Ellen Frank and Cities Of Peace Exhibiton Video

"I figure that this guy has just lost everything in the Market because his Broker was a 'Goniff' (Yiddish for thief) who had only his own interests at heart. So, either Our Man is going after the Goniff himself or he's about to send him this pistol wrapped in the NYTimes Stock Market pages with a note that says (Be honorable and due what you have to do.) I'd swear I got this idea from Shakespeare...ah yes, Anton and Cleop'tra. Chilling." Izzy Seltzer

For more Izzy Seltzer Photography/Humor go to

Izzy Seltzer

Congratulations...

Gregory Coates

has a new web site!

Falling Water by Winn Rea

was featured in an exhibition at the Alpan Gallery last month. The artist created an evolving installation of spiral cut plastic water bottles suspended from the ceiling forming a waterfall of swirling plastic ribbons. The Long Island City based artist reminds the viewer of a necessary concern for the environment. Winn Rea - New York Times Review

NY: Alpan Gallery Alpan Gallery Call for Entries

ABOUT THE JUROR: RHONDA COOPER
Rhonda Cooper has been the Director of the University Art Gallery at Stony Brook University since 1983. Before coming to Stony Brook, she was Curator of Exhibitions at The Queens Museum in New York City and Curator of Asian Art at The Dayton Art Institute in Dayton, Ohio. Other museums and galleries at which she has worked include The Harvard University Archives, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, and The Museum of Modern Art in NYC. Rhonda Cooper received her M.A. in the History of Far Eastern Art from the University of Hawaii in Honolulu and did additional graduate study towards the Ph.D. at Cornell University. She has taught arts management and Asian art history at Stony Brook since 1984. She has also taught at the Art Institute of Boston and the University of Bridgeport. Rhonda Cooper is the author of many articles and exhibition catalogues and co-author of the book Masterpieces of Chinese Art.

I missed this last summer - Brian Belott at Cheim Read….

The I WON’T GROW UP show emphasized work with compositional elements evocative of the creative freedom and wonderment of younger years which paid homage to the abandonment of adulthood and endless youth of Peter Pan.

It was art patron and advocate for contemporary artists, Beth Rudin deWoody and artist, Donald Baechler who curated a show last summer at Cheim Read where up-and-comer, Brian Belott exhibited along side Donald Baechler, Jean-Michel Basquiat, Louise Bourgeois, Jared Buckheister, Brendan Cass, E.V. Day, Phillip Estlund, Mark Fox, Beka Goedde, Gary Hume, Chantal Joffe, Chapman Brothers, Jonathan Hammer, Mike Kelley, Misaki Kawai, Jeff Koons, Tim Liddy, McDermott & McGough, Ryan McGinley, Paul Morrison, Takashi Murakami, Yoshitomo Nara, Djordje Ozbolt, Kembra Pfahler.

Performance work by Belott and collaborator Larissa Valez who currently performing at DTW and later in May. See more about DTW at:Dance Theatre Workshop ...

Brian Belott in his Park Slope Studio

The World

oil and alkyd on canvas 36" x 34"

I have just added a link to Fred Bendheim's who is in the Art Rent and Lease stable of artist (with me).

These abstract paintings are the result of over twenty-five years of exploration through painting. Although they contain references to nature, macro and micro systems, Eastern Philosophy, and to other art, they are primarily self-referential. Each painting’s structure is made from lines, often a single line that forms a circuit or isometric pattern. Within this line is a myriad of shapes, colors and gestures, which together primarily express feeling. A single line or circuit derives from the artist’s intuition of a universe that includes endless differences and yet is essentially one.
Lines are also metaphors of life: they have a beginning, a middle and end. They are records of their own creation--each line being made of many moments. The paintings describe the essence of form, they express the essence of feeling, which is energy.

Shepard Fairey’s ubiquitous illustration of President-elect Barack Obama,

seen throughout the 2008 election season, has been purchased by and will be exhibited in The National Portrait Gallery in Washington, D.C., Mr. Fairey’s mixed-media stenciled collage that depicts President elect Obama above the word “hope,” was created by Mr. Fairey, a Los Angeles-based artist known for rock-music album covers and a sticker campaign featuring the wrestler Andre the Giant. Martin E. Sullivan, the director of the National Portrait Gallery, remarked that the Obama poster was “an emblem of a significant election, as well as a new presidency.” The portrait which fetched $75,000 in donations is expected to be on display by Inauguration Day.

Frank Shepard Fairey, who usually omits his first name, born February 15, 1970 in Charleston, South Carolina is a contemporary artist, graphic designer and illustrator who emerged from the skateboarding scen and became known initially for his "André the Giant Has a Posse" sticker campaign. The Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston calls him one of today's best known and most influential street artists. He usually omits his first name.

All emerging artists need to read this article by Renee Phillips' in Art Calendar for emerging artists. Click here. It is very encouraging amidst our gloomy economy.

GLOOMY LANDSCAPE:

As financial downturn hits art market,

the days of easy Monet may be over

By JILL LAWLESS
LONDON (AP) _ The mood was frosty at London's Frieze Art Fair. Bidders were sparse at Christie's and Sotheby's. Even Andy Warhol's multicolored skulls failed to lift the art world's gloom. A week of slowing sales and sagging prices suggests the global financial meltdown has finally ended the art-market boom that saw paintings and sculptures become must-have commodities for the world's elite.

At Sotheby's and Christie's — where price records have tumbled regularly in recent years — the major autumn auctions of contemporary art generated at least a third less money than predicted, with many works going unsold. "A lot of the froth and hype has gone from the contemporary market," Melanie Girlis, art market editor of The Art Newspaper in London, said Monday.

Art world observers have been predicting a crash since the U.S. subprime mortgage crisis began rippling around the world. Many of the buyers driving the art world sales frenzy were hedge fund and private equity millionaires — among the first to suffer as the credit crunch took hold.
But prices stayed high, thanks in part to Russian and Middle Eastern buyers who were insulated from the worst of the economic woes.

In May, Russian billionaire Roman Abramovich bought two paintings by Francis Bacon and Lucian Freud for a total of $120 million. Last month, a Sotheby's auction of works by Britart star Damien Hirst defied market jitters by generating almost $200 million.
Now, however, the economic crisis has spread around the world, bringing stock market turmoil, failing banks — and plunging art prices — in its wake.

Christie's postwar and contemporary sale Sunday raised just under $55.5 million, against a pre-sale estimate of $100 million to $132 million. Twenty-one of the 47 lots failed to sell.
Sotheby's contemporary sale Friday raised a total of $38 million, below the presale estimate of $54 million to $75 million. The star lot, Warhol's pop-art paintings of human skulls, sold for $7.5 million, below the estimate of $8.7 million to $12.2 million. Both auction houses said they were pleased with the results, which some observers had predicted might be even worse.
Cheyenne Westphal, head of contemporary art at Sotheby's Europe, said bidding had been "rational." She said that while pre-sale estimates had proved overoptimistic, "the sale was assembled in a very different economic environment from that which prevailed today."
William Ruprecht, Sotheby's chief executive officer, said "there's no question that there's a reduction in price that some people are willing to pay for objects." "But there's also no question that there's an awful lot of interest in important works of art," he told The Associated Press in a telephone interview in New York. "I do not look at the marketplace ... as in any sense frozen or not moving forward, be it with some price adjustments, because that's what's happening. There's a price adjustment going on in a number of categories where there's been big price appreciation," Ruprecht said. He added that the demand and interest from the United States was "a surprise to us" and that some longtime collectors, particularly in the U.S., see the falling prices as an opportunity to find a bargain.

Christie's said the last few weeks had shown that prices for artworks were "finding a new level," but added it remained "cautiously optimistic" about upcoming sales. "We are seeing more selective bidding which represents a slowdown in the growth seen in recent years, as opposed to any decline," the auction house said in a statement from New York. "We have encouraged sellers to agree to reasonable and attractive estimates in forthcoming sales, as is standard in our aim of matching demand with supply in the auction marketplace."

At auctioneer Phillips de Pury, Saturday's contemporary art sale generated only $8.6 million, less than a third of the pre-sale estimate. The auction house blamed the extreme financial market volatility, which it said was leading buyers to take a "wait- and-see" attitude.
Nothing symbolized the modern art boom like Frieze, four days of champagne, chitchat, celebrity — and, of course, art — that has become one of the world's most glamorous art fairs since it was founded six years ago.

The glitter quotient remained high this year, as everyone from Gwyneth Paltrow and Sofia Coppola to Abramovich and his gallery-owning girlfriend Daria Zhukova came to inspect the work of 1,000 international artists in a tented mini-city erected in London's Regent's Park.
The fair did not release sales totals, but said the figures had "exceeded expectations."
But attendees said the mood was less frenzied than in recent years, when many pieces were snapped up in the first few hours. "It's like art fairs used to be," said Tom Heman of New York gallery Metro Pictures. "We're able to have much more of a dialogue about the work."
Some galleries even said they were glad to see the end of the feeding-frenzy atmosphere.
"It is nice that it's going back to normal and that it's time to talk about art again, instead of investment," said Claus Andersen of Andersen's Contemporary in Copenhagen.
The market's next test will come in a month, when Christie's and Sotheby's hold sales of impressionist and modern art in New York. Sotheby's auction includes Pablo Picasso's "Harlequin," which is expected to fetch more than $30 million.

The last such sales, in May, generated more than $500 million between them.
Some dealers remain optimistic amid the gloom. Hauser & Wirth, a leading contemporary art gallery with showrooms in London and Zurich, said it had had its best Frieze week ever, with several million dollars in sales of works by Subodh Gupta, Louise Bourgeois, Paul McCarthy and other artists.

"Quality (art) to committed collectors will always sell," said spokesman Roger Tatley.
"If it's a moment to separate the wheat from the chaff, the high quality pieces from the overinflated works, then that's a good thing."
___
Associated Press writer Ula Ilnytzky in New York contributed to this report.

MONROVIA

East Hampton artist, Ellen Frank

will be speaking with Bonnie Grice

Monday morning at 9:00 am on WLIU radio (88.3)

about her up-coming exhibit,

CITIES OF PEACE opening at

CATHEDRAL OF SAINT JOHN THEDIVINE

JANUARY 7 – FEBRUARY 16, 2009

OPENING RECEPTION, JAN. 7, 6 – 9PM

CITIES OF PEACE is a series of nine monumental, 6 x 8 foot gold-illuminated paintings honoring cities traumatized by major conflict: BAGHDAD, BEIJING, HIROSHIMA, JERUSALEM, KABUL, LHASA, MONROVIA, NEW YORK, SARAJEVO.
The commemorative body of work was conceived by American artist Ellen Frank
and produced at her Illumination Atelier, with trained interns and scholars from China, Colombia, Estonia, Canada and elsewhere. Honoring cities either in the midst of crisis or in different stages of cultural restoration, the suite features Baghdad, Beijing, Hiroshima, Jerusalem, Kabul, Lhasa, Monrovia, New York and Sarajevo.
“The U.S. faces more than the enormous effort to repair our diplomatic ties; we need to promote healing and unity across borders,” says artist Ellen Frank. “This is my way of helping: I strongly believe that when people are in the presence of beautiful things—removed from the world of despair, fear, worry—we become hopeful, closer and beautifully at peace.”

CITES OF PEACE marries word and image in the great tradition of illuminated art, evoking
artistic traditions as diverse as illuminated manuscripts, religious icons, tapestries, embroidery, architectural mosaics, woodcarvings, and metalwork. Crimson leaf, the color of blood, is placed in each painting to honor the dead. While serving as memorials, the paintings are also intended as border crossings that enable visions of greater compassion and heightened consciousness among peoples.

CITIES OF PEACE will be narrated in a free cell phone tour by actor Fred Melamed, who is
starring in the next Coen brothers’ film, A Serious Man. The Cathedral is located at 112th Street and Amsterdam Avenue, one block east of Broadway. Hours are Monday - Saturday, from 7 a.m. to 6 p.m. and Sunday 7 a.m. - 7 p.m. Admission is free.

Ellen Frank studied art history and connoisseurship at Yale University and holds an
interdisciplinary doctorate in English literature and the visual arts from Stanford University. She is a recipient of a Fulbright Fellowship, a Ford Foundation fellowship, and grants from the
National Endowment for the Arts, the Pollock-Krasner Foundation, the New York State Council on the Arts, and the New York Foundation for the Arts. Frank founded the nonprofit Ellen Frank Illumination Arts Foundation, Inc., in East Hampton, New York.

watch Ellen Frank video

Check out the

Sketchbook Project Exhibition

Get Connected!

If you don't know about The Daily Campello Art News blog, I strongly encourage you to check it out: dcartnews.blogspot.com. Lenny Campello has been blogging since 2003, and is offering webinars in February.

Boot Camp for Artists - The Lenny Campello Webinars Sunday, February 01, 2009 at 11:00 AM (ET) (online at: bootcampforartists.eventbrite.com)
SESSIONS
How to Build your Resume:
Sunday February 1, 2009 @11am-12:30pm ... Proven tactics for building your resume.
How to Present Your Work:
Sunday February 15, 2009 @11am-12:30pm... Delivering a positive impression of the work.
How to Reduce your Framing Costs:
Sunday March 1, 2009 @11am-12:30pm... Inexperienced artists often fall prey to high framing costs and then find that these costs account for the largest percentage in pricing artwork.
How to get publicity for your art show:
Sunday March 15, 2009 @11am-12:30pm... In times of declining main stream media coverage of the arts, artists and gallerists find it very difficult to attract publicity.
How to establish a digital presence:
Sunday April 19, 2009 @11am-12:30pm... Discuss a variety of tactics for improving your Internet presence as well as expanding your artistic digital footprint.
The insider's view on art galleries:
Sunday April 5, 2009 @11am-12:30pm... former co-owner of the two Fraser Galleries in Washington, DC and Bethesda, MD and is currently the owner of Alida Anderson Art Projects as well as the curatorial advisor to several commercial art galleries in the Mid Atlantic.
How to approach a gallery:
Sunday May 3, 2009 @11am-12:30pm... proven methodology for approaching art galleries.
Contracts:
Sunday May 17, 2009 @11am-12:30pm... discuss and explain the most common aspects addressed in most gallery contracts.

The artist, Rist speaking about the project

The Curator, Klauss Biesenbach speaks on the project

If you are using Safari as your browser, you have trouble viewing these videos in which case click behind the scenes with Pipolotti Rist and
MOMA curator on Pipolotti Rist

MOMA'S Sex Change

The Musuem's Piplotti Rist Show Cheekily Feminizes a Bastion of Masculinity - A New York Magazine, Jan 5 issue review by Jerry Saltz whose written aesthetic so perfectly describes this installation we can all enjoy through February 2nd.

The deliciously named Swiss miss Pipilotti Rist, who for two decades has been ravishing viewers with her fiesta-colored video visions, has risen to new heights of trippy bliss. Her opulently beautiful 25-by-200-foot wraparound video at MoMA—complete with two round breast-shaped projector pods protruding from the walls and close-ups of pink tulips, a black pig, and a fleshy nude—is catnip for the eye and a hormonal rush for an institution badly in need of one. It is one of the most seductively rebellious artistic gestures since Lynda Benglis’s notorious Artforum ad in 1974, for which she posed naked wielding a dildo. Benglis’s action slapped a biased art world awake; Rist’s Pour Your Body Out (7354 Cubic Meters) suspends us in a primordial sea of liquids, and performs a metaphysical sex change on the Museum of Modern Art. The atrium of this bastion of masculinism becomes a womb, and the museum itself a woman. In an abstract way, Rist makes the institution ovulate.
Rist’s installation is an impregnation and an incantation. It is also an exorcism. As I’ve said in these pages before, MoMA is—even with this show and the current Marlene Dumas survey—a place where very little work by women is on view, at least in the permanent collection. Rist’s installation comments on and reacts to this misogyny. She has hung magenta-colored draperies almost to the ceiling of the atrium, making it a ballroom, a Hopper movie theater, a bordello, or a living room. Her monolithic projected images caress and dissolve the hard-edged architecture. Drowsy droning music plays; bells ting-a-ling. The atrium has been carpeted, and a large circular couch with a hole in the middle has replaced Barnett Newman’s phallic Broken Obelisk. Shoes and coats are everywhere. People lie around, lean on walls, sleep, and sprawl in groups on the floor and couch. On one of my visits, the well-known painter Gary Stephen drifted by and said, “I wish I had some ganja.” This is museum as hallucination, opium den, Lotus Land, cubbyhole, and pleasure dome. Call it Trance Central station.
The images in Rist’s sixteen-minute video loop remix the colors of Fauvism, the fragmented form of Cubism, and modernism’s juicy jarring nudes. Rist’s quasi-narrative is pleasure, politics, and biology. In an interview she talks to curator Klaus Biesenbach about “our deepest craving to be synchronized with others” and “our love for fluids and water.” To some, Rist’s MoMA installation is little more than a hippy-dippy decorative circus. That’s a mistake, ignoring how clever and subversive Rist is. One subplot of her MoMA installation is to metaphysically induce a rush of psychic estrogen in the museum. By the film’s end the atrium is awash in a tidal sea of crimson and burgundy fluid.
At various points, a pig gnaws an apple, toes squish fruit, giant strawberries drift in clear liquid, a naked girl crawls in the grass. All hips, hair, and breasts, she caresses two earthworms as if removing the sin from Eve’s apple or stroking living phalluses. She fills another person’s mouth and nostrils with flower petals, eats tulips, digs into the dirt with her fingers. She is some sort of otherworldly Earth mother performing a modern-day fertility rite. MoMA seems to swell and stir to new life. A giant eye opens, a naked woman floats upside down, a trail of blood begins running up her breasts. Finally, a colossal female in a white bathing suit rises from the water. Between her legs is a flow of blood. The whole atrium goes red. MoMA comes of age.
What Richard Serra is to hard and dry, Rist is to soft and moist. Rather than only privileging the eye, as in Courbet’s yummy yoni shot The Origin of the World, Rist’s art is a full-body experience. Like Matthew Barney, who crawls like a symbiotic organism through space, or Niki de Saint Phalle and Jean Tinguely's giant reclining nude that was entered between the legs, Rist wants to turn the museum into an ecstasy machine.
In the West, however, ecstasy comes with proscriptions. Especially if it’s too female—then it’s taboo. A widely circulated rumor has it that MoMA asked Rist to edit out the red between the legs. It turns out that so-called “belly-magic” is more off-limits than mind-magic. In classical terms, the Dionysian is still more fraught than the Apollonian. Thinking about this installation without the blood is like thinking about life without blood.