tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-93112692008-07-23T09:51:05.262-07:00Mark Vallennoreply@blogger.comBlogger442125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9311269.post-656179067822900372008-07-23T09:10:00.000-07:002008-07-23T09:50:54.680-07:00

Those fortunate to see the latest exhibition at the National Gallery of Canada, 1930s: The Making of "The New Man", will not only have the opportunity to feast their eyes upon some of the greatest artworks of the 20th century - they will be given ample evidence of how artists once responded to calamity and social crisis. On view until September 7, 2008, the exhibit presents over 200 paintings,

Mark Vallennoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9311269.post-92185030923375267242008-07-17T11:37:00.000-07:002008-07-17T11:52:21.294-07:00

Brussels is not only the capital of Belgium and the administrative center of the European Union, it is also the city where the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) is based. In addition, Brussels becomes the latest stop for Fundamental, the group exhibition I’m participating in - exploring today’s religious fundamentalist movements. My painting, A People Under Command: USA Today, is included

Mark Vallennoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9311269.post-14969396849009041402008-07-08T09:56:00.000-07:002008-07-08T10:11:29.512-07:00

The A Shenere Velt Gallery of Los Angeles, California has issued a Call for Artists to participate in a juried exhibition entitled, R U Evolved? Artists Reflect on Darwin at 200. Scheduled for January 11 through February 27, 2009, the show will mark Charles Darwin’s 200th Birthday. I've been asked to juror the exhibit, along with my distinguished collegues, Paul Von Blum (author and Senior

Mark Vallennoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9311269.post-68821270303837075202008-07-04T12:53:00.000-07:002008-07-04T13:41:19.967-07:00

The Lure of the East: British Orientalist Painting, is an important exhibition running in London at the Tate Britain from June 4th, 2008 through August 31st, 2008. The exhibit provides a somewhat critical look at Orientalism, the genre commonly associated with nineteenth-century Western artists who depicted the peoples and cultures of an imagined Near and Middle East. The Tate is displaying over

Mark Vallennoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9311269.post-68724741416244948432008-06-25T13:11:00.000-07:002008-06-25T13:25:44.670-07:00

Thematically centered around the state of the American political scene, The Art of Democracy is a national coalition of art exhibitions scheduled for the Fall of 2008. Twenty-eight galleries from San Francisco to New York are participating in the project, which leads up to the November 2008 national elections. Other galleries, arts organizations, and artists are encouraged to organize their own

Mark Vallennoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9311269.post-69008784896683487302008-06-16T12:18:00.000-07:002008-06-16T12:34:41.535-07:00

There is seemingly no end to the superficiality of today’s postmodern art and the cravenness of those fame seekers who create it. In 2003 BritArt movement superstars Jake and Dinos Chapman purchased a suite of Goya’s celebrated antiwar etchings, Disasters of War, and in a gesture supposedly meant to lay bare the inadequacy of art as protest, defaced the set of 80 prints by drawing cartoon faces

Mark Vallennoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9311269.post-3004004711354096862008-06-13T12:53:00.000-07:002008-06-13T13:50:27.418-07:00

Some years ago, while visiting the German city of Cologne, I discovered the works of the Cologne Progressive Artists Group (Gruppe Progressiver Künstler Köln), a bloc of artists that represented the radical outer fringe of the Expressionist movement of the Weimar Republic (1918-1933). Fortunately for enthusiasts of art from the Weimar years the Museum Ludwig in Cologne, Germany, has mounted an

Mark Vallennoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9311269.post-35535061396950147462008-06-08T17:31:00.000-07:002008-06-08T18:30:54.401-07:00

The Museum at Bethel Woods, an institution dedicated to the examination of the Woodstock Music & Art Fair held for three days in August of 1969, officially opened on June 2, 2008, on the exact site of the original Woodstock festival. A splendid building of wood and stone that looks much like a fancy mountain lodge resort, the museum sits on a hilltop overlooking the field, once part of Max Yasgur

Mark Vallennoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9311269.post-2746517480465981892008-06-06T18:56:00.000-07:002008-06-06T19:19:46.242-07:00

Armed guards carrying clubs and loaded guns now patrol the new Broad Contemporary Art Museum (BCAM), the latest addition to the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. No less than three armed guards have been seen patrolling the BCAM, with one security officer assigned to watch over Damien Hirst’s installation Away from the Flock - a dead lamb pickled in formaldehyde that Eli Broad purchased in 2006

Mark Vallennoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9311269.post-80593012263958553632008-05-30T13:29:00.000-07:002008-06-25T13:39:14.853-07:00

I will be exhibiting a few paintings in a group show presented by the newest gallery space in downtown Los Angeles, California, the Katalyst Foundation for the Arts. Starting May 31, 2008, and running until the end of June, 2008, Pulse Point will be the second exhibit offered by Katalyst in its temporary gallery near the historic Little Tokyo district of L.A. Reading from the gallery’s press

Mark Vallennoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9311269.post-79213226993047192752008-05-24T13:06:00.000-07:002008-06-25T13:34:32.309-07:00

On May 22, 2008, a monumental bronze bust of Harvey Milk, the first openly gay politician to be elected to public office anywhere in the world and a martyred hero of the gay rights movement, was unveiled and officially dedicated in the rotunda of San Francisco City Hall. Milk was elected to the San Francisco Board of Supervisors in 1977, but was shot to death by an assassin a year later at S.F.

Mark Vallennoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9311269.post-65509221027254865432008-05-19T19:45:00.000-07:002008-05-31T16:24:44.414-07:00

It is not likely that many people personally knew, or even heard of, Michael Rossman - yet for those even remotely interested in the alternative culture and politics that thrived in Berkeley, California in the late 1960s, Michael’s spirit looms large. I consider myself fortunate to have known him - however briefly - and to be able to say that he was a friend. He passed away at his wife's home in

Mark Vallennoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9311269.post-50243489324716414252008-05-18T10:52:00.000-07:002008-05-18T11:08:33.125-07:00

[ Rural Women Unite Against Violence - Anonymous silkscreen poster from Sri Lanka, produced in the early 1970s. Created for the Network of Rural Women’s Groups/Baddegama, Sri Lanka. On display at Reclaiming the "F" Word. ] Mentioned on this web log from time to time, L.A.’s irreplaceable Center for the Study of Political Graphics (CSPG) has once again curated an exhibit of great importance to

Mark Vallennoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9311269.post-60539170885691923452008-05-14T23:10:00.000-07:002008-05-14T23:26:31.001-07:00

Robert Rauschenberg died at his home on Captiva Island, Florida on May 12, 2008, at the age of 82. Unquestionably there will be many eulogies written about the iconoclastic artist, and there’s not much that I can add in noting his accomplishments or his passing - save for the following. Rauschenberg always impressed me as being one of the more significant artists associated with the Pop Art

Mark Vallennoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9311269.post-2175470963776976452008-05-04T14:47:00.000-07:002008-05-04T15:20:53.888-07:00

On May 1st, 2008, the Los Angeles Times reported that famed L.A. muralist Kent Twitchell settled his lawsuit against the U.S. government for obliterating his six-story mural depiction of artist Ed Ruscha. Starting in 1978, it took Twitchell nine years to complete his mural on an outside wall of the L.A. headquarters of the U.S. Department of Labor. In 2006 the mural was deliberately painted over

Mark Vallennoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9311269.post-69568710838613589942008-05-01T12:41:00.000-07:002008-05-01T13:01:15.977-07:00

Among the many graffiti slogans scrawled upon the walls of Paris during the rebellion of May 1968, perhaps the one that best summed up the temper of the time was "Be Realistic, Demand the Impossible". But poetic, politically pointed graffiti was not the only thing to adorn the walls of Paris in 68. Anonymous street art posters augmented the May uprising, leaving behind a legacy of socially

Mark Vallennoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9311269.post-29475718943870224732008-04-26T23:08:00.000-07:002008-04-26T23:50:31.109-07:00

Edward Hopper (1882-1967) is the subject of a major retrospective at the Art Institute of Chicago, the last venue for a traveling exhibition that included stops at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, and the National Gallery of Art, Washington. Encompassing nearly 100 of the artist’s most notable prints and paintings, the exhibit features some of the artist’s most iconic canvases, New York Movie (

Mark Vallennoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9311269.post-48075210913392058562008-04-22T21:41:00.000-07:002008-04-22T21:57:34.987-07:00

The April 2008 edition of Modern Painters: The International Contemporary Art Magazine, is devoted to "the politically driven art made in response to war and its critical reception." An introductory statement from the magazine’s Assistant Editor, Quinn Latimer, sums up the profusely illustrated April edition thusly: "Each month, with some discomfiture, we publish art criticism that rarely touches

Mark Vallennoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9311269.post-31578644917727870892008-04-19T11:50:00.000-07:002008-04-19T13:29:35.476-07:00

On April 11, 2008, the inelegantly named Newseum opened in Washington, DC., to great fanfare. Ostensibly created to celebrate journalism in America and beyond, the seven-story museum is the newest and most expensive museum in the United States. Founded by the Freedom Forum and costing $450 million, the latest cultural institution to be added to the nation’s capital is so far receiving rave

Mark Vallennoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9311269.post-15530361325580981662008-04-12T11:16:00.000-07:002008-04-12T13:18:03.115-07:00

Storefront for Art and Architecture is a non-profit organization in New York that prides itself on being one of that city’s few alternative groups focused upon architecture and urban design. Established in 1982, the group seeks to advance innovative architecture through education, artist’s talks, film screenings, forums, and exhibitions. For the first time the group is conducting an event outside

Mark Vallennoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9311269.post-22180728883785955242008-04-10T10:22:00.000-07:002008-04-10T10:40:36.975-07:00

On April 7, 2003, Reuters photographer Faleh Kheiber took a photo that will forever speak of the cruelty of war. Kheiber’s photo, and dozens of others taken by fellow Reuters photojournalists working in Iraq, comprise an exhibition of war photography marking the fifth anniversary of the U.S. invasion of Iraq.Bearing Witness: Five Years of the Iraq War, is the inaugural exhibition for the Idea

Mark Vallennoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9311269.post-27212989950440499162008-04-07T11:06:00.000-07:002008-04-07T11:16:13.377-07:00

[ Police and Thieves - Anonymous street poster, 2008. ] I spotted this anonymous street art poster of Republican presidential candidate John McCain in the North Hollywood district of Los Angeles. The title of the poster, Police and Thieves, comes from a Jamaican reggae hit written by Junior Murvin in 1976 and popularized further in a 1977 punk version by The Clash. Rebuking gang violence and

Mark Vallennoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9311269.post-65551129352813682002008-04-06T19:29:00.000-07:002008-04-19T11:48:13.964-07:00

LA vs. War promises to be one of the largest antiwar cultural happenings in the recent history of Los Angeles. Organized by the activist artists of Yo!, the same people who put together the Yo! What Happened to Peace? international touring peace poster exhibit, the LA vs. War extravaganza is scheduled to run April 10 - 13, 2008, at The Firehouse art space in downtown Los Angeles. In the words of

Mark Vallennoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9311269.post-81350855356682523502008-04-05T09:06:00.000-07:002008-04-05T09:22:47.564-07:00

War: Dance of Death in Black, White, and Blood Red All Over, is the name of a timely exhibition of woodcuts now on view at Los Angeles’ A Shenere Velt Gallery. Printmaker Kurt Brian Webb’s blunt, no-nonsense graphic style makes clear an unequivocal opposition to the forces of war and militarism through prints that are at once honest, sardonic, and mordantly funny. The pale rider of course stalks

Mark Vallennoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9311269.post-26119363086187891632008-04-03T13:35:00.000-07:002008-04-05T09:26:37.865-07:00

[ Blood - Mark Vallen. Oil on masonite. 18" x 24". Click here for a larger view. ] A work in progress, my portrait of an anonymous African American man is intended as a rumination on racial politics in contemporary American society. The painting’s meaning and emotional focus is contingent upon who is viewing it, and while some may see menace, a great many others will perceive dignity. I have

Mark Vallennoreply@blogger.com