be telling. 

Andy's in the basement, and Cy Twombly is on top, in a room designed specially for him. Fitting, I suppose, given Warhol's condition.

Just kidding. On my way back to New York from Salzburg last week, I stopped for a day (well, most of a day) in Munich, where among other things I made a visit to its newest art attraction: The Brandhorst Museum. Situated near the three Pinokotheks -- Alte, Neue and Moderne -- it's where I learned about the above arrangement.

The Brandhorst opened last May, and adds a hefty collection of some 700 contempory art works to Munich's art scene.

Like many new museums -- this one founded by Udo Brandhorst and his late wife Anette, who gave their collection to Bavaria provided the state erected galleries for it -- the building is a big part of the attraction. Designed by Sauerbruch Hutton architects, it's adorned with three sets of vertical ceramic rods, glazed in 23 colors, from light pink and yellow to deep violet and blue. It's meant to look like an abstract painting. While it's definitely different from its environment -- there's no other colored building in sight -- the box structure fits in. No Denver-like statements here. 

And say what you will about the white-cube concept for galleries, it works well for this collection.

Just in case you all want to chat online about art, but don't have time -- per my post on Oct. 19 about the Guggenheim Forum -- I went back to the website to see what this iteration, which was about spirituality in art, had yielded. The Forum/chat was triggered by the Kandinsky retrospective now on view, prompted by his belief that art "belongs to the spiritual life." A transcript of the one-hour chat, which took place on Oct. 22, is posted on the Guggenheim's website (here).

This chat, hosted by Krista Tippett, of Speaking of Faith, seemed to be more substantial than the last one, which was on design, but I noticed the same problem -- people talking all around an issue and at cross-purposes. It's the nature of online discussions.

Here are some interesting quotes drawn from the transcript, but missing the connective tissue (NB: my listing them here does not imply agreement!):

At 2:20: I like this line in Louis' last post: The artist is a tuning fork for an out of tune and unlyrical society...

2:21: I feel like people are realizing that materialism and attachment to things didn't bring them meaning or happiness. Art often awakens parts in people that have been dormant for a long time and remind them that there is life right now in them.

2:27: I look at the work of Jeff Koons & some of it really makes me smile... there is something divine going on there.

2:30: a lot of the art with humour in it comes from a place of suffering indeed - whether mental, physical, spiritual, whatever -but 'drawing in black' so to speak/type, is quite easy... it's letting the light in that's hard.   

Is Iran, under fire for its nuclear activites, trying a little cultural diplomacy?

Last week, the country opened a "Permanent Art Gallery" in Rotterdam, Holland, according to a couple of press reports. Also known as "Iran Art," it is showing contemporary paintings, miniatures, graphic arts and calligraphy by about 40 artists. They include Iraj Eskandari, Reza Khodadai, and Gizella Sinaii. The opening ceremony was attended by M. Hosseini, deputy ambassador to the Netherlands, and Mahmud Shaluii, director of the Culture and Islamic Guidance Ministry's Office for Visual Arts.

The Tehran Times quotes Shaluii as saying: "After Iran's successful participation in the Venice Biennale this year and the opening of Iran's art gallery, it was decided to establish additional galleries in other countries to help introduce Iranian art and artists." He added that Iran would soon inaugurate a Paris gallery. And he said that he hopes sales from the galleries will boost the art economy.  

The Asian Art Newspaper, however, recently dissected the Venice Biennale and thought Iran's presence there was diappointing.  

For its first participation at the Venice Biennale, there were high expectations for Iran, all the more so as Iranian contemporary art is considered as promising as Chinese or Indian contemporary art used to be. The artists selected to represent Iran, Iraj Eskandari, Sedaghat Jabbari, and Hamid Reza Avishi were clearly technically speaking good artists, but they were the wrong artists for a biennale focusing on the latest developments in contemporary art. It is unfortunate that some artists from Iran who have already gained international recognition were not seen worthy of representing their country in Venice.

Meanwhile, but unrelated to diplomacy, this summer the Chelsea Art Museum mounted Iran Inside Out, including both artists working in Iran and those part of the diaspora.

This looks like a beginning. Here's a link to the Tehran Times article, the most complete of the three I discovered.

Photo Credits: PRESS TV (top); Tehran Times (bottom).

I AM BACK FROM MY TRIP TO AUSTRIA, AND A QUICK STOP IN MUNICH, AND AM STARTING TO CATCH UP ON DEVELOPMENTS IN THE CULTURAL WORLD. I'LL BE POSTING SOON. PLEASE CHECK BACK.